News flash: Life doesn’t stop when you have a baby

I was reading a feature in Glamour magazine yesterday. It was the issue with Tanya Burr on the cover and it was all about the super-vlogger taking over the world – I thought it might cast some light on how to be a super-vlogger but it basically just tells you that Tanya is lovely and works really hard.

Enlightening stuff, thanks, Glamour.

Anyway, the feature I was reading was all about having babies. There were lots of opinions from different women with some saying they want lots of kids, many saying they’re not ready for kids and some saying they’re 100% sure they don’t want kids at all.

The thing that really stood out for me was the amount of people who seem to have put their lives on hold when having kids – or think they’d need to if they have kids in the future. Others said they didn’t want kids because they want to travel and focus on their careers. Yey for wanderlust-fueled career ladies, there’s lots of us out there. But I don’t understand where the idea comes from that you can’t:

1. Have a child AND a career
2. Travel with a child

So I’d like to put the record straight for any ladies out there who – like me – want it all.

You can have a child AND a career AND travel. You might even be able to squeeze in a social life if you’re lucky.

We’re always told that you can’t have your cake and eat it too but, actually, you can. I do. In fact, you can even have two cakes because running around after kids burns a hell of a lot of calories and you’ll probably need the extra energy.

My son, George, is eight months old. He’s been abroad twice – once to the Maldives and once to Portugal – and we travel around the UK all the time. George goes to nursery two days a week so I get some time to myself and to work. I don’t have a single guilty bone in my body about sending him to nursery because he loves it there – sometimes a little bit too much and he doesn’t want to come home.

I’ve taken inspiration from The 4-Hour Work Week and I work smarter, not harder. It’s amazing how much more you can get done when you attempt to squeeze a full-time job into two days per week! I outsource some work, I hustle and I barter and my blogging business has grown and grown. The only month that I saw a dip in my income was the month I gave birth – and I’m not going to beat myself up about that one!

Yes, sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes I go to bed as soon as I’ve eaten my dinner because I just can’t keep my eyes open. Sometimes I look at Sam and realise we haven’t had a proper conversation in over a week. Sometimes I hate saying no to exciting travel opportunities because I don’t want to leave George for too long. But, most of the time, I feel lucky that I’ve been raised to have the attitude that I can have it all. It never crossed my mind that I couldn’t so I’d like to thank my parents for that one.

I wrote this post because I get a lot of emails from women who love to travel, love their careers and love the idea of one day having kids. That ‘one day’ might not be for another 10 years but rest assured that if you want it all, you can have it all and your life doesn’t have to stop when you have a baby.