C4K: When did you go back to work after having your children?

MH: I started writing some stories for the Telegraph newspapers from home in March, following the birth of Connor in January, and ‘officially’ went back to work in June of that year. I continued doing the occasional piece of television or writing until my ‘official’ return to the office in June, 2002.

C4K: What were your main motivations to return to work?

MH: I had and wanted to continue to enjoy and reap the respect of what I had spent so long hoping to perfect, and figured I was relatively good at doing. Why should having a child stop me from further developing my career potential? And apart from that, I could not have been one of those mums you see, zombie-like, who drop their kids to school before returning to the house to think about what they were going to cook that night! I enjoy being on the go and living mine and my son’s life at a relatively fast pace.

C4K: What was the hardest thing about returning to work?

MH: The lack of spontaneity it ‘doesn’t’ allow you. There is no “I’ll meet up with you tonight” without a helluva lot of planning! But on the other hand, you’re not out partying late (too often) waking up feeling too shocking, too often! I don’t want to, because I have a great little production of a son at home waiting for me! Unless I have a very understanding babysitter (or Connor is with his dad or my mum) and I have no major commitments the next day, a really late night is not on the cards for me!

C4K: Who looks after the Connor when you work?

MH: When Connor was at pre-school he was there in his final year for 4 days a week and each year prior, he was there a day less. Now he occasionally goes to after-school care at his school. It closes at 6pm, so if I can’t get there by 3.15pm - which as most working mothers know, is a virtual impossibility - it works very well and keeps him very well occupied until I pick him up. For evenings I phone a babysitting agency and request a regular girl who Connor gets on well with, or call on a few local babysitters I have used who live nearby. Sometimes my amazing mum looks after him and often stays the night with me or takes Connor to her house to look after him if I need to do something late into the evening.

C4K: How did you find your child care?

MH: I had left my run too late to get into any close-by centres - I would have had to let them know two years before conception if I’d expected to get in! (work that one out!) But luckily a friend knew a friend who ran a centre and who was opening up a new one a few suburbs away, so we got in to that one. What a relief that was too!

C4K: What were your main priorities while you were looking for child care?

MH: That Connor wouldn’t just be sitting around playing with toys, but that he would actually come home and tell us that he had learnt something. It really stood him in good stead once he started kindergarten, as reading and many motor skills and comprehension where already elements he understood. OK, he wasn’t exactly reading Proust but he ‘got it’ that this is what school and learning was all about.

C4K: What would you do differently if you were looking for child care again?

MH: Well, I would go to the same one or make sure the centre is eligible for the childcare rebate from Centrelink!!! As many are not.

C4K: What are the main benefits of your child care arrangement and/or having your children in care?

MH: That when I am with Connor I try to spend as much one-on-one time with him but that proves very, very difficult when you wear so many work hats and you have him on your own, as his dad and I share a week on-week off arrangement.

C4K: Have you any amusing or heart-warming child care experiences?

MH: I wish I did. All I know I was always running late and feared I would find him waiting out on the street for me one evening. Fortunately that never happened!