I write this from bed where Percy lays beside me, purring. I’ve just replied to a few emails, albeit one week late because time is precious and so much has to happen before I can sit down and open the laptop. I know that it won’t always be like this but now, today, this week, this month, emails must wait.

While I go about my days….walking Percy in the pram, hanging washing on the line, adding a log to the fire, stirring porridge, calming quarrels, cooking dinner…I think about the work of motherhood – no one really talks about that when you’re pregnant for the first time, do they? Yes, they talk about the busyness of life with a baby but somehow, everyone skips the bit about housework…the things that need to happen for the family before you can sit down and reply to emails. And regardless of the fact that you may have grown up watching your own muma do that work, you only really, truly, realise the depth of it when you are doing it yourself.

The work of motherhood (or parenthood) is cyclical; it’s hard to decipher the beginning and almost impossible to imagine the end. It is relentless and monotonous. And yet it’s all very necessary. Last week a friend of mine asked me what it’s really like to have three children and whilst it’s nowhere near as hard as I though it would be, it is most definitely busy. I rise at 6 and go to bed at 10 and there are always chores left undone.

Right now my hands are dry, my nails are chipped and my hair is falling out in handfuls. I am well but a little weary and I carry moisturiser in my bag in the hope that I’ll find a few minutes to apply it. Yes, my head is full of lists and my hands are always busy.

But my heart is full and happy.

photo : lamb & fox | me…soft and curvy in this stage of new motherhood