05 | March | 2015 | mamavsteacher

I have been fascinated by the reactions that people have had to me when I was on maternity leave, when I was getting ready to go back to work, and now that I am back at work. I find that some people are very judgemental about how they expect families to work. Well, I’ve got news for you everyone, we’re all different, we all have different needs and that is one of the amazing things about us.

My aim is to share the stories of families of all different types and spread the word that we are all playing a #BalancingAct to get through and raise our little people the best way we can. Let’s celebrate the diversity between our families, let’s not judge each other.

So, this week it’s over to Lauren from Belle Du Brighton. Reading Lauren’s blog’s was probably one of the reasons that I started up Mamavsteacher so I’ve really enjoyed hearing about how her family is growing.

1. Tell me about your family

We are a family of three, soon to be four! I’m Lauren, married to Sam and we had our daughter Athena in June 2013. She’ll be around 21 months when her little brother arrives at Easter time!

2. What was your job/position before you started your family?

I was a hotel manager for a large hotel in Brighton. I’ve worked for the company for 12 years, starting as a part time bar maid when I turned 18, working my way up to senior management.

3. What was your work-life balance like?

Pretty much non existent. A hotel is open for business 24/7/365. The doors are never closed, so you can never fully switch off. I would get phone calls about goings on during the night, on my days off and when on holiday if it was important enough! I could never sleep with my phone on silent, and often had to drop what I was doing at any given time to dash to the hotel to sort the issue out.

4. How did you find being away from work when you were on maternity leave?

Blissful! I missed it for the first few weeks, and kept in regular contact with the team and the person covering my maternity leave. But then I realised I was being daft, they knew what they were doing and I couldn’t step in too much and tread on their toes! I slowly started to back off a bit then, and was so happy to be able to have my phone on silent, or even in a different room than I was!

5. Have you returned to some kind of work since having baby and how did you come to that decision?

Yes! After my 12 months maternity leave and 1 month of holiday tacked to the end came to an end I returned to the same company in a made up (for me) role as an ‘area administrator’ which basically meant that my Area Manager created a role for me so that I could stay with the company and keep abreast of company related goings on, but work part time. I decided around 9 months into maternity leave that I couldn’t maintain the same level of commitment to being the manager with Athena. My husband does the same job at a different hotel; what if we both had an emergency call on the same night, who has the baby? What if we both have to go to the same all day conference, who has the baby? Plus, after 12 years of solid (Stressful!) working I thought a break from full time work would be nice, and give me time to consider different options for the future. I was lucky that I negotiated to work tues/wed/thu so have three days in and four days off, and get to do all the fun (to me!) admin jobs like cost analysis and forecasting, and none of the crap part of the job like dealing with major complaints or health and safety audits!

6. How (if at all) has work changed since you returned (if you did)?

Life is calmer now I have returned to work, although I got pregnant the week I went back so will only have been at work 9 months before I start maternity leave again! I enjoy the half hour commute each way (my only truly baby free time each week!) and enjoy the adult conversation and busy environment, and will miss it a bit when I am back at home this time with two babies!

7. Describe your work-life balance now in 3 words.

Pretty much okay!

8. Would you change anything about the family and work balance that you currently have?

I do sometimes wish that my husband didn’t have to dash off at odd times when there is an emergency, but having done the same job for years I do understand why! Him running his own hotel means that he can pick and choose the shifts he does to fit round me if I have evening/daytime plans for example, which is a great help, plus as we work for the same company we can plan our holidays together too! Neither of us doing mon-fri 9-5 jobs means we have to plan our time together, which is good as it means we stick to ‘date nights’ etc!

Details

Website: www.belledubrighton.co.uk

Twitter: www.twitter.com/belledubrighton

Facebook: www.facebook.com/BelleduBrightonBlog

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LKpBelleduBrighton/about

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/belledubrighton/

For all the previous posts, see the #BalancingAct page.

If you think you’d like to get involved in this feature and share your story, please leave a comment, tweet me @mamavsteacher or email me mamavsteacher@outlook.com.

I like to think of myself reasonably environmentally friendly, no doubt I could a lot to improve though. We do recycle a lot of our household waste and we use some cloth nappies, although not full time. We don’t throw away much food at all and we are pretty good with putting more jumpers on before using the heating. Although we did recently find out that we’d had the emersion heater on for the entire 5 years since we moved into our house!! Who knew?!

When I offered the chance to work with MyBuddy-Box I was extremely intrigued by the product. These boxes provide an improved, permanent and reliable way of transporting groceries but it is much better value for money than any bag for life, hessian bag out there. These boxes not only have thousands of uses but will last for decades with constant use.

So who better to put this to use than a family with a toddler?! Toddlers are great as a way of testing out the durability of products. So whilst we were making dinner one evening, I let him loose on it! And Sprog’s verdict is that it works extremely well as a toy car. He also loved carrying it around in what I’ve been calling ‘briefcase mode’!

It was after this however, that I realised that the box has sections which slide over the edges to strengthen the places where it folds down and that did please me. I had been worried about it would maintain a strong shape whilst loading it at the checkout but it turns out that I hadn’t looked carefully enough.

Here’s a few of the practical uses that I have found for MyBuddy-Box. I used it, rather successfully, to bring all 60 of the exercise books home that need marking over half term, plus some assessments too. I really like that the handles have a bit of padding on the top so that as I’m carrying the box it isn’t cutting into my hands too badly.

I also tried it out at the supermarket and found it great for picking up a few bits and pieces. It was so easy to put everything into the box, Sprog is particularly keen to help with this, empty the box onto the checkout, reload the box and put in the car. All whilst feeling a little smug that I had not used a single plastic bag! I’m not sure on the practicalities of using it to do a weekly shop though as I’m not sure how well they would stack up in the trolley after checkout. They do have handy corner tabs to hold down to help with that so it should work well.

I also love a company with a good ethical purpose and these guys are definitely on the right track with this. In October the plastic bag tax comes into force and they want to support us as consumers, and environmentalists, to be able to tackle that in the most sensible ways.

I was disappointed to hear from them that the supermarkets that they had approached were not interested in the product at this time. I can’t really understand this. I’m rubbish with plastic bags and bags for life. This we offers me a much stronger solution, particularly when buying bottles of squash, cartons of milk and the gallons of wine (ahem, only in my dreams) from the supermarket to the car.

I think my only criticisms of the product are that when it initially arrived, I saw the design and aesthetically it’s really not very me. But a quick stop at the website later, and I realised that there are many more designs including one which looks like a wicker basket (much more me!) so I was completely reassured by that. I also worry a little about the £14.99 purchase price of it as I do wonder if busy mum’s and dad’s will be able to justify that amount of money. However, we must remember that this product will last for years, it is hard wearing and incredibly practical so without my cheapo head on, it is a very sensible investment. They do also offer plain black or blue boxes at a cheaper price of £9.99 and for everyone who uses the code BURGESS at the checkout, you can have free P&P on us!