F
or Bess Hepworth and Kirsty
Smith, just having their
babies seemed battle enough
– the couple needed to go to
Thailand to conceive their two boys,
Flynn, two, and Jude, six months, via
an intrauterine insemination, in a
process that required multiple trips.
But as most mums find out, making
the babies is often the easy bit, and in
retrospect this is the same for Kirsty
and Bess. Now the battle is to wrestle
time – not an easy task when both
parents have jobs that require them to
be in different time zones.
Kirsty is an airline pilot, who is
also busy studying for her Command
Qualifications in order to become a
captain. She finds herself away for
days at a time, while work-from-home
Bess is the online voice for
Out Leadership, a LGBT
initiative that engages
senior business leaders
and is based in New
York. With Hong
Kong 12 or 13
hours in front of
Eastern Standard
Time, that means
Bess often works
until dawn. Her
older son Flynn
seems to sense if
she’s up at 3am,
and wanders into
Two kids and multiple time zones require this family to
keep an unconventional schedule, but one that works
perfectly for them, writes
Elle Kwan
.
her workspace, she says, but the time
gap can also be valuable. “It gives me
12 hours to get my act together,” she
laughs.
The level of flexibility that both
enjoy in their schedule can also be
intimidating. To get through, Bess
squirrels away work hours, squeezing
them in whenever the boys are
napping, in school or at sports. Kirsty
travellers
Time (zone)
says her strategy is to fully focus
on getting things done for herself,
whether this is reading the newspaper
or stocking up Christmas presents
during city stops while she is away,
and then putting full emphasis on the
family when she is back – also taking
the strain off Bess. “It’s a constant
trade-off,” says Bess. “I don’t think
there’s any such thing as balance. We
never really had a schedule before. In
fact, I’d say we still don’t,
but the boys do, and so
now it’s us working
around them.”
Divide and
conquer
Here’s how Bess
breaks down those
hours:
