One of the pitfalls to being a full-time student and a mum to two young children is that you constantly feel a bit inadequate. To help address my shortcomings as a mother and to alleviate some of the associated guilt I have tasked myself with the job of continuing to provide breast milk for the 6-month-old while she's at nursery. This, of course, entails expressing milk multiple times a day at university to keep up with demand.
Now I'm no earth mother and expressing milk is possibly one of the least fun things you can do with your funbags (one can only assume it is exactly like being milked as a cow, all rather unpleasant and certainly nobody's idea of a good time), but I dug my own hole as Child 1 was breast fed till he was 12 months old and all being fair I suppose Child 2 deserves the same. Well, that was my reasoning anyway for setting myself this exhausting, time consuming and logistically challenging mission.
One particularly fraught Thursday last week, as I was still coming to terms with the newness of my surroundings, workload, timetable etc, I found myself in the unfortunate position of it having reached 3.30pm and not having had an opportunity to express. Needless to say I was up to my eyeballs in unexpressed milk and feeling decidedly woozy.
At that point the tutor suggested we have a 10 minute break. I saw my chance and dashed upstairs to the Equality & Diversity appointed expressing-cum-first-aid room; a sparsely furnished cold, grey box of a room, littered with old filing cabinets with the only defence against a rogue intruder and a hallway full of staring students being a flimsy 'do not disturb' sign on the door.
I whipped out my double action, super suction, hospital-grade breast pump (a frightening contraption) and set to work. Ten minutes later, feeling suitably drained and having produced a pleasing amount of the good stuff I was feeling quite smug about my university/baby-rearing juggling abilities. Of course what should happen two seconds later? In my haste to get back to class I proceded to drop the entire contents of the bottle, causing a veritable tidal wave of milk to spill all over myself and the floor. What a dick.
I returned to class somewhat less smug, but certainly more damp, and feeling decidedly despondent about whether or not it was all actually worth it. But as my husband so glibly put it later that evening, there's no point crying over spilt milk.
Onwards and upwards.
Thursday 24 October 2013
Sunday 20 October 2013
Reinvention
Damien Hirst once said, you have to reinvent yourself every day. I must say I've been doing a fair bit of reinventing of late.
Making the leap from full-time mum to full-time student has been an exciting and liberating challenge if for no other reason than I've been able to redirect some of my attention away from the kids and onto more intellectual, selfish pursuits. But starting uni in middle-age with a class full of bright, young twenty-somethings is not without its drawbacks.
One of my main problems is that I've opted to attend an art school and art students are so effortlessly goddam hip. I, on the other hand, have spent the past two and half years operating in the role of frumpy house-frau; covered to a large degree in varying amounts of baby food, vomit and other bodily outputs, wearing shapeless, oversized clothing and struggling to maintain any semblance of a decent hairstyle. Now I've suddenly found myself out in the world again, amongst functioning adults and I need to get it together or at the very least remember to look in the mirror before I leave the house in the morning.
As a result of my desire to fit in I've been recently trying to marry the sartorial styles of both mother and student into a whole new look. An updated me.
My latest attempt at art student chic has been to invest in my very first pair of SKINNY jeans. This statement should be accompanied by some kind of elaborate, theatrical sound effect such is the enormity of the occasion. The reason being I've always felt a certain disconnect between myself and anything with the name skinny in it, predominantly due to the size, or perceived size of my midsection. My brothers once helpfully told me as an impressionable teen that I had 'monster truck' thighs (reference to 1990s sumo superstar Sally The Dumptruck) and the image has kind of stuck since.
Anyway I've got to the age where I'm slightly less concerned about how I look. My body image has reached a state of equilibrium with actuality, aided in part by the fact I've now had two kids so couldn't possibly be expected to look as I might have done in my twenties. I'm OK with being a little soft around the edges given what my body has been through over the past couple of years and being able to not only wear skinny jeans but feel pretty good about it is a huge step forward.
As to the new look, am I going to impress anyone with my hip-ness? Probably not. But I'm quietly confident I won't be totally ostracised as an over-the-hill wannabe by my university peers and come home time when I have to line up at the metaphorical school gates I should be able to hold my own with the other mums. That's not to say the odd bit baby vomit won't still make its way onto my clothes every now and then but I guess that's still part of who I am. For now.
To reinvent yourself every day? Nah, too much effort. But every once in a while is fine by me.
Making the leap from full-time mum to full-time student has been an exciting and liberating challenge if for no other reason than I've been able to redirect some of my attention away from the kids and onto more intellectual, selfish pursuits. But starting uni in middle-age with a class full of bright, young twenty-somethings is not without its drawbacks.
One of my main problems is that I've opted to attend an art school and art students are so effortlessly goddam hip. I, on the other hand, have spent the past two and half years operating in the role of frumpy house-frau; covered to a large degree in varying amounts of baby food, vomit and other bodily outputs, wearing shapeless, oversized clothing and struggling to maintain any semblance of a decent hairstyle. Now I've suddenly found myself out in the world again, amongst functioning adults and I need to get it together or at the very least remember to look in the mirror before I leave the house in the morning.
As a result of my desire to fit in I've been recently trying to marry the sartorial styles of both mother and student into a whole new look. An updated me.
My latest attempt at art student chic has been to invest in my very first pair of SKINNY jeans. This statement should be accompanied by some kind of elaborate, theatrical sound effect such is the enormity of the occasion. The reason being I've always felt a certain disconnect between myself and anything with the name skinny in it, predominantly due to the size, or perceived size of my midsection. My brothers once helpfully told me as an impressionable teen that I had 'monster truck' thighs (reference to 1990s sumo superstar Sally The Dumptruck) and the image has kind of stuck since.
Anyway I've got to the age where I'm slightly less concerned about how I look. My body image has reached a state of equilibrium with actuality, aided in part by the fact I've now had two kids so couldn't possibly be expected to look as I might have done in my twenties. I'm OK with being a little soft around the edges given what my body has been through over the past couple of years and being able to not only wear skinny jeans but feel pretty good about it is a huge step forward.
As to the new look, am I going to impress anyone with my hip-ness? Probably not. But I'm quietly confident I won't be totally ostracised as an over-the-hill wannabe by my university peers and come home time when I have to line up at the metaphorical school gates I should be able to hold my own with the other mums. That's not to say the odd bit baby vomit won't still make its way onto my clothes every now and then but I guess that's still part of who I am. For now.
To reinvent yourself every day? Nah, too much effort. But every once in a while is fine by me.
Monday 14 October 2013
Diary of a Part-Time Student/Full-Time Mum...
...or should that read full-time student/part-time mum? Officially, I guess, I'm full-time at both endeavours but as with anything in life don't really have enough time for either. So with that in mind perhaps we should leave it as somewhat of a student and a sometime mother but in all likelihood partially failing on each front.
Some scene setting then. I'm a 30-something (now disappointingly closer to mid than early) married mother of two young kids; a terrific, if emotionally fragile 2-year-old boy henceforth to be known as Child 1 and a (dare I say it?) beautiful 6-month-old baby girl aka Child 2. I recently started a one year full-time masters degree in Public Relations at the London College of Communications in Elephant & Castle and thought to myself what could be better for a sleep deprived, hectically busy student/mum type than adding blogging to my list of things to do. Why not, eh? I'm a woman, I can multi task surely? She says trying to write and eat breakfast at the same time and choking on the latter. This does not bode well.
So everyday, more or less, after dropping the kids off at nursery I enter the Elephant as a frazzled mother of two infants and emerge on the other side a born again student, trying desperately to hold my own in a class with an average age of much younger than myself and not fall asleep during lectures.
Take this blog as a starting point, a statement of intent to document my year long adventure in juggling home and school life. I hope to update once a week but given I intended to begin this three weeks ago we may have to adopt an 'as and when' approach.
Cheers.
Some scene setting then. I'm a 30-something (now disappointingly closer to mid than early) married mother of two young kids; a terrific, if emotionally fragile 2-year-old boy henceforth to be known as Child 1 and a (dare I say it?) beautiful 6-month-old baby girl aka Child 2. I recently started a one year full-time masters degree in Public Relations at the London College of Communications in Elephant & Castle and thought to myself what could be better for a sleep deprived, hectically busy student/mum type than adding blogging to my list of things to do. Why not, eh? I'm a woman, I can multi task surely? She says trying to write and eat breakfast at the same time and choking on the latter. This does not bode well.
So everyday, more or less, after dropping the kids off at nursery I enter the Elephant as a frazzled mother of two infants and emerge on the other side a born again student, trying desperately to hold my own in a class with an average age of much younger than myself and not fall asleep during lectures.
Take this blog as a starting point, a statement of intent to document my year long adventure in juggling home and school life. I hope to update once a week but given I intended to begin this three weeks ago we may have to adopt an 'as and when' approach.
Cheers.
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