Recently Facebook reminded me that a year ago, a Dad giving a live interview with BBC was interrupted by his daughter. If you haven’t seen it or you don’t remember it, you really need to watch it. This video spoke to me then and continues to speak to me today. I live this life regularly.
As background, I have worked full-time since my oldest was 11 months old but unlike pre-kid what I do has changed. I am 100% part of the new gig economy. This means a couple of things – first it means my office is in our house and second because of this my kids are way more integrated into my professional life than I ever would have imaged. The pluses and minuses of this is an entire different post – probably a series of posts – but for now just know my kids are around A LOT when I am technically in professional mode.
I am really honest with people about my situation and that my kids are around. For the most part, it is what it is and I have learned to balance it. My oldest was and is particularly chill and often attended meetings with me. My youngest is a wild beast and not so much. But having kids around and needing to use both mom and professional brain at one time causes issues with even the best kids. This ranges from my oldest (at about age 2) getting struck with a stomach bug en route to a breakfast meeting and barfing everywhere- and by everywhere I do mean everywhere – in my car. Then I had to deal with it at a restaurant that is not for families thus had nothing like say a changing table. To just this morning, when my wild beast of a youngest (currently 19 months) got mad at my coffee at Starbucks, dumped a full glass of ice water on the ground and began to roll around in the puddle on the floor.
But the absolute worst of these experiences came a few days before this dad had his internationally televised parenting issue. A part of my job is doing media interviews. Normally these are planned well in advance and I can ensure my children are no where near me when I am doing these but occasionally breaking news and reporter deadlines makes that impossible. Those circumstances came together just last year.
I had been at my oldest’s school working the book fair for the final shift of the day. Because I am mom this meant I worked the book fair wearing my youngest in the ergo. By the time I got the book fair shut down and all the kids to my car, I was exhausted. It was at this point I looked at my phone (which when you work like I do is your entire life and your office) and noticed a series of missed calls, texts, emails and voicemails. They were all reporters on deadline who needed to speak to me about a man who had been struck and killed by a train. Doing an interview when someone has been killed means I need some information in front of me and a level of seriousness on your part since someone had passed away and that is a sober situation.
Upon seeing this, I put the kids in the car and drove the mile home so I could have some statistics in front of me and get my kids settled before taking the call. As I have said my oldest is pretty use to me needing to do work kind of randomly and typically has no issues handling it. We arrived home, I told her I needed to do these calls and asked her what she needed me to set her up with before calling them back. We got a snack, some books and some art supplies out and I called the first reporter back. To be fair – I did warn her that my kids were home but I wanted to meet her deadline so I had called her back as soon as I could. It was then that it all started to unravel.
First, the youngest (who was under a year) decided that she NEEDED to nurse. Not like I might be hungry but I NEED to eat and only nursing will do. She is ripping at my clothes whining and crying. Since it is a phone interview and no one can see me I do what a normal mom does, I sat down and started breastfeeding while on the phone. I sat in my living room breastfeeding with one arm, accessing my laptop with the other for data and holding the phone with my chin. I thought well this isn’t ideal but I got this shit. I am making it happen and no one is the wiser. Really – never have those thoughts. It is an invitation to disaster.
As I am talking suddenly my then 5 year old runs into the room from where she was eating snack and doing crafts. She climbs up onto my lap (please remember I have a baby attached to one boob still and am trying to navigate a laptop when picturing this) she grabs my face between her two hands leans in so she is nose to nose with me and screams “I WANT CHEESE AND CRACKERS!” At this point, there is no way the person on the phone can’t know that my house is a disaster.
You are probably asking what did I do? Well I did what moms around the world have done since the beginning of time, I dealt with it. I apologized to the reporter for the interruption, got my 5 year old off my lap, stood up with the baby still attached to my boob and walked to the kitchen to get cheese and crackers while completing the interview. I then called a second reporter back and prayed to any god that was listening to let that interviews go better.
After all the calls were done, I poured a glass of wine and thought to myself – do working dads have to deal with this kind of crap? I can promise you that my husband would have a nervous breakdown if any of this had happened to him.