I’m a stay-at-home mum...get me out of here!

Broadcaster and mum-of-eight Miriam O’Callaghan believes that staying at home and minding your kids is the hardest job in the world but the best thing you can do for them.

 

Before I had my own kids, I would have been totally incredulous at the very suggestion that staying at home with children could possibly be harder than going out to work every day.

 

With the innocent naivety of a childless woman, I imagined that staying at home with your children every day must be the cushiest number of all.

 

I was heartbroken going back to work four days a week when Princess Firstborn, an angelically placid baby, was only six months. I will never ever forget that first day I left her in her new childminder’s house; how her huge, trusting brown eyes followed me as I walked away.

 

The guilt was suffocating, especially when my precious baby realised what was happening and began to cry and cling to me as I left her each morning.

 

Roll on five years and two more babies and I agree wholeheartedly with Miriam. There ain’t nothing cushy about being a stay-at-home mum, it’s far, far easier to go out (or to my office upstairs) to work.

 

Of course, the guilt of not being at home with my children every day, as my own mother was for us, will always be there, but I’m fortunate enough as a freelance journalist to be able to collect Princess Firstborn from school every day, spend lunchtime with the kids and drop everything if they are sick or there is some other emergency.

 

It took us four years to find the right childminder; a real old-school Mammy whose own babies are now adults and who keeps the rocky ship of our noisy, chaotic household on an even keel.

 

She has had to take six weeks off for health reasons and I’m battling to keep our ship from hitting the rocks. As a working mum, I’m well used to multi-tasking, but things have reached a whole new level this week.

 

With the laptop on the kitchen table, I’m trying to squeeze work in between all the endless tasks of childminding.

 

The kids are delighted, not only to have me at home all the time but to be getting extra treats and TV and computer time, all in the name of bribery to keep them quiet while I am on work calls.

 

It’s not easy to take notes, hold a phone to your ear, stick a soother in a mouth, clean a runny nose (or do a multitude of other tasks) and concentrate on what the person at the other end of the line is saying, Suffice it to say, trying to read back my notes is not much fun.

 

I’m starting to lose the plot already and I haven’t even come to the end of my first week of childminderlessness.