Amy Rose is a freelance copywriter, social media manager and founder of The Fourth Trimester magazine. She lives with her partner, Jack, and their 20-month-old son, Milo, in the village of Thorney in Peterborough. 

I have struggled with the motherhood juggle. We’ve only just started putting Milo into nursery a couple of mornings a week, which is excellent because it means I have dedicated time to work rather than just relying on nap-time and night-time.

On the days when I am with Milo all day I work during his nap (unless I accidentally fall asleep…) and then when his dad gets home from work. On the mornings when he’s at nursery, I work all morning and then he usually naps when I pick him up – meaning more work then we play all afternoon.

Our village is very cute and quaint, we moved here when I was pregnant two years ago, from living in the centre of Southampton. It’s a massive contrast, strangers actually talk to eachother here rather than walking straight past each other and avoiding eye contact!

My partner’s parents live in our village so they help out lots, too – with everything! As a small business, I don’t have a premises for The Fourth Trimester so when issue 1 was delivered they let us keep 24 massive boxes in their house until they all sold out – their house is bigger than ours! They have spent a lot of time looking after Milo while we package magazines.

Milo is at nursery two mornings a week and its helped us get into a better routine. We always struggled with a bedtime routine but all of a sudden we’re in one! I give him dinner at about 5:30pm then his dad bathes him then I breastfeed him to sleep and he’s usually asleep before 7pm nowadays – although now I’m worried I might be jinxing it…

We’re usually up between 6am and 7am. Milo still has a breastfeed in the morning so I check all my social media, emails, etc, until he’s done then I attempt to shower while he runs around upstairs, then it’s breakfast time and we decide what we’re going to do with the day. I always make sure we leave the house at least once or we both go a little insane. Not much cleaning gets done because, well, you can’t have it all!

It’s great that work is so flexible – I can kind of do it whenever I have the time rather than being stuck to strict times within a day. I do end up having to work a lot at weekends rather than spending the time as a family. I do struggle to keep on top of my emails – people sometimes want immediate answers which I can’t provide because I’m faffing about dealing with a tantrum-ing toddler or bedtime hasn’t gone to plan or I’m just shattered from parenting and my brain won’t work!

But I do love my job and customers and the whole Fourth Tri community – there’s always people offering excellent advice or even just a ‘I hear ya’ or supportive emoji! Receiving lovely emails and messages from mums that read issue 1 and genuinely found the magazine useful made me positive that I want to do this forever. Just maybe one day I’ll have someone who can run my emails for me… If I am truly exhausted and stressed I really struggle to pull myself back out of that hole so I usually call one of my close friends and they always manage to lift my spirits.

I didn’t realise that at 20 months my son still wouldn’t be sleeping through. I also thought he would stop breastfeeding at six months but nope, he’s a non-sleeping boob monster. My biggest learning curve has probably been patience. I’ve always been pretty impatient and can get worked up easily but since having to deal with a tiny dictator who wants something all the time but can’t tell me what it is that he wants, I’ve really learnt to be patient. Obviously I still get stressed and have to pass the parenting duty over to baby daddy as soon as he gets home but still, patience.