The daughter of a working mum, Anna Oxley Rintoul had always planned to combine motherhood with a career. By her late 30s, she was doing just that, raising three boisterous young children with her husband, Chris, while working as the Head of Social Impact Delivery at the NAB.
When other women asked, “How do you do it?” – that spikiest of compliments – Anna relished the thrill of achievement. She tells one hair-raising story of taking a consulting role for a month while on maternity leave, which required regular interstate day trips with a toddler and tiny baby in tow.
“I’ve always set myself impossibly high standards and the problem was that I could often achieve them,” she says now, in a tone of both horror and awe.
But behind the scenes, Anna was feeling increasingly anxious. Her daughter, then aged three, was displaying symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), as well as hypermobility and dyspraxia, while her little boys were also showing signs of ADHD. As her diary started to fill with specialist appointments with paediatricians and therapists, along with frequent meetings with teachers and carers, Anna’s grip on her career started to slip…