Because having a baby can actually make you better at your job.
I’m lucky enough to have a job where I can work from home.
For the past eight years, I’ve able to write about the glamorous world of entertainment while embedded in the not-so-glamorous world of new motherhood.
I’ve raved about red carpet events while glancing down at my own carpet stained with yoghurt vomit. I’ve reviewed the most brilliant new TV dramas in between cleaning up poos that were absolute stinkers. I’ve written features on unbelievably cute men while trying to stop my own unbelievably cute little man from pressing the “delete” button.
Mostly it’s worked out well. When my children were babies and I had to do a phone interview for a story, I always tried to make it for a day when my husband, who also worked part-time, was home.
But celebrities have their own schedules, and there were times I found myself having to chat to someone on the phone while keeping an eye on a baby. I’d try to get them to fall asleep just before the interview (success rate: virtually nil), or have them snuggle into me in a sling as I stood holding the phone, or breastfeed them while I was talking (thankfully, no one ever suggested Skype).
I was so desperate to appear professional, to give the impression I was sitting in an office, wearing heels, surrounded by other journalists - not at home, wearing ugg boots, keeping a wary eye on a baby. Yet the weird thing was that on the odd occasion that my child let out a sound, it was never the disaster I feared it would be.
In fact, more often than not, the interview got better.
Once the person I was talking to realised I was a mother with a baby, I could feel them relax. I wasn't some evil journalist out to trap them. I was a human being. Often, they opened up and started talking about their own kids.
I remember US talk show host Jimmy Fallon stopping in the middle of a sentence when he heard my son, then five months old.
"You've got a baby there!" he said, sounding excited.
He immediately began asking questions about him. I managed to steer him back to the subject of himself, but he finished the interview by saying how much he'd like to come to Australia - where, he insisted, he wanted to meet my baby.
