City lawyer with toddlers can't cope

[RosieIrene]

I work FT at a city firm and have two dd 1 and 3. Have a full time daily nanny but still can't cope. Work all day, come home and put kids to bed and work all evening to make billable target or have to go to client functions. So stressed out that on weekend just want to sit in garden with kids and do nothing. Can't sleep, can't talk to anyone. How do people manage?

Reminds me of the videoconference where a colleague and I spent the whole time trying to get a close-up of an American colleague's ENORMOUS new sparkly diamond ring while she was talking about some legal point blah blah blah - before realising that the screen shows you what the other party is looking at - so she could see us zooming in on her enormously vulgar jewellery!

Ah, Mrs Wobble - greetings, oh guru.

Conference calls are my all time favourite - have researched most of my holidays that way.

I am in the unfortunate position of earning reasonable money for working part time but having very little work to do. So I work my contracted hours (22.5) but spend much of this time mumsnetting, shopping etc. The odd phone call to my DH is neither here nor there. And in the days when I was busy I was perfectly capable of multi-tasking and dealing with some of the more mundane aspects of my job while talking to DH. DH spends quite a bit of time on the road so I can always talk to him then.

Greetings indeed Mrs Wobble.

I have two four hour transatlantic phone calls a month both of which require only my peripheral attention; I see these calls as 'Me Time'! I clear my Inbox (carefully stacking all email responses in Draft so as not to start bombarding my colleagues who are actually at the meeting), research holidays, buy odd bits and pieces for the DDs from Boden and, using my headset, indulge in a little desk-bound pilates. It's almost refreshing.

Do you think we've scared off RosieIrene? Frankly I wouldn't be surprised.

Soapbox: I am going to be a disappointment to you.

op how are you feeling?

my dh and I speak all the time.

Quite often the phone will go, I'll run around the house looking for one of those bloody cordless handsets, say "hello?" and he'll say "can I call you back?" and slam the phone down.

I'm left there shouting at the phone "but you called MEEEEEEEE!"

he he he

I'd love to contribute to this thread but I'm in such a state of suspended animation waiting to hear about a new job this week (hopefully) that I can't even string a sentence together.

And if I had a nanny I'd gatecrash your city meetup on friday in a FLASH! Sigh

LOL PPH been there too with being hung up on. Got new black phones which I think was a mistake because they camouflage in too easily. And DH has set them all with unique ring tones and I am never too sure if it is a house phone or DD's cinderella phone.

Issy love the sound of those (hope the op comes back so that we can actually help her instead of more of the same old...

exactly.
and I never put them in the cradles so I run around picking them up and theya re all dead so I have to throw myself down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the playroom where the only fixed line phone is.

and by then they've rung off

AURGHGHGHGH

calls was ment to be in there

PPH sounds exactly like my house

My Mum was on the phone to my Dad from here (she had to ring him back because I didn't find the phone in time) and he said "and turn the volume up to make sure she answers occasionally".

We need to get another phone as we have 2 cordless (no land line) and our house is on 4 floors so it either goes to answer phone before I get there (so dh hangs up) or I get the same "i'll have to call you back" as I do a heavy breathing impression down the phone having charged up 3 flights of stairs looking for a phone.

don't bother. I have four handsets (plus the fixed line) and they are always together in the same place, uncharged, being useless. they congregate. or else they are all together, and only ONE is charged, but you can't tell which one is actually ringing, so you pick them all up in turn, and it is always the last one, and by the time you press the button the person has rung off.

I LOATHE them all

or else they are all together on the kitchen table, and by some miracle they are all charged, and when someone calls they all ring and bleep and reverberate and freak you out so much you drop the cottage pie you are just in the process of taking out of the aga

oh yes

DS has usually hidden them (his current favourite is postimg them through the catflap into the garage.

Our phones all seem to congregate in DD's room, now that she spends all day talking to her friends on the phone, as I used to do more years ago that I care to think of!

Sorry for rotten typing, am in bed with the laptop,

Blimey- are you ahem 'multi-tasking'

No dh is watching TV. It is so muggy, all indows open and the fan on, so no way am I expending any energy

Hi Rosie

Sorry to hear you are having a tough time. It's not easy. Really I do know it's not easy. Four colleagues in the last two years have had nervous breakdowns trying to juggle F/T work plus infants.

What are the options? Well you could:

(a) Soldier on (not what I'd suggest without lots more help)
(b) Go part time with all the potentially adverse consequences on your career
(c) Give up work at least temporarily (don't know if that's financially viable)

or you could

(d) Downtrade firms/move to less stressful work environment. Don't know what sort of firm you are with but life can be easier down a few tiers (or the billing targets can be lower - along with hourly rates too, of course but that's another story). They're recruiting for judges like there's no tomorrow...

Whatever you do, good luck. But do something, not worth burning yourself out.

She hasn't come back yet. Is she o.k. ? Is she a troll ?

I think it had a trollish air.

Well if she doesn't come back soon, then we have to assume that she is a troll.
And how sad, becasue my heart really went out to her and it has certainly made a long thread !

Of course she isn't a troll, poor woman, she is completely recognisable as a city solicitor on the edge.
When I was in her position, I could easily go 4 days in a row out of the office in meetings/working constantly/no time to piss let alone mumsnet.

Please don't make things worse for her by calling her a troll