Children at work

One of the reasons I am really rather enjoying the toddler stage, and if I confess honestly hated the whole baby stage, is that now I have a real little person with whom I can rationalise. Eve understands cause and effect and generally tantrums can be headed off before they start, or at least minimised, by a rational explanation of something and boundaries that make sense.

So, this evening, when we went to leave the playground Eve decided to stay. She sat on the floor and screamed. To which I simply said that she could stay, but she would be on her own because all her friends had gone home, would get cold and it wouldn't be as comfy as her big girl bed to sleep there. Within 5 seconds she was running into my arms to come home.

If only colleagues were so easy. I have spent the day listening to excuses about why things have not been done, a fair bit of whining (some from me, I will admit), and a complete lack of thinking through consequences. Much like London City Mum (whose blog I will link as soon as it is up running for general consumption again), I found myself today wanting to tell a colleague that they could do what they wanted to but if they did it then nobody would want to play with them again and they would have to stay on their own in the cold.

Revelations on a boat trip

After a pretty hideous week at work, including flying back to Hong Kong on a Saturday morning and thereby missing the three great loves of my life, Eve, rowing and riding the new motorbike, I found myself at a fortieth birthday party on Saturday night. Yummy Mummy doesn't get out as much as she used to so the prospect of free flowing booze while trundling around Hong Kong on a boat was all rather appealing. It also served to give me a reminder about the existence of professional trailing spouses.

I've not had much exposure to them lately, we've been here so long now that most of our friends are pretty "local" in attitude. I had rather forgotten the trailing spouse brigade.

The one thing that really struck me, as usual, is how little I have to actually say to these women. I had thought that now I have a child we would have more in common. Sadly not. After the initial "How are the children? Which school are they at?" comments, my life is so completely different from theirs that we simply have nothing at all in common to talk about. In the past this would usually mean that I would end up talking to the husbands about banking, but now I have a child they too treat me differently. For the first time since I came to Hong Kong I really felt like I was being judged for the choice I have made to stay at work. A number of husbands asked me why I decided to go back to work, one even flinched when I (quite honestly) said I thought I would go a bit potty on my own at home all day. I found myself having to justify my choice to keep working - I love my job, it is a good role model for my daughter, I have an excellent work-life balance in my job, blah blah blah. I started to feel quite upset as I soaked up the disapproving looks and comments.

Then, as we got off the boat, something happened that made me feel a lot better. One lady's husband was staying on the boat a bit longer to party whereas she was getting off the boat early with us. I turned to her and commented that one could tell who would be getting up with the children early tomorrow, to which she said "Oh no, I have two helpers so I won't need to get up tomorrow at all". Hmm, so you've not actually stopped working to look after your children then.

Calling all working Mummies

I have a bit of a dilemma. Yummy Mummy has been very, very lucky since I became a Mummy and I have the most amazingly flexible working arrangement with my boss. I work from home when I can, leave at 6 if I am in the office, and have responsibility and a nice salary to boot. It is a nice job, although not what I imagined I would be doing, but a good team nonetheless. At the moment I don't have any obvious career path within the team, however.

Last week I was approached to find out if I would be interested in applying for what, pre-Eve, would have been my ideal job. It is working for a team I know well and find very interesting. It would get me closer to the business and our clients, which has been one of my complaints about my current job because it moves me further away from where the actual business gets done. I really like the person who would be my boss, it would be a great career move. I only have a limited window before my old contacts and reputation from my pre-Eve job run out and make it difficult for me to make the move at all.

It would also see an end to working from home, would mean longer hours and seeing less of Eve. When I met the person who is currently doing the job yesterday to discuss it I was so excited about the chance that I had made my decision to go for it. But when I sat at lunchtime today singing "if you're happy and you know it" with Eve I made it back the other way.

I also realise that I can't work like this forever, in any other job I would probably have to change how I work, that Eve will go to nursery in about 6 months and I will then stop working from home, or do half days rather than full days here.

I can't help feeling that this is one of those crucial life-changing decisions. If I say no then I will always wonder what I could have had as a career had I made the choice. If I say yes then I will always wonder what I have missed with Eve. It is, quite simply, the choice between having a career and having a job.

I can already pre-empt all the comments about being able to get back into the career later etc, and I realise how fortunate I am to even have this decision to make. So many women don't. However, knowing that doesn't make it any easier.

I have the formal interview tomorrow and then I will either have to make a decision or not. I can't help wishing they would turn me down so I don't have to make the decision at all.

The great work debate

It has only taken 48 hours, but my romantic notions of becoming a full time Mum were put to rest yesterday while at lunch with some colleagues. While talking to a female colleague (single) we came up with a bunch of reasons why we rather like being in our 30s and having a career:

1. Not being financially independent on anyone (i.e. a husband) and as a result being able to squander money on utterly frivolous and expensive things, like Jimmy Choo shoes and massages, without having to justify it to anyone else.
2. Realising that someone will actually pay us for using our brain and doing something we really rather enjoy.
3. Knowing we will be able to fund our own retirement (that was my one and, I know, a bit too sensible).
4. Having time to ourselves, and being paid for it.
5. Meeting all sorts of interesting people with many, many different backgrounds and skills. Celebrating that diversity.
6. Pay back for our parents for the amount of money they squandered on our education!

To this I added my own, Mummy-specific ones
6. Going on business trips. Although I miss Eve horribly, it is great to be able to have a glass of wine in the airport or hotel lounge while reading a book or watching a whole film on a plane. And going to the gym every morning. And not being late for dinner with friends. It is valuable and rare "me time".
7. Being a role model for Eve who shows that women can do anything they want and have the option to work and have a successful career if they want to.

I came to the conclusion that I don't think I want to be a full time Mum, but then I don't want to be the ambitious and driven career girl I used to be. I love that I can work from home, leave on time, but still have the option to travel and drive my career full steam ahead in a few years time. I realise how lucky I am.

I think I may finally have reached a place where I am comfortable on this one. For today at least!

Desperate housewife?

I am starting to wonder, quite seriously, whether to give up my job. I like my job and really like the people I work with. However, the last few months of banking have not been kind.

A good friend of mine, C, realised she was missing too much time with her 5 month old daughter and handed in her notice last week at her bank. The straw that breaks the camels back may well have come yesterday, when a very good friend of mine in the office was given his notice. He relocated here two years ago with his wife and two children, has another child on the way, and as of August will have no job and no home (it's a company flat). There is no loyalty.

Someone has also asked if I want to set up a consulting business with them. It is tempting.

I will mull on it a little more before I make a decision. In the meantime, I am reading all about being a full time millennium housewife, and laughing a lot, here.

Sistahs are doin' it for themselves

It seems only fitting that when my office is celebrating international women's week (or day), I have chosen this week to assert myself with regards to this whole co-parenting lark. Although I too have a serious job, I think my company and role are just generally more flexible, not to mention having a fabulous and family-friendly boss, so I tend to be the one who ends up doing most of the Eve-care during the week.

In my more churlish moments I get annoyed about this. The Boy and I did, after all, have a discussion before I got pregnant about this and how we would share the role equally. However, like so many other couples I know, this doesn't quite worked out. It seems to be a combination of the fact that women seem hard-wired to make the whole bloody show work, and that it is still more socially acceptable for a woman to say she will be in late/leave early because of family commitments than it is a man.

So, since Eve has been born there has been an unspoken assumption into which we seemed to fall without ever discussing it that I would be home to put her to bed unless I specified otherwise. I sometimes get resentful of this inequality, but then I realise it means I adjust my life so I can see my precious daughter for at least a couple of hours every day and I am the winner in all this.

However, tonight I had to stay late. It was not life or death, but it related to a big project in my new job with a tight deadline and I wanted to be able to finish the meeting rather than, at 6pm, say I had to go. So I told the Boy this morning that he would have to get home to put Eve to bed. Then I sent him an SMS reminding him of this commitment.

Guilt-free, I had a great meeting with my boss and the team. For once I wasn't rushing to fit it all in and had some great ideas and all were happy.

Now the Boy is cooped up in the bedroom on a con call (having not been able to work while he bathed Eve), just like I had to last week while he was away. And not before time.

Yummy Daddies

The credit crunch, and the reliance of Hong Kong on the financial sector, is having an unexpected impact on the playground where Eve goes. After a whole year of never seeing a father during the week, there are now a couple of mid-40s, well dressed Dads there with their young offspring. They join the nannies and mummies by the slide at a time when they would have, presmuably, previously been working at their highly paid banking job and never seeing their children.

There are some upsides to global meltdown then.

Full time mother

My friend A, is only just going back to full time work after almost 8 years looking after her two boys. They are delightful boys - clever, engaged, polite. I look at them and realise that bringing up ones children is a very important and rewarding task. I, therefore, am now revisiting my own situation and wondering whether working full time is really the best thing for Eve. More anon.

Daily dilemma

Things have been a bit unsettled lately at the bank where Yummy Mummy works and I need to make a few decisions. For starters, my boss is no longer going to be my boss and I will be reporting into someone who I don't know that well, already has a close knit team and, by her own admission, doesn't really know what I do. The job itself will be changing, but nobody seems to know what it will morph into (I am angling for a cute puppy but I suspect it will morph into something altogether less fun). I also have had a couple of other interesting opportunities land on my plate, all of which have got me thinking.

So, earlier this week I had a chat with my mentor. As a result of the leadership fast track thingy I am on at the bank, I get a mentor and mine is the head of our Hong Kong business. She is an amazing woman, straightforward, caring and brilliant at her job. We talked about possible career directions for me, what my aims were and the usual blurb. And then she told me that I would need to think seriously about what I was giving up with Eve before making my next move. This surprised me somewhat, surely she should be persuading me to follow the fast track and make the bank lots of money.

She has two children and so I asked her advice and how she handled it. She then, quite honestly, told me of some of the regrets she has about not being able to spend more time with her children, of not making all the school events, of them being in bed before she got home. She told me of an incident when her son, aged 10, had asked her why she was never there to teach him to bake cakes like his aunty was with his cousins. Her son is now 18 and, by her own admission, it is too late for her to get the time back now.

Her advice to me was thus: if I decide to pursue a career (and she thinks I have a very promising one at the bank, which is nice of her to say), then I need to realise what I will be giving up with Eve, accept this as the necessary compromise I will be making and make sure I will not regret it. If I do that and make an active and considered choice, and remind myself of this choice if I miss a sports day or bath time because I am travelling, then it is possible to be a working Mum.

This was possibly the single most useful advice anyone has ever given me, and has got me thinking hard about what I want my future to be.

More to follow.

Perspectives

Yummy Mummy works for a bank. Banks are not, in the present climate, very happy places. Although the bank I work for has not had the largest write downs in the market, that is reserved for the large Yank tank that is Citi, we are the next best. Although I work for part of the bank that is still doing very well, it was inevitable that Yummy Mummy would get hit in some way by the navel gazing and restructuring.

So, this week I found out that my unit and job may be changing, or it may not. The problem being decisions have been made on high but the ramifications have not yet been worked out. People are worried about their jobs, what they will be doing and as always in these situations looking for new ones. A year ago this would have been me.

However, as I sat at home in shorts and t-shirt listening to the announcements that my world is about to change, possibly, or not, I found myself not really worrying at all. Aside from the practicalities that it is highly unlikely I would be booted out and, even if I was, jobs in my specialism are easy to come by, the real reason I didn't care that much is because things just look different now. Where there was once the ambitious career girl, there is now someone who loves her job and loves having it but I now find that my life is much more than that and no longer is the job defining who or what I am and will achieve in my life.

That role now falls to Eve.

So, while my colleagues were scurrying around in a panic, I shut down my laptop at 7, played with Eve, read her a story and opened a nice bottle of red once she was asleep.

Something's got to give

After my first week at work I have found that leaving Eve gets easier so long as I know I am going to have some quality time (apologies for that dreadful phrase) with her each day. It is all a case of being organised so I feed her at the beginning of the day and am home before her last evening feed so we can play a little bit. Even better was last week when some meetings worked out such that I couldn't take two full days off and had to work two half days instead. It is, however, a military operation with Eve having to eat her fill before I leave for work, no easy task if she is tired or in a fussy mood. I have had to put meetings in my diary to block out when I need to express the milk (3 times a day!). To get home and spend any time with Eve I have to leave the office at 6, a time when business in Asia is very much still going on.

All of this has made me realise how tough being a working Mum is actually going to be. Aside from the ever-present guilt and feelings of being replaced by her nanny, there is the realisation that my career is going to take a big hit if I want to actually see my daughter.

Despite the age of Mums being the sole or main caregiver being long gone in theory, I have found that I am the one whose career will suffer because Asia is not particularly family friendly in its work culture, and because I seem to feel more acutely than the Boy that a parent should be with Eve as much as possible so am prepared to change my work accordingly. So it is I who will, inevitably, not get such a good performance rating or bonus next year because I won't work the long hours required in my job. it is I who, for the next 2 months, will take a 40% pay cut so I can work part time and Eve can have a parent at home a bit longer. It is also me who gets up in the night with her so when I am in the office I will be a shadow of my former, 8 hours a night, self.

The Boy is much more involved and better than most Dads and none of this is directed as a slight to him, but he was away last week for 2 nights, is away for the next 6 nights, and rarely can leave the office before 7pm. This means that something has to give, and I refuse to let it be Eve never seeing either parent during the week, so the only thing left is my career.

I am not inconsiderably annoyed about the inevitability of all of this, and that something I worked so hard for will not continue on the same path whereas any man's career can continue as before. Why this inequality?

I used to row with a great girl, H, who had a very high powered City job. I remember after her first baby and return to work I asked her how it was going. Her reply, "I have realised I will always have a job, but never again have a career". I have just come to the same conclusion.

Two days in

Today I only worked a half day, but went in as usual this morning. I am much happier leaving Eve today than yesterday, and no tears. This may be because I knew I would be coming home at lunchtime, and had a great afternoon playing with her. It may also be because I am actually rather enjoying being back at work, at a job I love, in a team full of really nice people. It probably also has something to do with me just getting on with it.

Sadly, the timing of my return to work has been awful. The Boy was away last night and tonight (he is also away all next week - you can imagine what a sense of humour failure I have had about that one), so no support or even anyone just to give me a hug at the end of the stressful first days back. Secondly, Eve's farting seems to have returned with reinforcements and she is waking up at least twice in the night and squirming through the rest of it. Less than 6 hours sleep, in two bursts, is not great preparation for a full day in a busy office.

Still, I am starting to think that I can do this whole work and mother thing.

Smiles and tears

My first day back at work. I didn't sleep at all last night, Eve was restless and so was I. This morning I cried at an HSBC ad on TV while I was feeding Eve (it featured a little girl) and fought back the tears most of the way into work.

When I got here the first person I saw was our lovely head of investment solutions (Italian, 3 kids), upon whom I promptly burst into tears.

However, now I am here it isn't too bad. I am really busy, enjoying getting back into it, and trying not to think of Eve too much. I have deliberately not called home because if she is crying I will want to go home and comfort her, and if she is giggling I will feel awful for missing it. And I have blocked out my time off this week in my diary.

It is now 3.15 and I am counting down the minutes until I can leave.

Full time job

I go back to work in just over 2 weeks and have been dreading it. As Eve gets older and more interactive, she gets more fun to be with. She is especially fun in the morning when, after the Boy goes to work and Eve is fed, we play in bed together and she is at her most adorable. I found myself the other morning at 8.30 getting all tearful because this lovely mummy-daughter time I have had since Eve was born will be when I am on my way to the office.

The basis of my desire to be a full time mum is mainly rooted in the horror that strikes me that someone else will be her main carer and will be the person who will be there for her when she is sick or needs a cuddle if she falls over. This is entirely about me and my emotions, our nanny is brilliant and Eve will be loved and cared for wonderfully. I am just not sure I want someone else to fulfill what I think should be my role.

However, it has been useful that over the past few days since my parents left and I have looked after Eve full time on my own, I have had a sense of what full time motherhood would be like. After all, one should go into a job knowing what the role and responsibilities are before taking it on.

What I am about to say may offend some, but the truth needs to be told.

I love my daughter and I am having a great time with her. However, by 5pm today I was bored. There are only so many times you can sing "Head, shoulders, knees and toes" before it does your head in and you start substituting other body parts. I have found that many nursery rhymes lend themselves to naughty or rude versions if you are in a creative mood. I even found myself doing the washing up this afternoon for something different to do.

Of course every time Eve smiles or giggles, it lifts me. She has started to chat in baby talk and loves singing along with me. All this is adorable and a lot of fun. But some people like babies, some people find them a bit boring. I love Eve and she is more interesting than most, but my brain has not worked (other than reading the Economist) for 3 months now and it wants to get back in shape.

So, providing I can get flexible hours or maybe working from home a couple of days a week, I am really rather looking forward to being a Mum and having a career. A decision made not too late considering I am back at work shortly.

First day boredom

First day of maternity leave and I am left wondering how on earth your average tai tai manages to fill her day. By lunchtime I had done everything I wanted to achieve today, including have a pedicure (it is SO important when one is in the labour room staring at ones lower parts that ones feet look pretty) and bikini wax (same principle applies) and had lunch with the Boy.

This afternoon I cracked from boredom and did a 2 hour conference call followed by another couple of hours of work.

Thank goodness I have a paper for a conference to write next week.

The final countdown

Today is my last day at work before my maternity leave. My company is surprisingly generous for Hong Kong and rather than the statutory minimum, which I believe is about 10 weeks, I get 15 weeks of leave to be with my new little bundle of screaming joy. HR mandate that I leave work at least 2 weeks before my due date because, although the bank are keen to develop the next generation of bankers I suspect the strategy does not extend to giving birth to them in the office. If Bump is on time then I will have 13 weeks to get to know her before I am back in the office.

Compared to my sister, who gets 6 months paid leave and then can take a further 6 months, this seems rather pathetic, but being out of the office for 15 weeks is still worrying me a bit.

I am not very good at not being at work. Since the age of 18 I have worked weekends and holidays. I didn't take a gap year and the longest break I have ever had between jobs was a 2 week rowing holiday. I blame the work ethic my parents instilled in me at an early age, along with the fact that I have always been rather blessed to do jobs I really quite enjoy. When we first moved to HK the Boy used to book our holidays to places where my phone wouldn't work so as to forcibly stop me engaging with the office, and when my Blackberry and phone worked on our recent trip to Vietnam I predictably spent a couple of hours one afternoon sitting by the pool sorting out some minor crisis back in Singapore. Although the team has cover while I am on maternity leave in the form of my counterpart in the US, I know I will end up taking a sneaky peak at emails and having to restrain myself from dealing with them.

My friend, L, has offered some very good advice in this regard. L is a good friend of mine and the archetypal working woman. She has a super senior job with one of the world's largest banks, which sees her with huge responsibility and lots of travel. Such was her work focus that when she went into labour 4 weeks early she said all she could think about on her way to the hospital was who would do the presentation she was due to give the next morning. For the first couple of weeks after her first son was born work continued to call her and she checked her Blackberry a couple of times a day in between feeds. She is not quite sure when her Damascene conversion occurred but one day she woke up, looked at her son and decided not to turn on the phone or Blackberry. She then spent the remainder of her maternity leave getting to know her son properly and enjoying the rare time to be with him, reasoning that work would always be there but she would only have this time with her son once. She let go of her job and became a Mum for those few weeks.

This is an example I need to listen to and start from the beginning. However, I can't help feeling that taking this time out will disadvantage me career-wise. I would like to think otherwise - I am lucky and have a supportive boss who has promised only to contact me on critical issues, the team will ensure they handle everything they can and only involve me on crucial decisions - however I will miss 3 months and it is going to take some time to get back up to speed after that.

Also, although L sets a fine example, her story also has a sting in the tail. She was, quite obviously and shamefully, passed over for a promotion that would have clearly been hers had she not been on maternity leave. Whether "out of sight, out of mind" or the incorrect assumption that Mums might be less committed than their male counterparts, it was a stark reminder of the choices we have to make.

The home strait

With less than 4 weeks to go, I am finding life increasingly difficult. I need help now, for example, getting out of the car or off the sofa. Only about 3 items of clothing fit me, and they are all work clothes because when I was doing my Bump shopping I seemed to forget that I might spent a couple of weeks prior to the birth not at work and now don't think it is worth spending the money for a couple of weeks of use.

I am not sleeping, despite a fab bean bag sausage thing that S gave me to stick between my knees, and once a night I get cramps in my abdomen, throwing me into a panic about the fact I might be going into labour (as an aside, I read at the weekend that one shouldn't worry unless ones mucous plug has come out - and if you have no intention of ever having children, you don't want to know what that is).

You read in the books that the last month is the hardest, and never quite believe it while variously have your head over the loo (first trimester), loose all your balance and coordination (second trimester), or even when you start to get a bit tired (months 7 and 8). But, I can categorically say that the final month is the worst. You are huge, bored, everything hurts, and don’t get me started on the need to go to the loo every 30 minutes. I am also, to use an Americanism "so over" being kicked all the time, and am convinced that Bump is pretty bored with being stuck inside me as well. I am clearly now heavily pregnant and people at work are starting to look at me nervously as I walk into meetings looking ready to pop.

I was out at lunch with some of my most lovely and glam girlfriends on Sunday, and wished that I too could be drinking champagne, fit into normal sized clothes, and no longer have to do a funny wiggle to shuffle my chair backwards to get out from under the table.

I suppose this is why gestation is 9 months. You get prepared, you get bored, and then you get ready. Having her out will be immeasurably hard, challenging, and sleep deprived. However, I am ready for the next challenge now.

As an aside, I did manage to go rowing on Saturday, and Sunday, so life isn't all bad.

The most fertile place in the world

It is with some sadness that I have today waved off S, who works with me, on her maternity leave. It comes at the end of a particularly tough week for us both, reminding me of why I love working with her and have asked her to join me in not one, but two companies since I moved to HK.

However, in our team meeting this week we realised that there is clearly something in the water they give our team (Evian, in case you were wondering). The HK portion of our team only has 6 people. Of these, 3 of us are pregnant at the moment, and one has recently found out his wife is pregnant. This leaves only one single girl and our team leader who are without child.

Two thirds of the team expecting at the same time has to be some sort of record.

It prompted a comment from one team member, however, that if we keep going like this we will need some form of quota system to ensure we have enough staff in the office. I hope he was joking.

Reality bites (or rather, she kicks)

I have been working some fairly long hours recently, and weekends. It's a busy time of year and I have a major project finishing this week, so I've been neglecting all manner of important things (hair, nails, small slave feeding me peeled grapes), but also the love of my life - sport.

So tonight I made it to the gym and have had a happy time flogging myself on the machines. It was lovely. I reminded myself what a rowing machine is, and scarily that I really rather like it, and stepped my way to heaven. Negotiating bump is, as always, amusing. I look something akin to a frog in a mating ritual on the rowing machine (think legs wide open and not at all flattering). Tonight, once she had found herself a comfortable position where she wouldn't get squished, bump happily kicked and jumped along with me while I exercised. It was all rather nice.

But then, as I was getting changed, a frightening thought hit me slap in the face. In 3 months time I won't be able to do this. No more working late and then flogging myself at the gym until I de-stress. No more Saturday mornings rowing then jumping on the motorbike and heading off for a two hour canoe on the sea. Will I ever see a sub 7.30 2k ergo test again (that's for the rowers amongst you)?

I know this might sound odd, and I know that I have had 6 months to get used to the idea of being pregnant and how much my life will change. I know that with the support of the Boy and the luxury of a full time nanny I will have much more of an independent life than most of my friends in other countries. But for some reason tonight, sweating after a session in the gym, it hit me.

Now I am very, very scared.