It’s been a while since my last blog, actually it’s been nearly a year and another shooting season has come and gone. In my last blog I spoke about what my life is like as a gamekeepers wife but this time I want to talk about being a keepers wife and a mum.
If you follow any of my social media you will know we have two girls, Olivia 4 and Harriet 2, one question we get asked a lot it don’t you want a boy? And my answer is always no our girls love being out with daddy feeding pheasants, checking pens, collecting eggs and this season just gone Olivia done nearly every Saturday out beating rain or shine with very minimal complaining, I’m not going to lie there were many drives I would come out of a cover crop giving her a piggy back so we didn’t get left behind when her little legs couldn’t keep up!
Having kids has always been my life plan and being lucky enough to have them grow up in the country was the goal. I met my husband back in 2010 in Suffolk and after 2 years we moved to North Yorkshire, we moved around the area for work and got married in 2016. We discussed having kids but it was very difficult with living arrangements as being a gamekeeper our house is always a tied house and you get what your given which we appreciate however they were either caravans or very small 1 bed houses attached to the head keepers house. In 2018 my husband got a head keepers position and thankfully it came with a house with more than 1 bedroom! Fast forward to the middle of our first season and along came Olivia! In hindsight it wasn’t the best plan, I ended up having to be induced and when asked what time would suit us to go back in to hospital my husbands words were ‘any time after 4.30 as we will be done shooting’ I think he thought we would be in and out that night and he would be back at work the next day but anyone who’s had a baby will know it doesn’t always go to plan and she wasn’t born until 4.21 the next evening. Olivia had to spend 3 nights in the special care baby unit so I spent 4 nights in the hospital and craig was back to work shooting everyday and seeing us in the evening so it was as relief to finally get home but my god was it a shock to the system, you envisage all the wonderful things your are going to do with your baby but I definitely underestimated how hard it would be. Everything I used to do pre having a baby suddenly felt impossible to do and I felt very lonely. Craig was out shooting everyday, my mum had gone back to Suffolk and I was stuck in the house with a new-born in the middle of winter. It took me a long time to admit it (nearly a year) but I suffered from postnatal depression and most of Olivia’s first year seems like a blur. It definitely was not the dream of having a smiling baby in a carrier out in the woods filling feeders, walking the dogs in the sunshine or being out on a shoot day. It felt like a mission to get out of the door and most days I just couldn’t face it, thank god Craig stuck with me and eventually I got some help because now I realise how much I missed of Olivia being a baby and wish I’d just accepted help earlier on but if anyone knows me they know how much I think I can do everything on my own which you cannot do with kids you need to take every bit of help you can. After 2 years and feeling like myself again we decided to try for baby number 2, Craig was very apprehensive but I felt like I’d know the signs if I felt like I was spiralling again and would know to get help as soon as. We planned to have Hattie out of the shooting season preferably march/April as it would be quiet time at work for Craig and he would be able to have some time off but that didn’t go to plan either. I think if I remember rightly due to the weather it was a rush getting cover crops in and he ended up doing a lot of tractor work but luckily this kid played ball and we were in and out in 24 hours and even got to McDonald’s in time for a breakfast!
Life with 2 kids was hard but no where near as life changing as the first, and now 4 years on things are starting to look like the dream I’d had in my head. The girls can finally run out of the door with their little wellies on and jump on the quad to go help daddy at work, they will come out and help clean the kennels, walk the dogs and we can all get involved on the shoot without it feeling like an mission to get organised. Their summer is looking like it’s going to be all about filling feeders and chasing pheasants which isn’t the worse way to spend the summer holidays but the long hours craig has to put in certainly takes its toll on the both of us. I know he feels like he is missing out on so much and struggles with the work/life balance, I feel like I’m doing so much on my own and if we want to see him we have to go to work with him which is fine most of the time and I understand it’s just the time of year but sometimes it would be nice to go out and forget about pheasants. Some days I really struggle when craig just gets up and goes to work with out having to think about the kids, he can get all his jobs done without a small child wanting something, whinging about something or saying watch me a hundred times followed by them standing on one leg! He doesn’t have to deal with the constant fights over toys or the continuous noise children make. I can’t just go and do the things I used to do which helped me not be bothered about the fact he works 24/7 so when we both get tired and argue we have to remember what we are doing it all for and the life we are giving the girls and make the most of the moments we can be just us when we can.