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Monday

My week starts with the mad rush to get three children aged under five out of bed and ready for the day.

I perform this feat before leaving at 07.30 for the eight-minute drive to the station, sprinting across the bridge onto the train, grabbing a coffee and copy of Metro before falling into the train. There I flick through my emails and get set for the day.

My first meeting is with Lucy Banks, our executive creative director, to work through a presentation that we are giving at ISBA on Thursday about the importance of insight in creating our products and to help us deliver creative excellence to our customers.

I review last week's weekly bookings and check on the progress of our new booking system.

Uh-oh. I am late for lunch with David Davies, CEO of Phaidon publishing. David and I worked together launching Grazia and we chat about the shared challenges and opportunities across book and magazine publishing.

After lunch I run the weekly meeting with the magazine advertising management team, where we discuss some of our people and culture projects.

I wrap up the day with Pippa Goodwin from M2M, talking about the health of the premium fashion and beauty market and some of the innovations that we have devised to tap into this, like the FHM watermarking issue.

This marks a media first and we believe it could be a really interesting area to explore across the portfolio.

I love my Monday evenings, which are always spent reading our weekly magazines Heat, Closer, Grazia and More…while trying to explain to my husband that it really is my job and doesn’t count as  "me time".

Tuesday

All working mothers out there will empathise with my rotten start to the day when my nanny calls to say that my five-year-old was supposed to be dressed as a Roald Dahl character for school today. I forgot. The guilt is immense and I can't do anything to make it better from here.

I have to put that aside to run the weekly sales meeting, where the entire magazine department gets together to discuss our performance, share our brand stories, celebrate our successes plus set the agenda for the week ahead.

Next our CEO Paul Keenan leads the weekly exec meeting, where the team debate the issues of the week and share performance across the magazine portfolio.

This week we are presented with the plans for Christmas subscription activity, a vital campaign for the portfolio, and discuss our new rising stars scheme to fast track the development of our best sales talent.

I'm disappointed when my client lunch is cancelled last minute (you know who you are!). Instead I embark on a remorseful parent shopping trip to Gap to assuage this morning's guilt.

Travelling home, I have to laugh when I read about the appalling trend of parents trying to buy their children's love with gifts and toys rather than spending time with them. Spend the evening reading through sales awards entries for our specialist team in Peterborough.

Wednesday

The day starts well with a quick revenue catch up with the associate media directors and the fabulous news that Grazia closed its biggest ever fashion issue with an incredible 300 pages, up 60% year-on-year and bursting with fashion and beauty advertising.

Lisa Tookey (associate media director, Women's Lifestyle) warns me that now the hard work really starts – sorting out the enormous jigsaw of a 300-page weekly flat plan. We have an exciting new piece of research in the pipeline (stand by for more details), so I catch up with Liz Martin, our head of insight, to finalise launch plans.

Spend an inspiring time at the judging of the Peterborough sales awards, hosted by our commercial director specialist Charlie Brooks. We're joined by Simon Young from H Bauer, Karen Stacey (our head of broadcast) and Richard Hayes (our magazine sales controller).

The entries are fantastic – some of the work and results showcased are truly amazing. Now I'm really fired up for the awards night in October (and from the sounds of previous events I should also be a little scared).

My task this afternoon is reviewing budgets for 2012, and I chat with Karen Stacey (head of broadcast sales and Bauer Access) about some of the creative work that is coming out of Bauer Access (a cross-platform service for Bauer Media's commercial partners, designed to encourage better communications between Bauer's brands and its clients).

This evening's entertainment: reading through the 2012 brand strategies ahead of tomorrow's brand planning day.

Thursday

The brand planning day is about ensuring that we truly understand our consumers and then reviewing, debating and deciding upon plans for some of the UK’s most influential brands.

A motivating day – although we unearth some challenges, we also have some brilliant consumer insight and have created some really innovative, exciting ideas. We focus on how we can continue to deliver world-class print products as well as innovate and develop our brands across multiple platforms – having a clear brand plan is essential.

I dash to the Soho Hotel where we are hosting the ISBA network evening with 50 of the UK's biggest advertisers.

Karen presents some of our insight work including the Media Week Award-shortlisted Phoenix project and our philosophy around Bauer Access. Steve Parkinson (MD of Kiss and Magic) showcases our award-winning work with Blackberry.

Also incredibly engaging is guest speaker Emma Harris, sales and marketing director at Eurostar, who recounts the story of the Eurostar move from Waterloo to St Pancras and their work with Locog.

After an hour or so of networking, I head back to Waterloo for the last time this week.

Friday

I don’t work on Fridays, so I probably annoy my team by firing out tons of emails on a Thursday night to clear my to-do list before I leave the glamorous world of magazines for a few days to become just mummy to Sofia, Henry and Teddy.