After years juggling demanding children with an even more demanding job, FEMAIL’s Lorraine Candy reveals in her last column how she finally found the secret of HAVING IT ALL 

• e-mail

When I began writing a weekly working mum column for Femail seven years ago, I had three children: Sky, then aged six, Gracie, five, and Henry, two. I also had a demanding job as editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.

We decided to call the column ‘I Don’t Know How I Do It’ as a light-hearted reference to a popular parenting phrase of the time.

Now, despite having four children aged five to 14, and writing this, my last-ever column for this newspaper as I move to a new job, I can honestly say I’m still no nearer to figuring it out.

Lorraine Candy and her family, bidding farewell to her Femail column after 5 years. Pictured (left to right), daughter Gracie, husband James, daughter Mabel, son Henry, Lorraine and oldest daughter Sky

I did it, that’s all I know. And continue to do it. But how well? Well enough, I’d say. And that, believe me, is as good as it gets for all mothers — whatever their circumstances.

Originally, I wanted to call the column ‘All The Rage’, because the ‘struggle to juggle’, with its never-ending to-do lists, schedules and itineraries, always made me cross.

But I was told ‘grumpy mum’ wasn’t the maternal role model anyone wanted to read about. Instead, I decided to write a light-hearted chronicle of my offspring’s growing pains — and mine, too — as we steered the family craft through choppy waters.

What I hadn’t realised when I embarked back in 2009 was that a seismic shift in society’s attitude to mothering was under way.

Experts were telling us that, instead of a newborn fitting into your world, you were expected to build your life around the baby.

This child-centred approach piled extra emotional pressure on all mothers, but I believe working mums — especially those who had to go back to their jobs — felt the stress of it most keenly.

We decided to call the column ‘I Don’t Know How I Do It’ as a light-hearted reference to a popular parenting phrase of the time. Pictured, Lorraine with daughter Mabel

Many of us almost crumbled with the guilt at the possibility of getting it all wrong.

This guilt was the basis of many of my columns — and I know from the reaction from readers that I was not suffering alone.

Like thousands of other mothers, I had sleepless nights over not breastfeeding my children to late toddlerhood, and again over the ever-changing thinking on co-sleeping — sleeping with your baby.

All this was labelled ‘the new Momism’, a parenting style that seemed to bestow hero-like status on being a mother, valuing it above everything else in your life.

Crikey, it was stressful and confusing and, looking back over the 350-odd columns, I can see how powerfully influential any new thinking on parenting can be. The main theme of everything I’ve written is: ‘Am I doing this right?’

The columns have been a relentless quest for the best rules on being a good mum.

The columns have been a relentless quest for the best rules on being a good mum

Now, of course, as a mother of four children aged five, ten, almost 13 and 14, I can see this search for the parenting commandments is ridiculous. They don’t exist.

Mothering is like the scene in The Wizard Of Oz when Dorothy goes behind the curtain to find there is no wizard and she’s got to work out how to get back home on her own.

I had my first baby at 33 and my last at 43, so I’ve spent a decade reading more parenting books than this family of six have used loo rolls — yet all I can offer is this obvious, but effective, advice: there is no right way, only your way.

As long as everyone is alive, enough limbs intact to dunk a biscuit into a soothing cup of tea at the end of the day, then you’re more than likely doing OK.

I realised this once my eldest hit her teens. Nothing prepares you for the tsunami of unpredictable behaviour you face with a teen. It’s like being on a rollercoaster naked and blindfolded . . . EVERY DAY.

Now, as I watch her fingers slip through mine into adulthood, I know it doesn’t matter a jot how long I breastfed her for, or whether she was in the perfect sleep routine.

Would she get higher grades if I had been there at every school pick-up with a sugarless snack?

Would she be on course to win a Pulitzer Prize if I’d seen every school play? Would she be the scientist who cures cancer if I’d given up my career to hothouse her? Who can say and does it matter, anyway?

Mothering is like the scene in The Wizard Of Oz when Dorothy goes behind the curtain to find there is no wizard and she’s got to work out how to get back home on her own. Pictured (left to right), Gracie, Sky and Henry

But does she know I love her? Does she know that everything she’s done from the day she promised me 1,000 kisses every bedtime to the day this week she set fire to the toaster is wonderful to me? I think she does, and that is the most important thing.

She says please and thank you in public, opens doors for the elderly and often flushes the loo.

Frankly, this is the best you can hope for.

Being a mum is, indeed, brilliant. It’s unpredictable, hilarious, heart-breaking and uplifting at the same time, and makes you question your own mortality and morality.

It exposes you to more germs than licking a laboratory Petri dish and makes your pain threshold so high you can tread on Lego barefoot and remain silent, so as not to wake a newborn you’ve spent hours rocking to sleep.

But motherhood is not the only thing that matters in life — this much I do know, whatever the experts say.

Choose to work or not: it is up to you, but remember, whichever option you choose doesn’t make you a better mother than the woman who makes the alternative decision, and no mother has the right to judge another.

So thank you for following the six of us over the years. You’ve been there through seven Christmases and New Years, through two first days at school, through one birth and maternity leave, through the loss of a beloved grandparent and father, the death of a much-hugged dog and a million early-morning episodes of Peppa Pig.

Being a mum is, indeed, brilliant. It’s unpredictable, hilarious, heart-breaking and uplifting at the same time, and makes you question your own mortality and morality. Pictured, Gracie and Mabel

Time has sped past faster than I could have imagined. Gracie-in-the-middle once perfectly described what it felt like, when she said it was as if the world keeps turning, but everything stops moving.

Time stands still in the moments you are kissing your newborn’s head, clutching your toddler’s tiny hands or waving your teenagers goodbye.

Just remember to make the most of every minute of it.

Candy Chronicle: The Highlights

Hello Mabel (June 23, 2011)

The day our little brunette firecracker arrived, I shared one picture of her on the relatively new social media platform called Twitter. This was unusual in those days — how times have changed.

Now, births are live-tweeted or filmed for Facebook. Is this the ultimate in oversharing, or is it a wonderful way to celebrate the miracle of human birth?

I don’t really know the answer to that, but I was in my 40s when I had Mabel and am certainly the oldest mum at school drop-off these days.

I have learnt much from the Mabelanator, as she has become known, and am of the opinion that, if you could choose your birth order, you should choose to be the fourth child. Everyone adores you.

Goodbye to Grandpa (June 13, 2013)

The most heart-breaking dilemma we have faced as parents was the loss of a parent — and how to tell our children.

My husband James’s father William died more suddenly than we’d ever imagined possible, aged 68 of leukaemia, three years ago.

How do you tell a child they will never again be able to see a man who has been in their life since they were born?

His loss pierced our souls and cast a dark shadow that we still feel today. At the time, my children were aged between two and ten. We said nothing the day we found out he had died — it was half-term and we were on holiday in Cornwall. We took some time to process the news ourselves and waited until the day we returned home to sit them on the sofa and explain what had happened, watching how each absorbed the shock.

I marvel constantly at how strong children are, how they cope in times of stress.

Over the days and weeks and months that followed, memories of Grandpa popped out, their little minds dealing with it as best they knew how and living entirely in the moment as children do. We noticed they coped better than us.

Mum guilt: Returning to work from maternity leave (January 25, 2012)

One of the reasons I wanted to write this column was to encourage a debate about making life easier for work-ing mothers.

Going back to work after having a child — however long you take off — is a tough decision. But one thing I know now, which I didn’t during each of four maternity breaks, is I wish I had saved the time for teenage maternity leave.

Your children need you more the older they get, so don’t let the agony of saying goodbye to your baby overwhelm you. Babies don’t remember that bit, it’s more about you than them. If you can be around more as they hit the tricky teens, then that’s far more useful.

The most useful phrase I have encountered in all the stuff I’ve read on parenting is ‘it takes a village to raise a child’

Nannygate (November 22, 2010)

The most useful phrase I have encountered in all the stuff I’ve read on parenting is ‘it takes a village to raise a child’.

Obviously, you love your children but, guess what: other people, not related to them, can love them too. And in the past 14 years, we have employed three wonderful nannies who have really loved our offspring.

This seems to concern many judgmental, ignorant and illogical nitwits who find it hard to accept that couples who both work need some form of childcare.

I have had more online trolling and unpleasant comments about employing a nanny than anything else I have ever written about.

I reckon if I’d chucked a cat in a wheelie bin, I would have received less vitriol than over mentioning my nanny.

Maybe it’s the word — perhaps ‘childminder’, ‘grandmother’, ‘nursery assistant’ or ‘after-school carer’ are more pleasing than the old-school connotations of the word ‘nanny’.

Frankly, I don’t care; having a nanny is not a privilege or a perk, it is a necessity.

It’s nearly 2017, forgoodnessnakes (as my son used to say). Parenting is not the sole responsibility of the human without manbits.

It’s an equal partnership and, sometimes, we need paid assistance to make it work out for everyone. We call ours a nanny. Get over it.

But running a family of four would not have been possible without the support of my husband of 16 years, James. Pictured, Lorraine holding baby Mabel

No more babies (November 28, 2013)

We’re done now, our family is complete and Mr Candy will no doubt remain ever grateful I shared the story of him having the snip with a few million readers.

This doesn’t stop me obsessing over newborns, holding that little bit too long the ones the new mums in my office bring to work. I love babies in the over-the-top manner of some people who adore cats.

But running a family of four would not have been possible without the support of my husband of 16 years, James.

This is equal parenting in action: he does the dentist trips, I do the doctors, we tag team sports days and school plays.

He is the non-confrontational voice of patient reason in a household of fiery, energetic, chaotic and unpredictable personalities.

Frankly, he is the rock that holds the whole volcano together. Without him, none of this would work.

So maybe I do actually know how I do it: maybe it’s because I married a man who wants to do it, too.