I love my son. Love him distractedly. Love him so much that, in the daylight hours, I would cheerfully die for him if the need arose. But last night, as I lay in bed, I was suffering the unfair and just plain wrong abomination of a summer head cold. You know the one. Your sinuses pound. Eyes water. Throat tickles. Neck aches. Your nose vacillates from dripping like a tap, to being completely blocked and then being partially occluded to allow for shallow noisy breathing from one nostril only. Sometime later, the other nostril comes on board. Finally, some unified breathing motion. Now, if I can just lie really still, maybe I’ll be able to breathe normally again and go back to sleep…
‘Mummy…’ came the cry from the boys’ bedroom.  Quiet whimpering.  ‘Mumma.’ More urgent this time, to show he’s really serious.

I love being a mum.  It is without a doubt the joy of my life and the one thing I am good at.  My son is almost eight-months-old, and there is not one day that I don’t think about how lucky I am to be doing the one thing I have always wanted to do. But then there are days like today, when I spend a little too much time at the shopping centre looking at all the things that I want to buy. But, knowing that we are on a tight ship at the moment, I am crestfallen.  It’s not that my partner denies me money to spend on luxury items if I choose to. I choose not to. It’s quite simple. The feeling that overwhelms me is guilt.