Cat Gordon left London for Los Angeles with her husband, Martin, and three-year-old daughter, Rachel. She is six months pregnant with their second child…

The way things were
My husband works for a music management company. When he suggested we move to LA for a year for his work, I was half-excited, half-petrified. I’ve never been that person who says “no”, and in this instance I had no reason to. I’m lucky to be a stay-at-home-mum, which I cherish, and the chance of pool access and sunshine 24/7 was a no-brainer. And a year is a year, I thought: it’ll go in a flash, right?

I grew up in the Midlands, a small village called Measham and moved around to various nearby villages and towns. All of them were far away from the sort of fun and chaos that London has provided me for the last 10 years of my life. If you were lucky you could catch a bus, or even better, a lift to the nearest town to hang out with your friends and try to get served in the local pub. The nearest city was the bright lights of Leicester, but that was even more impossible to get to if you didn’t drive.

My childhood, however, was ideal. I grew up in a very loving family with two older brothers and one older sister. We are all still very close. My Dad died when I was eight so my mum brought us up single-handedly and worked night-shifts as a nurse to make sure we had everything we needed.    

I studied Journalism at the London College of Communication (LCC) in London, where I made some amazing friends; I even met my husband the first year I started university. London provided me with a full-blown social life, and it’s been home ever since. I love everything about it.

Turning point
After graduation I had various rubbish jobs in factories, banks, call centres, before finally landing a job at a national newspaper. When I had Rachel everything in my life changed. It was hard to get to grips with motherhood at first, learning not to be selfish/lazy/messy… but I took to it like a duck to water. I now wake up excited like a kid on Christmas morning, every morning, just to see my daughter’s beautiful darling face. She completes me.     

My life has become so much more fulfilled and pure, in a way that I hadn’t felt since my childhood. I am so happy with my little family unit and Rachel is my happy place. But in order not to go full-blown insane by role-playing Cinderella stories all day, I’ve always tried to make time for my social life: fun times with the girls, festivals, nights out, dinners… Being able to wear something other than leggings and a slouch top in itself is a treat.  

The way we live now
We live in a house in Beverly Hills. It has a very English/European feel to it, and is the most beautiful house I’ve ever lived in. It was once owned by 1940’s film star Gene Tierney and still has that old Hollywood glamour feel to it; it’s beautifully-furnished with its own pool (oo-err) and even a log fire.

Rachel attends nursery most days during the week unless we have family plans. In the UK we used to take her in two days a week but it works differently here. We have to pay quite a lot and you must pay the full week, regardless of whether you use them… But we thought it would do her good to be social, and it was only for the short-term. So since the beginning of our stay my life here became quite lonely as I didn’t have my daughter by my side as I did back home.  

Initially, the first few weeks felt like a holiday for us all, but soon debilitating loneliness started to creep in for me. I would try my best to keep a decent amount of contact with friends and family in the UK by making phone/Skype calls, but due to the eight-hour time difference it isn’t always convenient for either sides, especially when you have an energetic toddler to run around after.    

Annoyingly for me, but more so for my long-suffering husband, I spent months moping around, moaning as I started to feel extremely low. I tried to busy myself however I could when my daughter was in nursery, just to fill the void. I tried to befriend other mothers in the park but it always felt there was a huge cultural difference. I would go away feeling like an alien.

The highs and the lows
Endless negativity aside – and God bless my poor husband for tolerating me and my constant whining – this place is an amazing place for our little Rachel. The nursery we send her to is a world away from the ones we sent her to in London. It has a pet tortoise, cute birds, rabbits, a private swimming pool for pupils, with an open roof for the summer months, and amazing play areas. She’s only three and can now swim the width of our pool.

It’s brilliant seeing her thrive so much. She comes home singing songs we’ve never heard of with alternative American lyrics (the ‘Hokey Cokey’ is the ‘Hokey Pokey’), and speaks with an American twang, which I don’t mind, for now anyway. In her Christmas play she and her class did a stage performance of Buddy’s Holly ‘Peggy Sue’ dressed in a brown reindeer costume complete with antlers, beaming with confidence.    

The long and short of it
America, as a country, is pretty mind-blowing. You could fit the whole of Europe inside it and still there would be space. It’s vast, diverse, alluring. We’ve been fortunate enough to find the time and the money to visit places such as Joshua Tree, New Orleans, Seattle, Florida Keys, Big Sur, Carmel, San Francisco, The Grand Canyon. I feel even luckier that I’ve shared these moments with my husband, and our daughter is extremely lucky to be so well-travelled. She gets excited when she knows she has to travel. The Airbnbs in America are so brilliant and family friendly, too, much better to any I’ve experienced in the UK.   

But the whole city feels like it revolves around business and networking so if you’re not someone of “importance” then you feel like you’re invisible. I feel like I’ve lost a bit of myself here, I question what I am, which I never did before, even though I probably did the same thing when in London. I suppose it doesn’t help not being able to meet a friend for a natter and put the world to rights.     

Eye on the prize
Even though I have struggled quite badly, I know that as each day passes things do get easier and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have more of a routine and with my pregnancy I’ve been focused on myself and my health more. I know the minute I’m back home under grey mid-summer skies, the faint echoes of Songs of Praise in the background, I’ll probably be dreaming of the 90210 house, the beaches, the pool, the weather…

I’m now six months pregnant with our second child and we’re planning on giving birth here so we’re having an American baby. The healthcare, of course, is all privately run so if you have money you’re sorted. If you don’t then I’m not sure how you’d get by. I suppose we wouldn’t be here. Even though it’s brilliant and efficient when you do have insurance, and you get to be seen pretty much straight away, you do get the feeling that they’re over cautious with scans and other tests, so it can all feel a little more daunting.  

I wish I could say that I adapted better and wasn’t fazed by the whole LA move, but it has probably been one of the hardest things I have ever done, even harder that squeezing a small person out of my lady parts. I feel so selfish for feeling this way, and for that I feel fragile and weak, but I now know for sure where my heart lies. As Dorothy says, there’s no place like home.