Читать книгу The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year - Mosey Jones - Страница 13

Typing ‘doula’ into Google comes up with a whole raft of websites, but there seems to be an association called Doula UK that puts itself forward as the unofficial doula register for Britain. There are hardly any doulas covering my area so that’s the first rule of business covered – make sure you’ve got the competition sussed. The site also lists the courses you can take to become a trained doula, although again there seem to be no officially recognised bodies. I find one that’s halfway between the cheapo £90 version and the super-expensive £1,000. If I’m paying that much I want letters after my name and a mortar board.

I tell the Husband that I’ve sent off a cheque for nearly £400 for the course and that I figure a spot of doula-ing will be just the ticket for bolstering the family finances. He goes bananas. Well, actually, he goes totally silent, then quite squeaky for five minutes and then silent again, which is his version of bananas. He isn’t impressed that we’re surviving on one salary with an extra mouth to feed and I’ve just splurged that month’s nappy and packed lunch budget on three days of looking at ladies’ fannies and drinking tea.

I should leave it at that and give him time to marinate in the information; let him gently come around to the idea that you’ve got to speculate to accumulate and that going down the fanny route won’t be a bad idea. But I can’t resist picking at a scab. Once you’ve got that little flap teased up, it’s impossible to stop yourself from going the whole way and ripping it all off, revealing the raw skin beneath that’s going to take a good few days to calm down again.

In this case, I don’t leave it alone but bang on about how my job is hardly worth going back to, and that if he’d only badger his boss about grant applications instead of always saying he’d do it tomorrow, he’d have the job thing licked and we could make plans. From his point of view I’m probably being grossly unfair. Here I am, ensconced at home with the children, one of whom spends most of the week at pre-school or the childminder, and I have the freedom to see who I want, and generally gad about while he frets over providing for his newly expanded family and deals with the very real prospect of being out of work in three months.

And I know it seems mad that I’m spending valuable family cash on sending Boy One to the Very Capable Childminder when he could now be at home with me. I chose a childminder over a nursery in the first place because I wanted him to have that home environment, the sense of extended family, while I wasn’t there. It’s worked a dream and he now has such a sense of belonging that to remove him from her would be like a bereavement. Besides, he’s just had his world blown apart by the introduction of a baby brother, someone who creates an attention vortex around him whenever he’s in the room. He’s had enough upset to his routine. Even though he still goes three days a week I see him much more now than I ever did. I’m not getting home an hour after his bedtime for a start, and instead of spending the days he has with me accomplishing pointless tasks like grocery shopping and cleaning the car, I can do those while he’s not here and focus on what he wants to do when he is. I think the arrangement works well for all concerned, and I tell The Husband that.

We both hold our corners – he is insisting I would be mad to give up a stable job I’ve been doing since before we were married; I am claiming he has no vision and is worrying over nothing. We don’t go to bed on the argument, though. I go to bed, he sleeps on the sofa.