Workingmums.co.uk - connecting mums and employers

We know, we know. You're supposed to have it all sorted. Wraparound care, including provision for occasional evening meetings and "networking" events. But life is rarely that simple, is it? What do you do when it all goes pear-shaped, as it seems to do so very often? Never fear, Working Mums is here to give you a helping hand. 

1. There are so many, many things that can go wrong with childcare, it's hard to begin. Of course, you should have a back-up plan [your partner] and a back-up back-up plan [assorted relatives], but how many of us have the facilities for the latter? If you don't live near a relative, consider moving. Select your relative with care. They must be young enough to be able to withstand at least 10 hours of emergency childcare at one sitting/people that you have some sort of speaking relationship with. 

2. Alternatively, consider moving the relative. Offer any sort of bribe you can think of. Free ice cream. Free pedicures [rope the children in here and give them emergency training]. Stock the cupboard up with chocolate and biscuits...unless the relative is on a permanent diet, in which case being around children and leftovers is not going to work well. 

3. Consider offering the relative an extension on your house. This could prove tricky, but consider some sort of separate flat arrangement with connecting doors and a password code so they don't catch you doing stuff they don't agree with, eg, letting the kids watch daytime tv. If you have only got space for one room or even part of a room, consider turning this into a "studio flat". This way you don't have to do those early morning calls begging them to come over when the childminder has called in sick on the only day you have arranged an important meeting with someone who has flown in from Rome just to see you. 

4. So you have no relatives who fit the bill? This is where desperation really comes into play. Cultivate neighbours and friends and start questioning what is meant by a back-up plan anyway. If you use childminders and the childminder skips the country or comes down with the norovirus, are you supposed to have a reserve childminder waiting just in case your childminder rings at 8am to say she has been up all night vomiting - the very morning you have your appraisal? Or perhaps a reserve emergency nursery place? What about if the childminder can't pick the children up from school because her own child is ill and she has had to go to hospital? A back-up plan is basically anyone you can get hold of on the day. It sounds sophisticated and like you have put a lot of organisation in, but this belies the brute reality of ringing friends in the early hours and begging favours. 

5. Of course, you could have a nanny/au pair/childminder who has remarkably robust health. But given that most people who are in close proximity with children, yourself included, more or less get every illness going, this is highly unlikely. 

6. There's always partners who are probably as loathe as you to take time off work in case their employers think they are slacking. This is fine for emergencies that happen before the partner who doesn't do the drop-offs in the morning has already headed for the office. This includes inset days [usually announced the week or day before they occur, but in any case allowing for a brief discussion/argument about whose turn it is to take a day off this time round] and all day training events that start at 8am with a breakfast bonding session. Here a school breakfast club can come in handy, but many need to be booked for the whole term and may be unbending about the odd emergency. It's worth asking, though. Sharing emergency cover between two working parents is usually good for the first one or two crises of the year and there is an allowance for unpaid leave, even if it is only limited to very young children. After that, fear of sarcastic comments from colleagues along the lines of 'your children seem to be very sickly' make that a difficult one to pull off. Either harden your heart to such comments and prepare for never being promoted or find alternative back-up plans. If you are a single parent, ignore this entry and revert to tips 1-6. 

7. Never let on just how many childcare crises you are dealing with every week of the year. Work people will look sympathetic at first, but this will fade by the third or fourth crises. Vary your reasons for crises between childcare and Other Factors. The transport system is always a good excuse for lateness caused by a crisis. Don't make it too colourful. Transport reports can be checked online. You could always try leaving a jacket on your chair overnight and then hiding your coat on the way in and pretending you have been in an early meeting and are not late at all. 

8. Take the kids into the office, nits/pox and all. Spread a little love. You won't get any promotion ever and you won't get any work done, but if the alternative is leaving them home alone what other solutions are there? You could plead to work from home for the day. This is fine if you can work from home [you may not have the necessary paperwork if you weren't expecting to be at home] and you don't have urgent meetings lined up that are difficult to reschedule. 

9. If you feel that you are now doing at least three full-time jobs - your job, being a parent and organising holiday/emergency/sickness cover - with only one being paid, draw up a list of the important skillsets you are gaining by all this multi-tasking. It won't help at all, but it might make you feel slightly more heroic. Make yourself a superhero badge and secretly wear it under your jacket. You may feel all those smug eyes on you as you rush into work half an hour late after a series of crises in the morning, but you'll sense the badge glistening as you slump in your chair at the mere ability to have made it to the office at all. 

10. Remember that all this stress is just about bringing home enough money to get the family through the day/week/month/year [if you have children and live more than from one day to the next, consider yourself an expert in long-term planning]. Most jobs are about making money for someone else and hence totally pointless in the great scheme of things. The world is doomed. Global catastrophe is about to strike in the next 50 years or so. Do you want to spend the last few years of Earth's existence worrying about missing a "networking" opportunity?