22 August 2019 Horse&Hound
27l Be flexible. Ride before
partner goes to workoronc
the kids are in bed, ifneedsbe.
l For those who breast-feed,
expressing milk meansthebabycanb
fed by others, but choosea goodteat
that allows the child to transfer easily
from bottle to breast.
l Playpens at the yard — or barricades
of straw bales — can keep children safely
enclosed while young, while iPads may be
a necessary evil later on.
l Preparation, routine and organisation
are vital, while spare clothes — and ski
suits for winter — are advised.Top tips
whose three children are fi ve years, two years,
and seven months old, knows exactly what the
challenges are.
“Not having time is the obvious thing, but
it’s also having the headspace and being able
to focus on your horse,” she says. “I was at a big
show in Germany a couple of weeks ago and
my daughter decided she wasn’t going to take
a bottle any more. So we were in the lorry, she
didn’t want her bottle, it was pouring with rain,
so we couldn’t go anywhere, I was about to
compete — and I went wrong in my test.
“I thought on my way to the horse, ‘I have
to put this to one side and focus,’ but it’s so
hard. You can’t just switch off being a mum
for a couple of hours.”
But Laura agrees one key is accepting that
life will be diff erent.
“The challenge is fi nding new ways to focus
and make it work. Don’t expect things to be the
same, because they won’t be,” she says. “Being
organised and having a routine helps. When
you know the baby’s going to be hungry, you
can express milk beforehand and have a bottle
ready, for example.”
Laura says another thing mothers have
to accept is that their bodies and brains
will be diff erent.
“I’m not as successful now
as I was — but I’m confi dent I
will be again,” she says. “I have
good horses, but it’ll take a
while as I don’t have the time
to give them that I used to.
“With many of my peers,
horses are the focus. They’reriding maybe three times as much as me and if
a horse needs an hour-and-a-half ’s work, it’ll
get it, whereas if I have to feed the baby, I have
to feed the baby.”
Laura says it is hard for a competitive
rider to know she is not at the top, that it was
diffi cult to come to terms with this and that
she can see how being in her situation could
shake someone’s confi dence, “as a person, a
woman and a competitor”.
“But it’s comforting to know others are in
the same situation. Regardless of your level,
fi nding time to enjoy your horse and be a good
mum is what we want to do,” she adds. “Things
do get easier and I have three amazing,
beautiful, healthy children. It’s a blessing.”
Laura describes combining horses and
parenthood as “a whole new balancing act”,
which every parent has to learn to master in
their own way.O
NE rider with more to balance than
some is Amy Thompson, an amateur
eventer with four children of her own,
including baby twins, and two of her partner’s.
After she had her fi rst baby aged 22, Amy
put her horse on part livery, timed riding
around naps and kept a baby monitor with
her to be assured Madeleine was asleep in her
pram, in an empty stable. Six years later, by
when her second child, Ethan, was three, Amy
had a horse of the same age, Luna, kept on DIY.
“I bought Ethan his own little fork to help
muck out and gave him jobs, such as fi lling
haynets and buckets,” she says. “The more I
involved him, the more he wanted to do and
the more I could get done.”
As Ethan got older, tactics included
allowing him to push the empty horse-walker
round, keeping him occupied and safe while
the horses were brought in, and taking the
whole family to competitions as a day out.
Of course, when the twins arrived, it made
life harder.
Amy is not intending to compete Luna
this year as she does not want the pressure of
keeping her competition-fi t while the twins are
small, but she wants to return to British
Eventing in future.
“When I found out I was having
twins, I cried and said: ‘I’m going
to have to sell my horse,’” she says.
“We’d talked about competing
and joked the only thing that
would stop me would be if
I had twins.
“But I have bipolar
disorder and Luna’s my