I'm right on schedule with the end of holiday despair - always a relief

It is January the 7th. Charlie, my newest baby is four days away from being five months old. If I was a normal Belgian full-time working mother, I would have been back at work two months ago. This just seems ludicrous to me. My only goal apart from taking care of my family is to write one blog post a day, and I can't manage that. I don't understand how people can go back to work and function like normal human beings just three months after giving birth. They must be some kind of superhuman cyborgs. Either that, or pretending to be fine while really falling apart on the inside, especially the ones whose babies are still refusing to sleep properly.

(This is no stay at home or out to work manifesto. Whatever works for you. I've done both, I just happen to be at home this time.)

But then again of course I do understand how they do it. Because today, going back to work would feel a little like a holiday. I would see adults! I would get to go to the bathroom without sprinting back to check if anyone has been smothered by someone else. I would get to eat without having someone shout for my breasts as soon as I set the plate down in front of me. Someone else would deal with all of it. My aunt, also a mother of three, was asking me only this weekend why didn't I just give up on the breastfeeding and go back to work. She said sure you feel bad for a bit leaving them, but just think then you can breathe. And she's right.

I remember that feeling from when I went back to work after having Jack. First you have the guilt - "how dare I leave my baby in the care of strangers what if he dies because they misinterpret his cry what if he grows up fearful and depressed because he was abandoned by his mummy when he was only tiny" - and then comes the relief. Because all of a sudden you aren't constantly needed and cried for and prodded incessantly and guilted into leaving your tea to get cold to clean up another nappy or another spilled drink.

Of course I feel guilty even writing this. My babies are gorgeous and fantastic and it's my pleasure to stay home with them to take care of them and love them to bits and cuddle them when they fall. How can I say I want to be away from them? (If one of them dies tomorrow, I will be sorry because it will be as if I asked for it. (That's just my sick neurosis talking - pay no notice.))

I just want a break. I want to go to the gym and spend a couple of hours listening to Britney Spears and the Village People while pounding my body into obedience. I want to have lunch with my sister and not have to spend it apologising to her for not listening 100% because I'm breastfeeding/wiping a nose/changing a nappy/consoling a child-with-a-bump-on-the-head. Actually I'd settle for just having lunch with my sister at the moment.

I know that time will come, and when it does I will think back of this time and miss it. I will miss the breastfeeding and the snotty noses. I will miss the soft little buttocks in the stinky nappies and I will miss my kisses being the one and only thing that can heal a bump on the head. Those parts of my day I love right now. It's the bits in between that I am counting down to the evening. The bits in between I need to tell myself over and over and over again will end will end will end, because every other day so far has ended so surely this one will.

I'm a barrel of laughs today, I am. I hope I'm not bringing you down. Actually, most sensible readers will have probably clicked away by now. If you're still here, I can only assume that despair is something you are familiar with and doesn't scare you off. In which case do join me for a little moan. Tomorrow will be much better. Tomorrow we do gratitude and calmness and appreciation of all the many, many plentiful gifts the universe has bestowed on us. Tomorrow will be fun and games, love and laughter. Until then, I will be right here feeling sorry for myself.

(And Monday school is back, so all will be well then. Thank fuck for that.)