PHOTOGRAPH: PAUL EDMONSON/STOCKSY
During all my years of motherhood, I’ve been juggling full-time work with wanting to be as present a parent as possible. I’ve stretched and split myself into pieces in a bid to be home for bed and bath times, up before babies to meet deadlines and make calls, and sobbed my heart out when inevitable train diversions took me away from that promised bedtime story or nuzzling feed. It has not been easy. There, underneath so much of it, was that palpable knock of my heart, and tension, worry and guilt, with their caterwauling catcall, underlining the black-and-white fact that I have a family to support, and that I have chosen to be the working parent.