Being a working mum can have it’s advantages, from using your grey matter again to the extra (much needed) income. However these advantages are often outweighed by the disadvantages especially when there is no Plan B.
Plan B, what is Plan B… that would the plan you need to have in place in case your childcare lets you down or one of your children is sick. For my family the Plan B is me! and quite honestly I’m not sure how I have managed to survive a ‘little chat’ at work about my frequent disappearing acts.
Let’s take today, my first day back at work following a week off due to illness. As you can imagine after having a week off under any circumstances you are likely to return to a list of things to do. So whilst sitting in my managers office getting some more things added to that ‘to do list’ one of the girls shouts, ‘the nursery is on the phone!’. Fabulous… what is wrong now??
Nursery: Sorry to bother you but Tigger has a gunky eye, we’ve had to wipe it three times. I think he needs some eye drops. Is there any chance you can come and collect him?
Me: Well, maybe
Nursery: He can come back as soon as he has had eye drops
Me: Let me see if I can get in touch with the doctors surgery and I’ll call you back
Frantic call to the doctors to see if they will issue a prescription without seeing him. After explaining that yes he does need it today, can I not just get a callback from a Nurse Practitioner? They agree that a nurse will call me, after surgery approx 5.30pm! Sorry but that’s not going to work, they then explain that our family doctor is off today, so I ask to see any doctor… finally appointment made in 30 minutes time.
So a quick, ‘I’m really sorry, I’ll be back’ to my manager and I flew out the door. Now whilst having to collect Tigger from nursery to take him to the doctors would be frustrating on any day, today I have no car! So let me give you an insight into my journey…
- 15 min walk to the nursery
- 20 min walk to the doctors
- 40 min wait in doctors
- 2 min doctors appointment
- 5 min walk to the pharmacy to find that they have closed for lunch (you don’t want to know what curses I was muttering
- 5 min walk home to give Tigger a dose of my eye drops from my eye infection last week (very naughty I would not recommend doing this), good job he was prescribed the same ones as me
- 10 min walk to the nursery
- 15 min walk back to work
Once back in work I couldn’t really start anything as we had a team meeting starting in 10 mins so a complete waste of a day. As it’s Roo’s parents evening tonight I can’t go back and finish my hours today so have agreed to stay late on Wednesday when Mr Boo is off.
I’m so lucky that my work up until now have been accommodating but they know that I will always come back and work my remaining hours.
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