I don’t know how she does it.

There’s nothing like meeting someone with a lot on their plate to make your own plate seem suddenly small and pathetic. One day about a year ago, I was feeling particularly martyr-like because I had to fly up to Brisbane for a meeting and then home on the same day. My newish baby had only just started sleeping through the night and I was recovering from yet another bout of mastitis. If you’re unfamiliar with the word, all you need to know is ‘breast-feeding gone wrong’. Also, ‘pain’. My head was already scrambled from making the usual complex arrangements for kids and work and school and babysitting and a million other bits of daily detritus.

As I wearily sank into my aisle sea, the woman next to me noticed I was chugging rescue remedy and asked if I was OK. We started talking and my feelings of being overwhelmed with my life were quickly left behind on the runway as she told me a bit about hers. My new flying friend was about my age, had her first baby three months ago and had four
step-children aged 3-12 from her husband’s previous marriage. Three days after giving birth, she’d returned to work – running the boat charter business she and her husband own on the Gold Coast. As she cheerily pointed out, “when it’s your own business there’s no such thing as maternity leave”.

A sixty-hour week and breastfeeding are not a stellar combination. Actress Bridie Carter discovered this the hard way when she returned to work on the set of McLeod’s Daughter just weeks after giving birth to her son Otis. “He was only five weeks old when I went back to McLeod’s” she told Woman’s Day this week. “I look back with horror. “  I’m sure she does. That’s hard-core. How on earth did she do it? I think this a lot when I meet multi-tasking women, particularly mothers who seem to have an unspeakable number of balls in the air. I do not often include myself in this group. Usually, I have at least one of my balls rolling around the floor.

I’m the one opening the can of tuna to dump on last night’s leftover takeaway rice, whacking in some frozen peas, chucking the lot in the microwave and declaring it a balanced meal. I’m the one forgetting to pick up a child from after-school care not once but three times last year (DOCS disclaimer: this was due to some unfortunate miscommunication among various responsible adults, not abject neglect due to drug use or other irresponsible behaviour. Child was physically and emotionally unscathed. Although will no doubt bring it up in therapy in a couple of decades). I may have been doing this juggling thing for a bunch of years now but I still drop my balls frequently. And occasionally, spectacularly (see after-school incident above).

As we taxied down the runway, more details of her life were casually revealed. Her husband’s four kids lived with them every second week. That’s week, not weekend. So the family swelled from three (including a newborn) to seven and back again every seven days.

The night before our flight, she’d been up with her sick baby at 11:30pm, 1am and 3:30am before getting up for the last time at 4:30am to catch a 6am flight to Sydney for meetings. She was now on her way back to the office in Brisbane to do a few more hours of work before heading home.

Oh, and next week she was flying a light plane from LA to Brisbane. She had her pilot’s licence, did stunt flying sometimes for fun and she and her husband had bought the plane for their tour company business. It was a six-seater plane and to make the long trip from America to Australia, four of the seats had been removed so extra fuel tanks could be installed. Even so, the trip would take four days and she’d have to land in Hawaii, Pago Pago, New Caledonia and Coolangatta to refuel. She was still breastfeeding and didn’t want her milk supply to dry up so she was going to express every four hours during the four-day flight. “I hope my co-pilot is female” she quipped wryly.
Right. That’s me back in my box then.

Incredible women like this make me feel exhausted and humbled. I have a little mental file of these women and I open it every time I feel like I’m losing the plot. Along with saint Angelina who seems incapable of just putting up her feet and having a Tim Tam while there are injustices and orphans in the world, my file also includes the woman I know with three kids under four and twins on the way. In fact, all the women I know with more than two children.

And of course all the women I don’t know who are battling illness, whose kids or partners are ill, who are broke, homeless, in abusive situations, the women who are battling infertility or just disappointment that they never got to have kids….oh the list goes on. In moments of pure woe-is-me self pity, I don’t usually have to get very far down this list before I’ve got some perspective and gratitude for the smallness of my juggling problems.

A wise woman once told me that the good news about dropping balls is that they’re not made of glass so you just pick them up and keep going. I have a photo of my toddler daughter sitting in her highchair with a spoon in one had and a small can of baked beans in the other, feeding herself straight from the can. When I emailed this photo to my mum and girlfriends with the subject: “Mother Of The Year”, my mum, ever the cheerleader, replied, “Baked beans are very high in protein!”. I’m also at pains to point out they were salt-reduced. Do I get any points for that?