Becoming a working dad - Episode V – "overtire strikes back”

It was 5:45am, June 13th 2022. The birds were only just waking up and so was I. 2 weeks had passed since the birth of little Marley and it was time to go back to work. For those “up and at ’em” types that are used to it, I doff my cap. To me this had become the norm, not by design, but as our darling girl was refusing to sleep unless she was laying on top of mum or dad. With sleep now in shift patterns, I was not ready to be back in the office and had no idea how I would cope with so little sleep on top of a hectic work schedule.

As I write this article, I realise it’s been nearly exactly 9 months since that first day back. But I remember like yesterday how tired I was and the sense of trepidation walking back in the doors and leaving my partner to handle everything on her own. All parents will know that one of the first things people ask you when you have a new-born is “how are they sleeping?” Usually either preceded or followed by “how are you sleeping?” There is very good reason for this! Sleep deprivation is a known form of torture and our ability to work effectively and efficiently requires being able to get a good night’s sleep to recover. Those first few days and likely even weeks were fuelled by a cocktail of adrenaline, nerves and desire to succeed in what was still a fairly new adventure here at Gibson Watts.

This feels like an appropriate time to make some apologies. I apologies to my colleagues, clients, friends and family and pretty much anybody I spoke to in the first month or so of being back at work. I apologies for the stifled yawns. I apologies for not always being able to string together full sentences or jumbling my words. Scientists discovered that sleep helps to drain waste products and toxins from the brain using cerebrospinal fluid. By removing a toxic protein called beta-amyloid (renowned for accumulating in brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease), sleep enables the brain to store important information, remove the useless bits and recharge ready for the new. Apologies made, education delivered, paragraph complete.

With the soppy apologies out of the way, now on to the thanks. Thank you to all the above for being patient with me. Thank you to the fantastic team here at Gibson Watts for your support, not just in those early days but ever since. Thank you to Lee and Anne for your help and guidance. Thank you, too, to anybody reading this far and making it past my painful attempt to link sleep deprivation, being overly tired and a Star Wars sequel title in hope of grabbing your interest, and wrapping it all up into an excuse that I had originally planned to write an article a month and it's taken me until now for the second release. I wrote in my previous post about the paradox of parenting - time moves so fast but also so slow. I cannot believe it has been 9 months since I came back, and it feels like it’s been a matter of days and a matter of years all at the same time. Thank you to the cheeky little madam in the pictures here for making parenting hard work but damn good fun and thanks again to the team here for laughing at my awful jokes. I’m still learning the art of the dad joke, but getting better all the time ??. Finally a special thank you to my partner Tanya for being an amazing mum and absolutely smashing parenting out of the park. I’ve no doubt being in a relationship with a recruiter is not an easy task so putting up with me whilst raising an amazing baby girl is further proof that women really are superhuman.

So with that said, I am delighted with how things have gone in the last 9 months. I have a fantastic routine in place, am up in the morning at the gym before I go to work after getting up with the baby for a quick change and feed whilst still getting my partner a chance to have an all-important lie-in most mornings.?I manage to spend time with the family without feeling the constant stress of work but have still been able to dedicate my time to the constantly growing workload. It seemed like an impossible dream several months ago, but it is becoming easier all the time. Gibson Watts had a fantastic first trading year. We have built some great relationships with clients across the globe and successfully helped them with some very tricky talent acquisition challenges. We opened an office in America very recently and have signed terms with some amazing companies all working in the cleantech and renewable energy space. We have grown our team and continue to do so in both Bristol and London and are working every day to build a brand we are all proud to be a part of.