And then there were three....

Born at 8pm, after a 4 hour labour following a hospital induction, gorgeous, pink Betty lay in my arms, her first instinct to immediately start feeding from me.

Despite the fact that she was 14 days past term and had to be induced, her labour had been absolutely perfect, allowing us the opportunity to laugh throughout and even for me to exclaim mid-contractions “this is brilliant!”

You see, her brother’s birth 2 ½ years earlier, had been a different story.

Following an amazing pregnancy, my braxton hicks had turned into true contractions on Dylan’s due date and on becoming 5 minutes apart, we had gone excitedly to hospital. However, as is often the case, on entering the maternity ward, contractions practically stopped and when they never returned again, I was sent home at 2cm dilated and told that I would probably return that evening.

In fact, I returned to hospital 3 days later after a weekend of on-and-off contractions where I was told I was 5cm dilated. Labour didn’t progress very well so I was induced and after 15 hours, gas and air, and diamorphine, I was exhausted. I felt no urge to push and was instructed by the midwife when I was getting a contraction to ‘chin on chest and push’. The whole thing was awkward and uncomfortable and I have never been so tired, having missed a whole night’s sleep. Eventually Dylan had a ventouse delivery.

The poor baby was also exhausted and couldn’t feed. It was 12 hours before he had his first feed - from a cup - and he was the only baby on the ward to sleep through the night that night.

I have to say, I slept very little. The ward was busy and noisy and there were midwives coming round hourly to check on us and to see if I could express any milk. I also had so much adrenaline pumping round my body that I couldn’t keep still. The whole event was traumatic and disappointing and I left the hospital thinking that I never wanted to go through that ever again.

Thank goodness the bad memories soon fade, otherwise few mothers would go on to have their second child!

It was never going to be an option for me to have anything other than a hospital birth with Betty. I was expecting the same delivery as I had had with her older brother and was very anxious heading into hospital that morning to be induced. I had spent the previous evening crying with worry, and having kissed goodnight to my only child, Dylan, knowing that it was the last time he would be the only baby in the house.

However, on having my waters broken at 4pm, I went straight into labour. I was totally in control, I felt all the pain. I was delighted to announce of my own accord “I need to push!”

I used gas and air but then realised it was making me dizzy so just used the nozzle to bite on, and 4 hours later, at 8pm, little Betty was there having her first feed. Absolutely perfect!

But then, despite the wonderful birth, because my daughter had been born at 8pm, it was going to take until at least midnight before all her checks had been done and the paediatrician had been around so I was encouraged to stay in hospital. That was a bit devastating, and once again, I got very little sleep on the ward and I missed Dylan terribly.

It was this that brought me round to thinking another 2 ½ years later, that we would have this next baby at home. Knowing how wonderful our birth had been last time, it made sense to have our birth in our own bedroom, with Dylan and Betty in the house with us, ready to be brought up to meet their brother as soon as possible.

In my head of course, I saw me going into labour as soon as the kids had gone to bed, labouring a few hours through the night, giving birth in bed and then the kids joining us in bed a few hours later - our little family complete.

I spoke to my midwife about it who was wonderful and said how much she loved home births. In fact, all subsequent midwives that I had appointments with were very reassuring in telling me that they enjoyed home births. I had real niggles about the fact that I would undoubtedly be getting a poor midwife out of bed, after a long shift in hospital, to come out and deliver my baby. It was a huge deal to me, but every single lady that I saw said it was absolutely no problem at all and that they all got excited about it.

I was so disappointed to discover at my first midwife appointment that I was high-risk, and that if I remained on the high-risk spectrum that I wouldn’t be allowed a home birth. My BMI was low and I had to see a consultant throughout the pregnancy. Thankfully, at 30 weeks, I was discharged and handed back to midwife-led care and was reassured I could still have my home birth.

Then, another concern - if I were to be induced again like Betty, I would have to have the baby in hospital. I was pretty sure this would be the case. I had heard that each pregnancy lasts longer with each child so I was pretty convinced that I stood no chance of having the homebirth that I now really hoped for.

I booked myself in for acupuncture a few days after my due date and hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.

It did! I went for acupuncture and then had a sweep a few days later with the midwife. I sat there like a mad thing, recording all twinges and contractions all week. When nothing happened, I went for another sweep but was gutted when the midwife said that she couldn’t do it because was the baby wasn’t engaged. Seeing my disappointment, she booked another sweep over the weekend, 3 days before my date to be induced.

Unfortunately, it was the same story and the sweep had to be abandoned again.

I think it was then that I lost all hope and decided to just embrace the idea of having a hospital delivery. I made the most of it and cleaned the house and prepared meals and was able to organise childcare and plan the whole thing. I guess it almost made me feel a bit relieved that I could plan it all.

We had had our baby’s moses basket set up in our room for 3 weeks and had told our kids that their brother would arrive soon. They ran into our room every morning to check if the basket had been filled. I feared they would start getting bored of waiting.

The evening before our induction, I packed my hospital bags for the last time and made the kids’ beds with fresh sheets. I was having my usual contractions - I’d been having them for 3 weeks - and was trying not to time them and get my hopes up.

We did the bedtime routine, got the kids into bed and my husband and I settled downstairs to watch the Sons of Anarchy finale! I sat astride a dining room chair, the sole purpose to try and encourage the baby to be engaged in preparation for the imminent induction. My contractions were coming every 7-9 minutes but when my dad phoned and we had a half hour conversation, they had practically stopped again.

Reluctantly I went upstairs at 10pm to get ready for bed, knowing I had missed my chance.

However, I noticed something that had never happened before - my contractions started again, very painfully, and never stopped despite my walking around.

Standing up and holding on to a baby changing table in our bedroom, I timed contractions for ages until I discovered I was having them every 7 minutes each lasting a good minute or two and at 10:30pm, we called the midwife!

We couldn’t believe it, but both my husband and I fully expected the midwife to arrive, examine me and say “sorry, false alarm”.

Even so, I texted my close family and a few friends and told them that the midwife was on the way. Excited messages bounced back straight away.

My husband quickly blew up a balloon and ran outside to tie it to the lampost, showing the midwife where to come to. When he returned I was in absolute definite labour!

A bang from the kids room sent my husband running off again to discover Betty had fallen out of bed, but she was popped back, sleeping soundly.

We wondered whether to call one of our stand-by assistants to come over in case the kids needed looking after, but we just didn’t really feel we needed any help.

Clock-watching, we did start to panic when the midwife called to say she was on her way and would be 20 minutes. She asked how I was doing. Ever tolerant of pain and way too laid back, I said in my sing-song way “oh, I’m fine!” and she happily hung up.

Eventually, just as my husband was bracing himself to either call an ambulance or roll his sleeves up, the midwife arrived. On examination, it appeared I was 5cm, so we all took a breath and relaxed a bit. We had a chat and a laugh, we drank tea, we ate biscuiuts, our conversations punctuated by long silent pauses when I closed my eyes and embraced another massive contraction, before resuming the conversation.

So, it was a massive surprise when I felt a pop and was suddenly soaked!

Action stations, the midwife checked my waters which had spilled over the floor, reassured us they were clear and then instructed me to go to the toilet to let the rest of the amniotic fluid come out. But there was no chance. I was frozen to the spot with one huge, constant contraction. I was shaking, the pain was intense and my body was in a whirlwind of shock and exhaustion. “I’m going to faint” I managed. I managed to get onto the bed and request some gas and air “please”.

“How polite” I heard the midwife as she brought the canister over.

She took out her phone and rang for the second midwife to come over now that I was in established labour.

I couldn’t get my words out, my contractions were so strong but eventually I heard myself squeak “I need to push!”

The midwife, hung up the phone, put on her apron and gloves, leapt to the other side of the bed and 6 minutes later, I was holding my brand new baby boy. In my bed, in my room, at home!

I cried and cried! I just could not believe it. I felt I was having an out of body experience. I was meant to be getting induced in a matter of hours - this wasn’t supposed to have happened!

My husband’s text messages were sent out to let everyone know that Robin had arrived, a mere 1 ½ hours after our previous message to say the midwife was on her way. Congratulations were sent back straight away - all our friends and family staying up to hear the good news.

Placenta delivered, the second midwife turned up and was sent back home before taking her coat off!

Alex and I sat in bed a while holding our son, only slightly aware of the brilliant midwife bagging up sheets and towels and clearing up the mess we had created. She helped me into the shower and was able to pass me my own clean towels and pyjamas and once I had dried and dressed I was amazed to see the bedroom looking clean and tidy with my bed sheets turned back ready for me to climb in and feed my son.

2 hours later, after more tea, toast and biscuits, the midwife had finished writing her notes, was happy with Robin’s feeding and congratulated us for the umpteenth time and thanked us again for a lovely birth experience. We were quite sad to say goodbye to her and handed her a box of chocolates with absolute heart-felt thanks, knowing she had to be up at 9am for clinic.

Then we climbed into bed and I had my first sleepless night, nursing my boy!!

6:45am, our alarm sounded and we heard the pitter patter of feet running down the landing. It was still dark and I whacked Alex to get his phone ready to video the kids coming in. Their reaction was amazing and makes me cry now. Dylan was first to come in and immediately peered into the moses basket. “Ah, a baby!” he exclaimed.

His voice was soft and quiet. “A baby,” he said again. “look Betty, it’s our brother!”

Oh my gosh, my dream had actually come true.

I’m crying as I write this. Such an emotional and magical moment. We must be the luckiest people in the world!

The whole homebirth experience was like a little slice of luxury. We couldn’t believe we hadn’t had to have gone private or to pay for it, for someone to actually come out to us so that we didn’t have to go to them, for them to give us one-to-one care, for them to then clean and tidy our room for us and take all the rubbish away - I really can’t express our thanks enough that we had this option.

For Richer, For Poorer

"I look over at my wife, sitting on her own, flicking through the TV channels with her phone in her other hand. We've just put the kids to bed and then I've washed the dishes whilst my wife has sat with our youngest until she has fallen asleep.

We reconvene in the living room, me at the dining table and my wife on the sofa in front of the TV.

I glance up now and then to see what she is watching. I doubt that she even knows what's on, as she glares at her mobile with the sound of the TV in the distance. I know that she is just catching up with her social life. Facebook is pretty much her contact with adult conversation, her outlet and her downtime.

A message appears on Skype and I look back to my computer. I'm in a conversation with a freelancer who I have outsourced some work to. He only works after 6pm so I have to catch up with him during the evening – along with a lot of my other clients, who like me, have families and work to look after during the daylight hours.

I've spent the day with my head down, trying to focus on what's in front of me and not get distracted by the office banter. A morning meeting with a client who needed their hand holding whilst they provided feedback on a site I had been working on, set me back a couple of hours and I have people chasing me on emails that I haven't replied to yet.

My head is full to bursting with emails and demands and people thinking that the button that isn't working on their site comes first on my schedule. I sat up until midnight last night and was up again at 6:30am to try and answer as many of them as I could. But it wasn't enough – it never is.

Cashflow is looking great this month – if only I can get these 5 jobs done on time.

There are several unopened brown envelopes sitting on the kitchen counter that look like they are from the Inland Revenue. What's the point in opening them?

Getting the Balance Right

This evening was the same as any other. We left the office at 5pm – any later and the wife gets mad. At home, I immediately start cooking the dinner whilst the wife greets the kids and they talk about their day and the childminder discusses what they have all been up to. I hear the door close and my wife busying herself about tidying up after all the fun the kids have had, and if she has time, hoovering and getting the kids ready for dinner. The pets are fed and by the time I present dinner, the living room and kids are all in order.

Dinner can take an hour with our very tired kids and we all start to get frustrated. My wife knows that she has a bundle of ironing upstairs to get on with before the kids go to bed, and I have umpteen emails and quotes on my mind. An hour sitting with empty plates whilst scolding the kids to eat is too long!

Bundled upstairs, the kids get ready for their baths whilst the ironing board comes out and there is a temporary lull. How long passes, I don't know, but my silence is broken by the sound of my wife shouting, “are you coming upstairs or what?”

Damn, how did I get so distracted? I press 'send' on the email I was writing – did I even finish writing it? I'm in trouble. I'll just run upstairs and get the kids in to the bath and let the wife get on with her ironing for a bit.

My head is filled with things I need to do. I am itching to get downstairs again to write a quote that I need to send out before the morning. But the kids are in a really good mood and as my son squirts his little sister in the face with Nemo, and she decides to laugh it off, we start a water fight and I end up as soaked as them. I love them. I enjoy their company so much. This is so much fun!

These little guys really keep me going. Everything I do is for my wife and my kids and our future together as a family. It's hard and we all have big sacrifices to make, but I wouldn't be putting myself through this if I didn't think that I could provide the kids with a brilliant future.

It breaks my heart when I can't spend time with the kids at the weekend. There are times when I have taken on so much work that my wife has no choice but to take the kids out for the day so that I can bury myself in work and try to get a good 6 hours quality time, undisturbed, working on a project. But when they get home, I run out to the car and give them great big hugs and instantly know how much I have missed them.

Days like that always end in a takeaway for me and the missus where we spend quality time on the sofa whilst the kids are dreaming in their beds, scoffing our faces, leaving the washing up until the next day, and catching up with a series we are watching on Netflix. I see her photos on Facebook of the day that they have had. I'm glad they had fun.

Bringing the Wife In

Last year, I took my wife on as an Office Manager to help take some of the strain off me. We were warned by many that we shouldn't work together but always believed that by sitting together, having totally different jobs to each other and by educating my wife about what I actually do, that we would work it out. A year later and we see each other a lot more and yes, my wife does know more about what I do. When I talk to her, she knows what I am talking about.

My wife's main role was to implement a few systems around the office whereby we were able to track our finances and the time that we were spending on each job. The boys and I suggested a few different online programmes but in the end, my wife felt much more comfortable designing her own spreadsheets and collecting the information from us all independently.

Bless her, she put her all into it and really believed that it would transform our cashflow every month. But did any of us stick to it?

The boys were given a sheet every week breaking up all the hours of every day and assigning them to different projects they were working on. But it didn't account for the clients taking days to get back to us with feedback or with providing us with content, and it didn't take into account all of the changes that the clients made. I felt my wife's frustration and I watched as every month our bank statements just didn't turn out the way that the 'Cashflow' spreadsheet had predicted.

The 5 jobs that I was working on had 2 hours a day assigned to them. However, if so and so shouted louder than someone else, ultimately I ended up doing more hours on one project than another. And then, if an old client reared their heads and demanded I look into their site and why their shipping wasn't working, that took priority. And sure enough, each month, all of those coloured figures that sat neatly on my wife's spreadsheet, were all taken out and placed onto the following month's sheet.

But quite often, the magic all happens in the last few days of the month. I have my wife and Business Consultant pestering me about whether some of the income we are expecting can be moved off the spreadsheet with no hope of them coming in. 'No' I say, 'That may still come in'.

And I sit up all night, busy in my work. I'm up again at 6am. I have to get this work done. I have to squeeze every bit of myself into this project, and then I have to squeeze some money out of the client. All too often, the people that have been crowding my inbox all month and clouding my head, will suddenly go to ground as soon as the word 'Invoice' is mentioned, but as I work my butt off, sure enough, D-day comes round and we just about manage to get some payments in just in time for payday.

Home Time

I get home sometimes and my head is just swamped. I need a bit of 'me' time, if only for a few minutes or half an hour or so. Sometimes that comes in the form of getting out Hungry Hippos with my babies, sometimes I get out my phone and play a game, sometimes I sit upstairs and read. Sometimes I just need silence.

I can read my wife's mind of course, and sometimes I also wonder if I could take a 9-5 job instead. But I don't believe that that is an investment in our future – and I think that my wife believes that too. I'm proud of my business and I want it to succeed and I don't want all of this to have been for nothing.

I feel I am spinning plates. I want to be the very best dad that I can be and I want to be the best husband. And my wife is strong. We have adapted well into this life and this routine. We have our own duties and our routine and for the most part, it works. I know when it gets to her and it doesn't work quite so well for her. I have those days too. But we do have flexibility and if I can do a few extra things at home to ease things for my wife, she knows that she only has to ask.

Sometimes, I think my wife has had enough. She goes silent and I feel her hostility about the business and about the amount of time I am spending on it and the lack of money showing in our account. I feel that something is going to blow. But usually, the next day, she wakes up having had a big think about it and there's a smile on her face and we are ok again.

Motivated

I am running along with my boy, I've just let go of the saddle of his bike, and he is riding clumsily alongside me. We can hear my wife whooping at the kerb whilst she films this momentous occasion. It's 9:30am and we should have been in work already. I realise I haven't looked at my watch though and I'm not stressing about getting to work. I've already answered a few emails this morning over breakfast and so far, all my clients are satisfied. And, anyway, here lies my inspiration. This is what I am working for.

If I can't take an hour out every now and then, when I know that the rest of the world is hard at work, and we have the road to ourselves, when we can enjoy the kids whilst they are still too young to go to school – if I can't do that, what's the point?

Enjoying these tiny guys and seeing them grow and develop is my motivation. And I go to work with a smile on my face and it's a new day and I'm ready to do some work!"

Married to the Job

Bumping into friends I haven't seen in a while, I am always asked the same two questions: “How are the kids?” and “How is business?”

My response very seldom varies: “The kids are brilliant!” and “Business is good but hard work.”

Bumping into a friend with a little more time on their hands, they might get the more embellished answers: “The kids are brilliant! They have their days of acting like monkeys but on the whole, they are great, just growing up too fast!” and “Business is good but hard work. My husband never stops and we are so busy, but still there is no money.”

A little background

My husband and I met at university – a college of Arts. He was doing Graphic Design and I was studying Fashion Promotion. When he graduated, he was offered a job in the BBC as an Interactive Designer but continued to work on freelance web design projects at home as well. When I graduated, I started working for a handmade greetings card company.

For me, work was always a 9-5 thing – a means to making a living, buying a house and doing nice things as well as having a social life. For me, enjoying my job was paramount. I've never had a job that I didn't enjoy.

For my partner, it was most definitely more of a hobby and a part of his life. From the very beginning of our relationship, he would sit on the computer most nights until bedtime, working or learning something new whilst I talked on the telephone, enjoyed our home and garden, enjoyed our pets and watched TV.

My husband left the BBC in 2007 and set up shop in our little living room in our one-bedroomed flat in London and that is when our business was born.

Things were good. Hubby had this ability of finding enough extra work when we needed to go on holiday or pay for a big thing so that we were able to really enjoy life. If we suddenly needed an extra £1k to pay for flights to Thailand, he put in a few more hours and hey presto! We were on our way!

We left London in 2008 and moved to Cheshire, got married, and the following year, we were blessed with a baby boy. In time, hubby moved his desk from our upstairs spare room to an office building in a nearby town, and employed his first member of staff.

I enjoyed spending time at home with my little boy who instantly became my little best friend.

Our life as a little family didn't exactly follow the norm. My other half didn't take paternity leave. He stayed at home for the first two weeks but sat at the dining table working, and instead of just having to look after myself and a newborn, I also made lunch and numerous cups of coffee for the boss everyday.

When he returned to his office after a fortnight, he got home at 5:30pm everyday and as soon as we had bathed our little boy, it was back to the computer.

4 years on

4 years on, we now also have a 2 year old girl and another baby on the way. Following my maternity leave with my little girl, I decided to go and work with my husband to try and improve things and sharpen things up. By then, he had 2 employees and was really struggling with cashflow in the business.

Our own finances started to suffer and before long, we were up to our eye balls in debt.

My husband also employed a Business Consultant who thought it was a great idea to bring me in to introduce a few time management and cashflow systems. Until then, hubby used to just wing it. He would have lots of jobs on but no idea when they were due to finish and when the clients would then kindly pay for the work that he had done.

I was very out of my depth going in there, but enjoyed the feeling that I was doing something proactive with my time and something that, ultimately, was for the good of the future of our kids.

On setting up numerous spreadsheets and looking into archived projects, it occurred to me that things were in a bit of a mess and that we weren't billing for half as much as we should have been, jobs were taking twice as long to complete as projected and my husband was taking on far too much work for himself and not letting a lot of it go to his employees.

My husband is the best web designer that I know and I wholly respect his talents. However, sadly his management skills were lacking and trying to please everyone (clients) all at the same time, he very rarely met deadlines.

It was my job then to enforce a few strict rules about the work he was allowed to take on, how long it had to take to be completed and when we definitely needed payment by. Staff had to follow my rigid timetables and spend set amount of hours on each project daily, reporting to me at the end of the day how many hours they had spent on each project. Every project had to have a deadline, every project had to come in on budget. Our cashflow had to work.

Of course, it didn't. Did anyone pay a blind bit of notice to me? No. Did I have a clue about the work they were doing and how long it took to do everything? Not at all. Did my timesheets all end up in the bin? Yep! And my own husband was the worst offender.

The boss's phone and emails got in the way constantly. He couldn't spend the 4 hours I had set him daily on working on a particular project because so and so had called and needed a little tweak on something else. Such and such had emailed and needed an amend. Thingymabob had messaged to ask for a newsletter...... He couldn't let go. Despite the measures that the Business Consultant and I put into place, giving my husband an hour or two set window for answering clients, not letting him answer the phone, having down time at home, he just couldn't conform!

Cashflow continued to be a nightmare. The spreadsheets were all there, the sums had all been done. All the boss had to do was check them and update them and account for the worst case scenario. If so and so didn't look like it was going to be finished in time, move it to the next month's income and we will try and concentrate on getting another payment in instead. But ever the optimist, hubby held onto every single payment until the very last few days before realising that no, they weren't going to pay before the end of the month, and oops, we're £2k short of wages!

Yippee! Holiday!

I've lost count of the number of holidays we have been on where at least one of our days has been ruined because it was payday, and true to form, left to the last minute, we have had to run around the nearest town, looking for banks, checking opening times, getting cash out of the hole-in-the-wall to then top up the business accounts from within the branch which is usually due to close for the day, scraping every last penny we have together, for daddy to then find an internet cafe with a slow wifi connection to then pay everybody back home before the end of the working day.

But that's when we even take holiday. Save for our annual trips to Poland to see family, my husband would never use up his holiday leave by just taking the odd day off or the odd week at home, just to use up days owing. If he takes 12 days a year holiday, I would be greatly surprised! Bank holidays – no chance! Why, aren't they just bonus days when the boss can work in peace and quiet?

Our days out usually consist of daddy checking his phone regularly, receiving phone calls, pulling over on the road to send an important email, sitting on his own to try and work out a problem that a client has encountered (on a lovely summer's day at the weekend), phoning round hosting companies, sushing the kids because he's on an important call, and sitting with his 'email clients' whilst we all have lunch.

Hometime!

At home, we are used to hearing the click of daddy's phone coming to life every ten minutes. Putting the washing out, I can hear the kids, “daddy..... daddy..... daddy.... daddy....” until I shout, “Will you answer them please!” even though they are in the bath whilst he is supposedly bathing them!

I walk downstairs to a silent house to find my husband in a corner of the kitchen, in the dark, cups of tea half-made, checking his emails on his phone.

Kids screaming, attaching themselves to my legs, snot on my cardi and a dirty nappy in my hand, I finally give up and shout to him to come and help. “Coming!” he says, as he turns off his laptop.

I come down from the shower in the morning, there's ten minutes until we have to leave for pre-school. I am greeted by half-finished bowls of cereal, kids in their pygamas watching TV, a sink of washing, and daddy hunched over his computer.

And then there's the evenings. Kids go to bed and the next batch of work starts. I usually sit on my own watching TV, doing housework, reading, catching up with friends on the phone. We're in the same room but often I get little sense from my life partner who is sitting on another planet. The twilight hours are his favourite hours for working as there are no disruptions. So I can't very well go and disturb him. Sometimes, I can entice him over with a piece of cake I've bought or an episode of a series we've been watching, but as soon as that's over, it's back to work. He will usually stay up then until 12am or later.

Would I Change Things?

Thankfully, I now work with my husband and I see him more and I get what he does. But when he isn't working, he does like to talk about work and try as I might, I still don't have a clue what he is talking about.

My darling husband works harder than anyone I have ever met. He puts his whole into it, he really does. I don't know how he does it. But is it sustainable, and selfish as it sounds, how long will it take before we actually start reaping the benefits of this hard work? We know other entrepreneurs who work all the hours that God sends, but they really bring in the money and their wives and off-spring enjoy very cushy lives. They can't really complain.

But when you are losing your husband and feeling most of the time that you are a single parent family, and you still don't see the reward, how does that work? How long can that last? The promise of a good future does a lot to keep you sane most of the time, but sometimes not enough. I've gone to bed so many nights crying (usually towards payday looming) and questioning why my entrepreneur can't get a normal job and have someone pay him.

Selfishly sometimes, I catch myself resenting the fact that I am forced to give so much support to our business when I often feel I get very little support in return. No one thanks me for the work that I do at home, or for the work I do at the business that I wasn't trained to do and never wanted to do, or for looking after the kids on my own when daddy is distracted. When I ask him to just help me out and clean the fish tank (because on this occasion I simply don't have time) whilst I hoover, mop and clean the bathrooms quickly before we go out, I wonder why no one ever asks me to clean the fish tank?

And then, I feel awful and hate myself for feeling like that and for being so ungrateful.

When people ask what we do and we tell them (quietly) that we run our own business, you see the pound signs flash up in their eyes and hear them thinking 'Oh wow, good for you – not!' You see them looking at us like we are loaded and live in a massive house and buy nice things and go on expensive holidays all the time. So not the truth at all!

Would I change things? It depends on what day you are asking me. Ask me on payday and yes, I would change things in an instant and have my husband working for someone else. Ask me when the tax man phones and yes, I would change things. Ask me when I am handing over my card in the shop and wondering whether the payment will go through, or when I am walking past the office landlord hiding behind my phone cos we haven't paid our rent, or when I am tired and have to take the kids out for a day at the weekend because the boss needs to get his head down and work – yes I would change everything!

Then ask me on my son's first day of school when we can both stand at the gates at 3:15 and wait to pick him up; ask me when my little girl has a bad cold and needs looking after and I get to stay at home with her; ask me at 9:30am when we should have been in work half an hour ago, yet here we are watching one of the kids riding their bike for the first time; ask me when we have a midwife appointment and my children's dad is the only man in the waiting room; ask me when it's my birthday and my loving husband comes home early; ask me in ten years time.... no, I wouldn't change a thing!

But if any of my kids come home in 20 years time telling me they are marrying an entrepreneur..........

Growing Confidence

From being an awkwardly-shy, quiet young girl, always on the outside of friendship groups, I often wonder about how I grew up to become one of the happiest grown-ups I know. When did it happen? When did I finally get that little bud of confidence that blossomed into an acceptance of who I am now?

I always hated who I was when I was growing up. I so desperately wanted to be loud and outgoing and popular. Within any group of friends I always felt like the least valued member of the group. I felt I wasn’t funny and I wasn’t interesting and I was just boring. The discomfort I felt when I was playing out with my friends was absolutely all-consuming. The fear that people talked about me behind my back and the ‘knowledge’ that they would rather I wasn’t there was immense. It ate me up and it was devastating.

A fairly clever girl, I never put my hand up in class, I never volunteered for school plays or presentations. Acting was a small release and when I was selected to take part in productions, I really did let loose and throw my all into it, but it was very rare that I auditioned for such parts.

An audience of several hundred people didn’t phase me in the slightest, yet a small room of listeners was unbearable - worse still, addressing a group of friends. The dread I felt walking into a shop and speaking to the person on the other side of the counter and knowing there was a good chance that I had turned a deep shade of red was enough to stop me going in sometimes. Being asked to read in class sent me into a frenzy of shaking and sweating and trying desperately to hide my purple face.

I look back on my school days and I feel so much sympathy for that little girl; the little girl who meant no harm to anyone. Children and youths can be so inconsiderate and damaging to somebody who suffers from having low self-esteem.

When I decided to head off to university, I don’t remember making a big deal about moving away, but there I was, putting myself in a situation right outside of my comfort zone, going to a place that I had never been to before, 250 miles away from home, with nobody that I knew and studying a subject that I had no experience of. How I did that, I just don’t know, but I have no doubt that that was a great part of my therapy.

Before going to university, I studied an art diploma for 9 months. Again, I knew nobody but in those 9 months, I met some fantastic people and had an amazing time. For the first time in my life, I felt that some of my friends there had actually chosen me as a friend and wanted to be my friend. I never felt popular in any way and I still felt like bottom of the pack, but I felt like a valued bottom-of-the-pack person.

At university, I actually enjoyed the fact that I didn’t know anybody. I remember deciding to just be myself and not try to be something I wasn’t. I remember that life-changing thought. I suddenly started to learn about who I was. I came across some good friendship groups - never getting hugely close to anybody but having a lot of friends. And within 3 months, I had met the man that I was going to marry.

Alex was lovely and he seemed to really like me for who I was. Some of his friends were into different things to me and weren’t very accepting of me, but, despite feeling like I was having a very hard time with them at the time, I now see that they also helped shape my confidence. Rather than conforming and trying to please everybody, I stood my ground, continued to be me, and gained an identity. I was proud to be different and I was proud to be me.

More and more, I started to hear compliments from friends about how I was a nice person, and how I was a very genuine person, and for the first time ever I actually heard them and believed them. I met people who didn't mind that I was quiet or shy.

I remember going out with a new friend from work and meeting all of her friends for the first time. Any time before this and I would have sat there very happily listening to all of their funny stories, nodding and laughing but not feeling interesting enough to contribute any conversation. That night however, I remember catching a glimpse of myself, holding the table, having everybody laughing and everybody really enjoying my conversations. Reports the next day came back that they all wanted me to go out with them next time too. Those people had been so content with themselves that they hadn't needed to judge and had no predisposed ideas of who I was.

Alex and I bought our first house after university - we were self-contained, independent, enjoying life and knew, near enough, which direction we were heading in.

Don’t get me wrong, I never gained a complete confidence in myself. I still have many hang-ups; I still analyse situations and wish the world could swallow me up, or at least erase the last thing I said or did; I still dread situations that I know are going to make me feel uncomfortable or invaluable.

We moved up north and I rekindled a strong friendship I had with a friend from my diploma and I also met some other brilliant new friends. They all individually, encouraged my confidence and brought out the best in me and were always reassuring me through their actions that they enjoyed my company and that I was a valued friend.

Becoming a mum was beyond doubt, the greatest life-changing moment and the single thing that suddenly gave me an overwhelming feeling of happiness. I suddenly learnt for sure who I was and what I had spent the rest of my life waiting to become. It was a defining moment and one in which the rest of my life suddenly seemed to make sense. I was good at being a mum, it suited me and it was who I was. In fact, it was the first thing in my life that I felt really really good at!

My kids adore me - they think I am the best thing ever. They see no problems with my confidence. I tell them funny stories, they tell me funny stories. We are best friends. They don't mind if I'm quiet or loud. As long as I can be with them and hold their tiny hands and tuck them in at bedtime, they don't judge me in the slightest.

A lot of people talk about how becoming a mother and wife makes them feel they lose their own identity. I gained my identity, or rather, I realised it.

I’m also a rather good judge of character and one of my best assets is the ability to appreciate the good qualities in others and to learn from them and their experiences. Many people feel it a weakness to accept advice or to go along with the suggestions of others. I found that by taking little bits from all the good in everybody else, and following advice made me into a slightly better person. And I am extremely lucky to have a lot of people in my life to take inspiration from!

Being comfortable and happy within myself and my life gives me the ability to look at myself more subjectively and when I look at myself, I see a woman who loves and who cares for others, who means absolutely no harm to anyone, who has no time for ill thoughts about anybody else and who just wants to live harmoniously within my lovely little family and to not be judged for who I am and how much or how little I say. What does it matter to anyone else anyway?

I do wish I had have realised all of this much much earlier. I still regret my childhood and teens which could have been so much happier. I still regret being the awkward, quiet 20 year old who bored everybody with her silence. I just wish that I had have been able to see then the good I had in me and that I was worth more than everybody else’s disapproval. I will always slightly dread seeing all of the people who made me feel like this and who still remember me for being shy and quiet and boring, that will never leave me.

I look at my kids, bubbly and loud and energetic and I pray for them that they will hold all of their mother’s values. But I pray that they will have their father’s natural confidence too so that they don’t miss out on everything in childhood and their precious teenage years that I did.

Food For Thought

The worst thing about living in a beautiful, affluent, rural town like ours is how easy it is to forget what's on the other side.

A walk along the high street and you can be greeted by a collection box for the local choir; pop into Waitrose for some weekend groceries and you can choose which little slot to press your green charity coin (given to you upon payment at the till) into for a nearby organisation; you may be stopped by a wildlife trust representative asking about how many birds you've spotted along the moor.

Walk into any Tesco in central Liverpool and you will no doubt find a huge crate at the entrance filled with foods and a shopping list on the wall asking for Food Bank donations.

Until recently, I was fairly ignorant to this, all the more so having young children who only watch children's TV all day. I haven't watched the News in centuries and I just hadn't come across poverty in years. There is certainly no obvious Food Bank around here. I had heard of them but, with limited exposure to the news and very few trips to inner city shops, I just hadn't really paid them very much attention.

It was my aunty who brought it up in conversation one day. (She reassured me that I wasn't the only one who knew little about just what was going on in the country.) My aunty is a midwife and is out in the community most of her day. She has had training to spot vulnerable people and, as part of her training, she attended a workshop to introduce her to a wide range of services offered to people who need social and financial help. These services are largely unknown and it is really down to the likes of midwives, health visitors and social services to direct the relevant people to the people that can help them. The workshop introduced her to (amongst other things) Food Banks and the more and more important role they are playing in society in the UK.

For those who don't know about them, Food Banks were set up to give people the opportunity to buy some staple groceries and donate them. The donations are taken and given out to people as an emergency supply. The people who benefit from the Food Bank donations have usually been identified by Social Services and given a voucher to go and collect 3 days' worth of emergency food. At the Food bank, they may also be offered advice to help get themselves out of their particular situation and may be pointed in the direction of another service that could help them.

I knew that I really wanted to help out and started keeping a look-out for Food Banks local to me. And I never did find one!

It was through looking on the internet that I found out that I could donate through a local church and I have been donating there ever since. I put a few signs up in work and was overwhelmed by everyone's generosity. Like me, most of them hadn't really known about Food Banks, and if they had, had never actually come across one. Yet, being given the opportunity, they all wanted to help.

It seems a little amazing to me that those who can maybe afford it more than others ie. People living in more affluent areas, aren't given the chance to donate. This is probably because there are fewer people in that immediate area that need the help, but as all of the food is non-perishable, it makes little sense to me not to have a little box set up at the entrance of, say, Waitrose, Booths, Marks & Spencer.

3 weeks after giving regular donations to the Food Bank, I couldn't help thinking that I wanted to do more. Having two young children, with very good, healthy appetites, I don't understand why less privileged people should go with having less healthy meals. The Food Bank are very good in requesting tinned vegetables and fruits and pasta sauces, but this just doesn't appeal to me. I felt myself placing my family in the same situation and wondering how I would feel about the bags of provisions I was offered. Extremely grateful of course, but wanting the absolute best for my two little kiddies who have no say in anything and who have no reason to miss out on the very best that life has to offer. I started to feel guilty about everything that I cooked them, picturing the bags of pasta and the tins of peas I was offering to the church every Thursday.

One day, a colleague came in to see me to talk about the Food Bank and he mentioned that his wife had put a link on Facebook to a lady who advertised her leftovers on Gumtree to people in her area. I read the article and was truly inspired. I contacted Caroline and after a long Facebook conversation, we realised that we both wanted the same thing!

I sent a Facebook message to a few local friends who I trusted and who I knew cooked good, healthy meals for their families most nights, to ask for their ideas and for their support, and the overwhelming majority said that they would happily freeze their leftover portions to donate to us. One friend offered the use of her freezer, another friend offered to provide food cartons to store the meals.

I am by no means taking anything away from the Food Bank. They do a fantastic job and as long as there is poverty, unemployment, homelessness, bedroom tax, benefit cuts, there will be an important place in society for the Food Banks. Our idea is certainly not an alternative to the Food Bank. In a way, our organisation is serving me too. I'm the one that wants to do this, I'm the one that will be left with a sense of pride and a sense of happiness to be helping out – that's my selfish ulterior motive.

What we hope to do is provide meals for people who haven't the facility to cook healthy meals for themselves, for whatever reason. I envisage us serving food to families with young children, young professionals who can't meet their mortgage repayments, the unemployed, pensioners, the homeless, ex-prisoners trying to get their lives back on the straight and narrow. It's certainly not for me to judge why they are standing at my doorstep accepting food from me. Just to be there in the first place, tells me all I need to know about them.

Caroline and I are so excited about this. We have registered our 'business' and hope to start dishing up in the next few weeks. We have so far decided to target churches and Children's Centres believing them to be the most in touch with the community. The hope is that they will either send people to us (Which I would love as it would be great to meet people in the community) or we will be able to take food to the Churches for them to distribute.

I would dearly love to meet the people that live in the areas that we work and live in. It can be so easy to walk around with your eyes closed. I would love to get to know the local families. I would love it, if by Christmas, instead of dropping my Christmas present donations off to the Salvation Army, I could give them in person to the families.

Hopefully this doesn't all sound too fantastical. I just hope that it all comes off and that we can make the tiniest little difference to the people who need to know that people still care.

Being Your Own Boss

6am – the alarm goes off, it's black outside, it's freezing. A snooze is out of the question, and peeling back the duvet, stepping out into the cold air, blindly walking the very few steps to the bathroom, my day begins!

7am - Alex and I are standing at the bus stop with all of the other Earlsfield zombies, two packed buses already having shot by without a sideways glance.

7:30am - we resolve to walk until we either get to Wandsworth or until we catch a bus with room to squeeze two little ones in.

7:45am – Alex and I are standing chest to chest, diagonally, relying on the crush to support us, hardly daring to breath in the bad breath of all of the morning commuters we are pressed up against. We can't see anything but we know where we are, feeling every jolt, every bend in the road and every pot-hole to identify our location.

8:30am – jumping off the bus which has been stationary on Fulham Palace Road for over 20 minutes, we walk to Hammersmith.

9am – late for work, we jump on to the empty Hammersmith and City Line train to Ladbroke Grove.

9:30am – get into work late.

7:30pm – home

So, despite both of us having fairly well-paid jobs which we really enjoyed, in 2008, Alex decided to leave the BBC to set up shop from the living room, leaving me to commute on my own!

Alex had worked as a freelance web designer alongside his full-time job for many years and eventually, he decided that he had enough work to sustain a decent living and took the leap into the world of self-employment.

We were living in a little flat in Tooting at the time. We had bought it only 3 years before. Our little flat, which had cost us a small fortune, consisted of a small living room, a small bedroom, a small eat-in kitchen and a small garden. We had bought it as a bit of a wreck and had flown a Polish guy over who lived with us for two weeks and re-plastered, painted, tiled, added picture rails and daido rails, and who we fed and looked after and paid a good amount of money to. We landscaped the garden and made it totally beautiful, painted our front door, built in wardrobes and designed and constructed a fantastic TV cabinet, shelving units and office desk in the living room. This is where Alex sat for the next year.

Alex's work was varied and local and Alex happily worked on two small projects at a time. He enjoyed the freedom and found no problems in making ends meet.

Later in 2008, having decided that we needed more room, that we had no chance of having more room whilst living in London, and that we had to move up North, Alex set his office up from the spare room of our brand new, three bedroomed house in leafy Knutsford.

Having sold our flat with a considerable amount of equity, we had a stunning wedding and honeymoon, and I stayed at home with no job, to organise our new home, explore our new surroundings, bring a Labrador puppy up, and make Alex sandwich creations every lunch time. We had a wonderful time and Alex enjoyed more work, local networking events and a feeling of being welcomed into a strong and affluent community.

There comes a time when every good business must take the risk and make the move to expand.

Alex's time came when we had our first baby and he found that he had more than enough website requests to divvy out between two people (and I wanted my spare room back).

The decision wasn't as easy as that in reality. It's a big, brave step to decide to take on your first employee and to start paying rent on an office. It's a massive financial leap! I can't even remember our conversations about it as we had a brand new baby in tow – there must have been so much head scratching, to-ing and fro-ing and calculating going on. Whatever the discussions, Alex moved into his office in Altrincham, joined by a young, friendly and talented web designer.

The web designer that Alex chose to work with made the move fairly easy. He was easy to get on with and quick to do the work. It was fun going to see Alex in the office, and Alex loved it when I took our gorgeous little boy, Dylan, in to see his daddy and play on the computer with him.

Of course, there was always a strain. It was imperative that there was always enough work coming in. We had the responsibility of an employee to pay, we had rent to pay, and we had ourselves to pay. Budgeting for holidays and sick pay was always an issue, and one that we didn't always prepare for.

There was also a certain amount of control that Alex had to hand over. He had to accept that the designs that his employee did weren't always going to represent Alex's taste, and this was hard for Alex to deal with. However, in allowing the business to progress, it was just imperative to let go a bit and have the trust and confidence that the work was being done.

It all worked out!

2 years later, Alex took on another employee. It was necessary. There was too much work coming in for just the two of them to deal with, especially now that the jobs were larger, required more management and more maintenance. Alex had found that the more work that he took on and the bigger clients that he attracted, the less time there was for him to knuckle down and design some websites. He was spending his day writing quotes and proposals and briefs, having meetings, updating existing websites and chasing invoices. There was just no time for Alex to do any billable work. And Alex's working day was continuing long into the night and into the weekends. I found that I was taking Dylan out on our own for one day of every weekend just so that Alex could get his head down with no distractions.

We had another baby on the way. I told Alex in no uncertain terms that things had to change. I needed help around the house more and I needed help with the children at the weekend. I needed time off too!

When Betty arrived and things weren't showing any signs of changing, Alex enlisted the help of a business consultant. It was a good thing he did too, as little did we know that we were about to experience some of the worst financial months that we had ever had. We all worked together on a cash-flow forecast and a business plan and saw that with the rent that we were paying, the extra cost per month of an additional employee, Corporation tax and our Vat Return looming, we had to put a plan in place.

Around about that same time, Alex came home one day, white as a sheet. We were putting the kids to bed and I noticed his silence. His eyes were red, he was the closest to tears that I had ever seen him.

“It's not the finances,” he explained, “I just have so much work to do. I just haven't got the time.”

He had totally burnt out. He saw no end to the massive mountain of work he faced. He spent his day being shouted at by clients wondering where their websites were and why they were taking so long. He spent his evening being nagged by me to spend time with the kids. He spent his night at his computer drinking mugs of strong coffee.

It was decided that I would be employed by the Company as an Office Manager.

I would take a lot of Alex's administration work away from him - chasing invoices, monitoring cashflow, bookkeeping – and I would introduce some new systems around the work place to record timekeeping and efficiency. The hope was that by taking away these duties, Alex would be able to get some of his own work finished and become more of a Manager and concentrate more efficiently on sales.

At the same time, it became apparent that we needed a cash injection and that meant a trip to the bank.

Thankfully, after several trips to the bank, we were granted a large overdraft and we felt the pressure ease. We weren't out of the woods but Alex had enough time to actually think about what needed doing and when, without the burden of having to chase cash around.

In working at my desk, sitting next to Alex, I was filled with admiration and respect for him. He had so much weight on his shoulders. As well as having a house to run, two small children to feed, clothe and entertain, a bossy wife to please, poor Alex had two members of staff that needed paying on time, in full every month, and numerous clients to satisfy, all with their own deadlines and all with no care in the world for his time.

We had always run the office in a non hierarchical way. Of course, Alex was the manager but we had taken on employees of similar ages to ourselves and who had similar talents to Alex, and it was never a case of wanting to own them – our job was to make sure we brought enough work for them to do so that we all got paid at the end of the month.

However, in introducing our cash flow and timekeeping models, it was revealed to us that the staff were not bringing in enough money to cover their wages. Alex's projects were carrying the business and the hard work that he was putting in, and his push for covering the wages every month, was what was paying for everyone else.

Alarm bells started ringing.

It was then that things changed in the office. Alex and I had to become the Managers that we hadn't been before.

After many consultations and research and speculation, we took our staff into appraisals, we started keeping personal records of who was bringing what sales into the company, and what everyone's utilisation rates were, not to spy on everyone but to ascertain just where things were going wrong and how we could improve things to make every hour of every day more productive.

We also adapted our contracts to favour our project management so that there was less chance of clients adding little extras into the projects that we hadn't quoted for; Alex stepped right out of his comfort zone and started charging more per job (an amount much more appropriate to the size of Company that we were becoming and the time that it was actually taking per job); we introduced targets and budgets for our staff.

We are only a month or two in but we are seeing some good results. We are attracting bigger clients who can pay more. However, with that comes all of the project management and slow payment processes. We have also found that our staff are more focussed and have much higher utilisation rates.

It's the tip of the iceberg so far – we have so much more work to do, but we feel we are on the right path. For the time being, I still can't quite see the day when our debts are paid off; I can't see a day when Alex and I will be able to take home a wage which will cover our outgoings and then some; I still can't see a day when the last week of the month won't be a mad dash for the bank to move money around to cover wages and a last-ditch attempt to claw some money from our debtors.

We are doing this for the future. One wonderful day, our children will have the choice whether to go to University or to train as web designers and follow in their dad's footsteps. One day, Alex will step down and our kids will be able to decide whether to take over or to sell up. When Dylan has his first school play, Alex and I will both be able to attend. When Betty has her first day at school, we will both be able to pick her up. When the kids get chicken pox, I won't have to ask the boss for time off to look after them, and make up the hours later. When the kids' friends ask them what their parents jobs are, Dylan and Betty will be able to proudly tell them that they have their own Web Design Company.

It's a heck of a tough journey, but we look forward to the day when we can say 'it was worth it!'

It seems amazing that it has only taken 6 short years to get to where we are now. We are by no means the biggest company in the town and by no means have we had the quickest growth, but to think of our morning commute through rush-hour London every day, being stuck in traffic jams, a 12-hour day, then to Alex happily ensconced in working on some lovely little local websites from the peace and quiet of our newly decorated spare room, to now having the responsibility of two staff members and an office to pay for, always aware of how much money is in the bank and how much more we need before we can afford to pay everybody – well, we are nearly there aren't we...