Like Playing See-Saw With an Elephant!

If you've been following my blog (please do, I'm very interesting and insightful. Really. Honest) you would have seen my post about wanting to work whilst being a mummy. As I'm officially on maternity leave until the end of January but am no longer being paid, I've been doing some writing work, hence the quietness on here.

It turns out that trying to work from home with a baby is trickier than I thought. Firstly, Isabella is obsessed with my laptop and every time I have it round her, she climbs on top of it. Secondly, my baby does not like being ignored and she doesn't nap that much. If you add together all the hours you spend playing with a baby, feeding a baby, soothing a baby, changing a baby and doing the endless washing of clothes that comes along with it all, I'm pretty sure it adds up to more than 24 hours!

At first it was fine, I was doing manageable chunks of work here and there, but then I managed to score a job as a content writer for an outsourcing company. It was a LOT of work, which is both good and bad. Good because doing 8-10 500 word pieces a day adds up to a reasonable amount of money, bad because it's actual impossible to fit that in when you're a mummy. Something has to give, and in my case, that ended up being sleep. 

I had a seemingly endless stream of articles and guest posts to write with next day deadlines. The fascinating subjects included- packaging tape, pallet wrap, plywood, body armour (?). Soooo, I ended up typing all the way to Shropshire and back, typing during Isabella's meal times (it's fortunate that at the moment she just insists on feeding herself) and typing through to the wee small hours. Old caffeine addict Kayleigh was back! My baby ended up twitchy from the amount of coffee I was drinking, I felt like I was being tortured and it got to the stage when I just didn't care if I was being paid or not, I just wanted my life back.

After losing 5lbs in the space of 4 days and gaining a massive spot which makes me look like I have a cold sore, I decided to call it quits. I told a little white lie and said that I had another job and agreed that I'd do 1000-2000 words a day for them max. I've got a few straggling pieces to get through, so it's going to be another tough couple of nights, but at least then it's done and gone away forever. Now, I'm just working for the one company that I started with doing a little bit of blog work and proof reading here and there and I'm much happier. 

It's so impossible to find a balance between working and being a mum, whether you return to the office or work from home. Hence the title of this entry because it is, in fact, like trying to play see-saw with an elephant!