Why I'm Redefining Having It All

This post was originally featured on Littles Magazine.

The concept of having it all, is in my opinion a strange one. It's the idea that the woman, the Mother should strive to have an excellent career and a contented family life and that these things should exist in harmonious balance with one another. It's the idea that this is what all women want or at least should want, because its now (apparently) all available to us.

Ugh. How patronising.

I'm a full time working mother of one, with a husband who also works full time and co-parents with me in equal measures. Whilst I am not particularly qualified or financially well off, I would go as far as to call my vocation a career because it is specialised and I've been working on it for a long time.
Sounds like I've got it sorted doesn't it? Well some days I do, some days we get up, we get ready, I've made lunches the night before and everyone has clean underwear. Some days the toddler fully co-operates, he actually brushes his teeth and he lets us dress him without kicking Daddy in the balls. He's excited to see his Nanny or his friend Lily at nursery and he's bowling out the door with a huge grin on his face. On these days I've straightened my hair, I'm on time, I'm wearing that dress with the little brown belt and there are no ladders in my tights. These are the days that I, by definition look like I 'have it all'.

The Homeless Period: My 100

So here I am starting another article with George Osborne and my vagina. I'm not really sure how I got here, I really didn't intend for these two things to collide, blog related or otherwise but yet here I am, sitting at my laptop talking politics and pussy once again. Since I wrote that article, I've had a lot of people contact me and show their support by signing the petition set up by Laura Coryton. I think its fair to say the general consensus is that the tampon tax should be stopped and with the petition now exceeding 300,000 signatures hopefully we are well on our way to seeing that happen.

Through that piece of writing I became aware of The Homeless Period petition, a campaign to give homeless shelters an allowance to buy sanitary products. Currently, charities aren't receiving any extra help with this and they are dipping into donated funds to purchase them (inc. paying the luxury tax of course).

When Your Toddler Holds You Hostage In Superdrug

Sometimes I forget that I'm still a first time parent. I feel like I've been a Mum for a while, its not all shiny and new and I should just know the answers by now. I mean you get all that when you have a new born, that feeling of not knowing what you're doing, not knowing how to hold them without their head falling off. Unsure of the normal temperature, the normal colour of poo, the normal amount of crying. You're supposed to not know when they are new and you are new at being a parent, its expected, its accepted. Its ok to hold your hands up and say 'Sorry I'm new at this, I don't really know what I'm doing!'. 
Trouble is, I'm not really sure I can do that now my first baby is a new toddler. I mean I'm more confident with my parenting skills than I was in those first few months, his needs are easier to read, mostly because they are being screamed at me from across the supermarket. I can assess the right temperature because I've realised that its either just too fucking hot or too fucking cold, it doesn't matter if you're nine months old or ninety. I don't worry about the colour of poo, I no longer phone my Mum about it. Two and half years in, I've seen it all or at least please God, I hope I have. Its been on my hands, in my hair, on the carpet, there's nothing in the poo department that can worry me now. We've kept him alive and reasonably well behaved, we used to congratulate ourselves on what a 'good baby' he was.

Then three weeks ago, he held me hostage in Superdrug.

The Return of the Bastard Migraine

Previous to being pregnant I suffered with migraines on what I now realise was a chronic basis. I literally had a migraine, a visual disturbance or a constant headache every day. Every bloody day, for maybe three, four years. I just thought that was the norm for me. What a fucking idiot.
Then the wonder that is pregnancy happened! Yes it was great to be pregnant and have a baby and all that but that's not the point of this article. The point is that pregnancy made my migraines disappear!