Conversations with myself.

Rain or Shine, by Cathy Cullis

Ugh, what am I doing with my life?

Right now? You're walking the dog.

No, not right now. Overall, with my life. What am I for? What's is the point of me? What do I doooooo?

Well you walk the dog, you take care of your family, this morning you did some laundry and hoovered the hall and sometimes you get paid to answer other people's emails...'

Uh huh. That's not really helping.

What do you want to do with your life?

Write. And take pictures.

And what did you spend this morning doing?

Writing. And taking pictures.

Interesting...

But there was no point to it, no one paid me to do it, it didn't make any money...

Oh. So money is the point. You want to get paid?

It would be nice, yeah.

Do you need to get paid?

I don't understand the question. 

I mean do you need to get paid? Do you need more money?

It would be nice.

Yes, but do you, right now, need money? Are there things missing in your life that you need that you can only have if you get paid for what you do? 

Um.... Well... No, not really.

Interesting. 

But if I'm not getting paid then what's the point? 

Are you happy? Are you getting better at what you do?

Yes. 

Maybe that's the point?

Oh shut up. What do you know. 

I know that you want to write and take pictures. I know that you do write and take pictures. I know that you want to get paid but you don't financially need to get paid. Maybe you would like to get paid, maybe emotionally and mentally you need to get paid but right now, this week, you are not getting paid.Yet there is the potential, that in the future, once you have scrubbed your step, you might be in the position to get paid. Is that correct?

Yes. 

Okay good, glad we sorted that out. Now maybe we can get on with doing what we do and worry about getting paid later? When we need to?

Maybe. 

You know we're very lucky that we don't need to worry about getting paid right now?

I do. I also know you added that bit so the Internet wouldn't hate us and think we're a whiny ungrateful bitch. 

I did. 

Thanks for looking out for us. 

You're welcome. 

Motherhood and (self) employment.

A friend asked me if I could write about how it was being a self-employed mother who had to go back to work after 3 months, in a society where the mothers around us are for the most part taking a year's maternity leave.

Friend,  like me, is a wedding photographer. And Friend, like me, gave birth in November and had to start shooting weddings again in the Spring when her baby was around four months old. I'd imagine though, that also like me, she started answering work emails and fitting in little bits of admin after only a few weeks. Not because she wanted to but because when your livelihood relies on bookings made 6 months to a year (or two in crazypants situations) advance you're painfully aware that the emails you don’t answer now are the weddings you're not going to be shooting a year down the line, when presumably, you're going to need some dough.

So, four weeks after W&P were born I started working again. Just an hour or two while they were sleeping. Let's back up and look at this situation from afar: four weeks after giving birth to twins, haemorrhaging, having a blood transfusion, spending a week in hospital, coming home with TWO BABIES that I had fuck-all idea how to look after and who spent most of the night awake, who were struggling to breastfeed, who I was struggling to breastfeed, who were complete fucking alien tyrants, I decided to start working again. More specifically, to start communicating with people, people who I wanted to think that we were capable of a) photographing their weddings and b) behaving like normal human beings at their weddings. It was a bad scene. But it was essential, both to our livelihood and actually, to me. I kind of enjoyed having a role other than 'mother' to fulfil. This might be when you ask 'why wasn't Nye answering emails? Aren't you a partnership?' which, yes. Yes we are. But Nye, the dear man, was up all night with the tyrants while I slept a blissful six hours on the sofa. So that I was capable of sustaining our business. The simple fact of the matter is that I don't cope well on interrupted sleep and he's painfully dyslexic. Reversing our roles so that I was up all night and he was writing to clients would have been a total shitstorm, (Quite possibly literally with TWO BABIES and a woman who throws things when she's tired and angry.) At this point I could write an entire essay on our mental schedule during the first year of the girls lives, but I won't because Friend didn't ask what it was like being two people who were trying to keep their babies and their business and each other alive. But that's a good story too.

What did she ask again? Oh yes, self-employed mother, going back to work. Focus.

So at four weeks I went back to answering emails and other administration stuff and Nye continued to look after the babies (after being up all night), patting me on the shoulder to (try to) feed them when they were hungry. I know who had the better deal out of that ride. The truth is, as I said, I enjoyed being back at work. But the truth also is that 'work' was a few hours of emails that I could write in my pyjamas, ten feet from the sofa I slept on and much more importantly that I had an immeasurably amazing partner who looked after the children and allowed me to get enough sleep that I was able to function. In fact I should probably just stop writing here because I have fuck-all idea how anyone does this shit without someone else at home all day. Show me a self-employed mother who is trying to work and look after her new baby while her partner is at work outside the house and I'll show you a fucking superhero. A crazy, tearful, unwashed superhero but a superhero nonetheless. I'm very very aware that our situation is fairly unusual and that I can't really talk for all those women who have just had babies and are still feeling the pressure not to let their businesses die a speedy death from neglect.

Let's assume you survive the first few months of parenthood and you find yourself at the point where you have to actually leave the house, and the baby/babies to shoot a wedding. Holy crap. Before the girls were even born I spent days and weeks fretting over this point, sobbing 'I don't want to leave them, I don't want to go back to work. How are we going to do this?' 'It'll be fine, don't worry' said Nye. Unsaid: 'we don't have any choice, we have to work so suck it up.'

The thing was, we worked as a team, so we both had to leave the house so we had to leave the girls with someone. 'Someone' was our parents, so at least they were being left with people who loved them, but that didn't alleviate the terror that a) the caretakers would forget to feed them/ drop them/ sit on them/ go out for a fag and let the door slam behind them (that none of our parents smoke is probably worth mentioning. This particular fear may have been born of hormone-induced insanity.) or b) I would cry through the whole wedding, aching with longing to be back with my babies.

I contemplated the logistics of combining working with feeding my babies; the babies would just have to come to. Whoever was looking after them would have to bring them to weddings and I would just pop out to feed them (because brides and grooms wouldn't mind that sort of thing at all). And the weddings that we had to travel overnight for? Well my mum would just have to come too and we would all share a family room at the travel lodge and it would be fine. HA!

Let's just consider this a parable in the pointlessness of sobbing over things that have not yet happened. In the event, by the time we shot our first wedding, I had given up on breastfeeding altogether, (it being just too soul-destroying to continue with) which removed that problem. The girls were happy to take bottles so there would be no need for me to pop outside to whip out my floppity milkers during the vows. Secondly, by March, when the girls were four months old, I was really really really ready to spend a day without them. REALLY ready. As we closed the door behind us to head off for our first wedding I did a little skip and a hop, feeling my charpei belly wobble under my work outfit (still Gap maternity trousers, FYI.) 'Are you worried?' asked Nye. 'Nope, are you?' 'No!'. I don't know that I've ever enjoyed photographing a wedding as much as I enjoyed that first one.

I hope I don't need to say this, but the internet is stupid so I'm going to say it anyway; I loved my babies and I loved being a mother but I also loved working and I couldn't and can't see a single reason to feel guilty about that. Maybe if I was leaving my kids alone with a couple of milk bottles tied upside down to the bars of their cot, like hamster water bottles, I'd have felt guilty. But they were being left with a kind, caring, terrified Grandmother, they were going to be fine. We worked all day and when we got home late that night I was absolutely ready to see my little bears, to sniff their milky necks and hold them close. Then go to bed while Nye stayed up all night trying to convince them to sleep. The next morning was tough, I got up at 6am to send Nye to bed for his 6 hours sleep and take over parenting duties and dear god, it hurt. Two weeks later we left for an overnight trip, two nights actually. That was pretty good too. I don't think my mum enjoyed it quite as much, when we got home she looked ready to flee, but everyone survived to tell the tale.

I don't understand the cultural noise that says we're supposed to want to be with our babies and our children all of the time, and I mean ALL. There is an understanding that leaving your baby with someone else, even for a few hours, is somehow not only shirking your parental responsibility but depriving your child and reveals that you are in fact, entirely heartless and unloving. Men don't feel this and I get it; breastfeeding. Breastfed babies have a dependency on their mothers that is important and undeniable, so swanning off on a week's holiday and leaving them with someone else is probably unwise. But even when they're older, when they're no longer breastfeeding we're supposed to want to be with them all the time and personally, I'm calling bullshit. I'm sure there are mothers who do feel that, who genuinely want to be with their offspring 24/7 and who would genuinely ache were they separated for more than an hour. It's just that I don't know any of them and I'm not one of them.

The status quo in the UK is for mothers to take the full year that they're entitled to on maternity leave and at the end of it to either return to their jobs, start a new career or to quit working and continue to be full time parents. I couldn't possibly say how many take which path, seeing as I went out of my way to avoid spending time with other mothers in that first year, but I feel that going back to the job you left is not the prevailing trend, I may be wrong. It seems that the freedom that a paid year of maternity leave offers rarely comes in tandem with the flexibility most mothers are after once their child is a year old. 

To be completely honest, I don't feel qualified to provide any comfort at all to mothers who have to go back to work before that year is up and who are unhappy about that fact.  I can offer comfort to mothers who are worried about this coming up and say 'hey, it might not be that bad! You might enjoy getting away from your kid for a while, AND THAT'S FINE!' But for the mothers who are actually struggling with leaving their kids at home while they go off to earn the readies; all I have is my sympathies. It sucks to have to do things you don't want to do and I'm sorry that there isn't an easier way.

Weirdly, talking about our parenting situations seems to be taboo, we are quick to be defensive or self-depreciating, to see other people's decisions as either an attack on or a validation of our own. It's only by having these conversation that we can begin to place our own experiences in context. I'd really love to hear other people's experiences of returning to work, or not, after their allotted maternity leave, be that a week or a year, is up.

* DISCLAIMER. Again, because the internet is Stupid, I'd like to say: I have shared my experience, my situation and my feelings. I am in no way suggesting that this is or should be anyone else's experience, situation or feelings. I am neither insinuating that everyone should be glad to go back to work or that those who don't want to leave their infants with a babysitter are in some way lacking and I have huge sympathy with almost any and all alternative experiences. Call my naive, but I do essentially believe that we are all just trying to get by and do our best. By sharing my experience I am not publicly validating it as either healthy or desirable. Just because I felt it was both is in no way to imply that you should. I am well aware that I may be deficient in many ways and that the chances that I am completely fucking up my children are high. In fact just yesterday I referenced a dog training manual in conversation about childrearing and was surprised when people laughed/baulked.*

a place in the winter.

And I'm telling this story
in a faraway scene
sipping down raki
and reading Maynard Keynes
and I'm thinking about home 
and all that means
and a place in the winter 
for dignity

The radio is incessant but thank God it's there in the background, constant, reassuring, life is going on, the world is turning, people are listening to the early evening show and calling in traffic disruptions as they make their way home on the M25. Across the room, with curtains drawn in a mockery of privacy, a woman who was induced days ago is doing a remarkable impression of an unhappy cow. As one song ends and another begins we are that bit closer to meeting our daughters.

It's dark. We arrived at the hospital at 3pm, it was November and the light was already fading. Stepping out of the taxi my heart was racing, not with fear or anticipation but with pure rage. The mini cab driver had skipped every red light, broken every speed limit and taken every corner too damn fast. “I'm not in labour” I would have told him, but he had already ignored me when I asked how he was and told him Nye would be down in a minute with my bags, clearly furious to have a heavily pregnant woman in his car and desperate to get rid of her as soon as possible. I stepped out into the ambulance bay shaking and looked down to see that in his impatience the drive had trapped my cardigan in the car door, dragging it through the rain and spilled petrol of the Glasgow streets. Frustration and impotence boiled over into tears of anger; 'I told you we should have ordered a proper taxi.' I hissed. I had started out so calm, so ready to be induced, even our car breaking down that morning hadn't bothered me, but a kamikaze journey to the hospital proved a worthy opponent to my zen.

We are led to a ward to wait. The woman across the way has been there for a week. She is expecting her 8th. Perspective. 

5pm. The woman across the room is still lowing. Every inch of my body wants to curl up into a ball and lie down but I've been strapped to a foetal heart rate monitor for over and hour and despite being told regularly that it will just be a little bit longer, the signs that I'll be set free from the torture of sitting upright any time soon are not good. The babies weigh on my abdominal muscles, like you might image 30lbs of flesh and bone and fluid would,  but I've gotten used to it over the last 6 weeks and have accepted that although it feels like it, the muscles down the right side of my stomach probably aren't in imminent danger of ripping. The babies' heartrates are good, I'm having regualar and fairly strong contractions. I can't feel them, I can't feel anything but the shredding pain of sitting still. The lights are dimmed, it's almost romantic this cosy room of moniters, low light and quietly constant radio. Nye sits beside me, offering juice and energy bars and reassurance. I don't want any of them, I just want to get up and move.

Finally I'm released, told to go for a walk, stretch my legs and get some air. With something approaching pure glee I roll over, reach out to Nye and grinning allow him to pull me up and off the bed. Slowly, but not as slowly as we should, we wonder down the corridor through double doors after double doors and sneak out of a fire exit.  I've never been so happy to see a cold, wet Glasgow night, but overlooking the hospital car park, the November rain frosting my face with icy drops and the street lights doubled and trebled in the puddles and the wet windscreens of parked cars, I hold my husband and feel all of my anxiety and stress, my irritation and my impatience wander off into the night. I'm about to be induced and that means that despite my certainty that pregnancy was never going to end, I'm going to give birth. I'm going to meet my daughters. I look up at Nye, laugh a little bit and tell him I love him. I might even do a small, graceless dance of excitement there on the fire scape in the rain, 38 weeks pregnant with twins. 'Are you ready?' he asks me. I nod, I am absolutely, undeniably, more than ready.

Fifteen minutes later and I'm in pain. Proper pain. I didn't expect it to happen so soon but almost immediately after the doctor came and gave me the first dose of drugs the contractions that we'd been watching on the screen started to get real. The midwife on duty had read my birth plan, she knew that I wanted to do it without pain relief, as much as was possible. The hospital had been deeply reluctant to deliver twins without an epidural  in case they needed to do an emergancy c-section to remove Twin B, who was breech. In fact they were deeply reluctant to allow me to try to give birth vaginally at all. I thanked them for their advice and dug my heels in and so in concession I had agreed to the epidural, seeing it as my only choice to placate a consultant who thought I was being a very silly girl. I knew that I had the right to refuse the epidural too, but honestly, I was scared. There's only so much I felt comfortable pissing off the people in charge. I've been around hospitals enough to know that nothing good comes from being labelled a 'difficult patient'. 


Despite having agreed to an epidural I was kind of hoping that if I put it off for as long as possible I might get away without one, (because who doesn't love some prolonged agony?) but day shift melded into night shift and with it night shift brought a midwife who clearly hadn't read my birth plan, or if she had she was one of the ones we had heard about who thought that birth plans were utter nonsense. Either way, she wasn't interesting in my 'no pain relief' crap. And I couldn't care less. We might have been coming from completely different ends of the birthing philosophy spectrum but she delivered my first born, held my hand while my second child entered the world, stayed way past the end of her shift to be with me and left the labour ward that morning covered from head to toe in my blood. I can't imagine that in the rest of my life I will feel as close to many people as I did to that woman. 

*photograph by A Desert Fete. The whole story is here. 

two years ago today.

Looking back at the photos all I can remember about this day two years ago is that Nye and I had a huge fight about turtle sex in the middle of Central Park. And that I felt so sick. I was 10 weeks pregnant. 

January, bits and pieces

january, my birthday, 27, a subscription


new bicycle


a friend who sends jam is the best kind of friend


inaugural voyage


The cake shop, closed, on my birthday. It was the saddest thing.












purging.




Our book keeping. Whoops.

so pretty, so utterly useless.









she snores. 

corners.

We finally finished our house. If you've been reading for a long time then you might remember our no hot water/no heating/no ceiling phases which lasted longer than anyone would care for. But it's finally finished and ready for someone to buy please. 

I'm better at little corners than whole rooms. Whole rooms intimidate me. Whenever I've moved house I've always packed one box with my favourite pretty things and as soon as I've arrived I've unpacked that box into a small corner somewhere and been home. One day I'll master whole rooms but in the meantime here some of the small corners.

Notes. 

photo 2: Did anyone else buy Nova when it was relaunched? I loved that magazine and it seemed like a not-so-small miracle that it appeared in our local shop on our little island where you couldn't get your Sunday papers until Monday morning every month. Until it didn't and I cried real tears. I was 16 when Nova came out for the second time, I'm pretty sure it changed my life.
Operation Alphabet is an amazing kids book that its very kind authors sent me to review. I haven't done it yet because whenever I get it out to photograph W&P are ALL OVER it and it's a disaster, but lemme tell you, it's gorgeous and if you're looking for a kiddy book for slightly older kiddies, you should buy it.   

photo 4: Do you like my red anglepoise lamp? TK Maxx baby! £14!   

photo 11: I don't wear Coco Mademoiselle. I was given it 12 years ago and I kept it because the bottle made me feel all fancy. So if you're imagining me smelling like that then stop. I smell like damp laundry. Sexay. 

monday morning.

It's Monday morning, the girls are asleep, Nye is working. I'm guzzling coffee in an attempt to prepare myself for a client meeting in a couple of hours. A client meeting that we're taking the girls to. Said client is also taking her one year old and I'm praying to all of the gods of all that is fair that her kiddo is as mental as ours are right now because I don't know that I can handle being shown up by my offspring at work. Other things I don't know: why I thought taking the girls along was a good idea at all. I heard 'I'll be taking our one year old with me to the meeting' and thought 'how cool! I'll take ours and they will be great friends and it will be so cute!'. That was before yesterday.  Ella was a total monster yesterday and got sent to her room for the first time in her short life. Ten minutes of yelling and throwing toys seemed to calm her right down after a whole day of being a shit. I really thought that this tantrum stuff was supposed to happen later, something about 'terrible twos'? (Which now that I think about it is as obnoxious and annoying a phrase as 'double trouble'.)

We had a wedding at the weekend, it was an emotional one. I mean, they're all emotional to a degree, but this one was Emotional. I don't know about other photographers but I totally ride the wave of the couple's emotions all day. It's not a conscious decision, I couldn't detach myself if I wanted to and it's what makes me good at my job but I don't half end the day feeling wiped out (let's end the surfing metaphors there, shall we?)

Oh, we're moving to London. FYI.  I'm a little bit terrified a little bit never been so excited in my life. Anyone want to buy a flat in Glasgow?

We also had a bit of a makeover, with new shiny logos and stuff. I kind of like it.

Okay, now I need to go wash, dress and sedate my children.

Byes for now.

Sixteen months.

(apologies to anyone who got half of this post in their google reader earlier today, I hit the wrong button.)





 

It's Monday afternoon, the girls are asleep, Nye is working. I'm enjoying 10 minutes of quiet.
There is a river of snot flowing in our house and a constant cacophony of coughs (nice alliteration, huh?) It's that time of year when we notice it's starting to get lighter in the evenings after months of interminable darkness, then exactly 24 hours after the observation: BAM, the lurge. It happens every single year. 

I don't have words for how amazing Widdle and Puke have been (we call them Pickle and Moo now. Sometimes Spickle and Moomin). The last few weeks they have gone through so many changes and have become so much like people. And I have fallen in love with them three hundred million times more. 

They have words now. Not many but enough to make them distinctly Not Babies. Babies don't talk, kids do. Ella's words are: doh (dog), duh (duck), baba (baby), ahbee (Ammie), nana (any type of fruit),  noh (nose) and Azerbaijan. Ammies are doh (dog), duh (duck) and noh (nose). Ammie doesn't need words because she has the most expressive range of noises in the world. She jabbers away all day, chirping and chirruping and babbling and squawking and bellowing and yelling and snuffling and exhaling. Ella chats too occasionally, but Ammie's commentary is near continuous. I didn't know that anyone could express so much with a purse of the lips and a vigorous exhalation. 

They walk. Ammie start in November, a couple of weeks after their first birthday. In a move that seems to have released a tonne of frustration and irritability Ella caught up last week. And she is so pleased with herself. Every time she stumbles across a room she is all 'look at me! look at me! I rock!' Yes kid, you totally totally do. 

They kiss and they hug too. Mostly Nye and I (which is nice after a year of being yelled at) but as of last week, each other too. I can't tell you how huge this is. Since they were only a couple of months old people have been asking us if they interact and play with each other and we have been snorting back laughter. Up until nine months they barely acknowledged each other's existence, why would they? When you're a baby another baby is of absolutely zero use to you and their 'interaction' was limited to waking each other up and competing to cry the loudest. Then at nine months they added pushing each other over and stealing each other's food/toys/milk, the natural conclusion of which was scratching, bashing and eye gouging. Sometimes they did scratching, bashing and eye gouging without the precursor of theft, sometimes it was just fun to whack your sister in the face. After that came wrestling over my lap or arms, depending on whether I was sitting or standing, and then recently some much more sophisticated fighting. Ella quickly became a master of swapsies: instead of 'you have the  toy/food/parent I want, I'm having that and I'll poke you in the eye when you resist' it became  'You have the toy/food/parent I want, here, have a chewed up piece of cardboard and while you're contemplating its worth I'll have that toy. Bye!' Amelia caught up with that game eventually and now they are both excellent at it. Of course they don't fall for it with each other any more but anyone else is fair game. Recently in the airport Ammie toddled up to a teenage boy and in a truly admirable move attempted to swap her complimentary (and thoroughly dribbled upon and ripped up) airline magazine for his iPad. I was so proud. 

Over the last few months they've started interacting in a way that is actually nice though and it's been incredible. It started with Ammie lying down beside Ella while she was in the middle of a tantrum and patting her on the head. When that didn't work she got up and left to play with some toys but still, it was the first time either of them had shown any sign of empathy towards the other and that was HUGE. It took a few months for Ella to return the favour but now they're all about patting each other on the head, offering cups and occasionally even toys or food and as of last week, hugging. Guys, they actually like each other! I won't pretend that we weren't starting to wonder... 

They also hang up laundry, pat dogs, make animal noises, dig in soil and wear shoes (which they bring to us to put on their feet, even when they're in their pyjamas). They eat curry and chilli and chickpeas have a bizarrely high currency in our household. They've started trying to put themselves into their sleeping bags at night and occasionally they show signs of knowing that sleep and bed are good things and not the work of the devil. They dance, although more Ella than Ammie, man that kid has some moves. She likes 80s pop and 70s reggae. 

I don't want to give the impression that they're perfect, I know how much I hate all those perfect blog babies. They are also still occasionally mental. For the first five days that we were in France they were both teething and both cried almost constantly. Ella developed an instantaneous and unprecedented bath-aversion the night we arrived and went absolutely ballistic daily when we so much as approached the bathroom. . I had stopped drinking wine 3 months earlier because I thought it was making my endometriosis worse. Yeah, that didn't last long once we hit France. Tantrums are daily and they are extreme: exorcist extreme. Sometimes when we go out for lunch one will only eat crisps and the other will only eat ice cubes. Every night for three months they screamed and kicked and writhed while having their pyjamas put on. They are now down to doing it 4 nights out of 7. Their nappies stinks like they live on a diet of microwave burgers. At least once a week Ammie head butts me so hard I wonder if she has broken my nose. 

Whatever, I still think that they're the most amazing kids that ever lived. 

And with that I'll leave you, it's time to go and play with my most excellent kiddos.