Boris backs my cause!!

I don’t believe it! Preparing for Lily’s birthday party or prozac, or a combination of the two, must be turning my brain into a pudding – I actually agree with something written in the Telegraph, not only written in the Telegraph – but written by Boris Johnson!!?@?!**! Ooo, it makes me shiver just to type the admission. But go Boris, hats off to you boy, because today you got something spot on, and I for one won’t be slinging my marmalade at you (his concern when his opinion was voiced).

Boris believes that there may actually be some women out there who, wait for it, don’t want to go back to work when their children are young. Hurrah! Somebody has realised. Shame it isn’t somebody in charge who can actually make some tax changes and adjust the ridiculously inflated house market, so that we can turn our wishes into reality.

As a Conservative, Boris was using this to have a go at Labour’s latest attempts to improve the pathetic state of childcare in our country. But for me this isn’t a political issue (and if it was, I don’t think either of the main parties are anywhere near managing to sort it out!). For me it is a question of the heart, a calling, a need. A need that, when I didn’t get it met, my body and mind went into meltdown.

I’m not a ‘natural’ mother – I wasn’t one of these women who always dreamed of having kids, and would plan to spend her days baking cakes in gingham aprons and making Blue Peter models with them. So when the time came to have children, I naturally assumed that going back to work after a decent period of maternity leave was not going to be a problem. I loved my little angels like nothing else in the world, but hey, I figured sometime apart was also good for us – they would make friends, learn to socialise and have the opportunity to play with sand, water and paint all day – and I would keep sane by keeping my brain ticking over and remembering something of who I was before I became ‘mummy’.

Besides – with the years of studying Bill and I have clocked up between us, the price of houses, and the pitiful state of pay in our chosen professions – there wasn’t much choice. I had to go back to keep our modest roof over our heads.

Even as my body and mind began its shutdown process, I hadn’t realised why. I know all sorts of women succumb to postnatal depression – but I have a wonderful husband, a supportive family and two kids who most of the time aren’t trying to kill each other or blow the house up. So what did I have to be ‘depressed’ about? And then with time, and counselling, it suddenly dawned on me that a huge part of what was important to me wasn’t there. I realised I wanted to be able to clean the house, to cook tea for the kids more often, to put Bill’s dinner on the table a few times, so he wasn’t always cooking for me, and above all to cuddle and play with my children and watch them grow up. I wanted to be a MUM, and I wanted the energy and time to do it. You’re right, Boris, I didn’t want to go to work.

It was a revelation for me. As I said, I’d always been driven by work, social life and external causes – I hadn’t figured on a part of my identity being tied to the home and family quite so strongly. But there it was.

So what can I do? We still need a roof over our heads (we’re bursting at the seams already and downsizing isn’t an option), we need to eat and clothe the kids, and every once in a while we like to treat ourselves to a night down the pub. We don’t have an extravagant lifestyle. But I can’t give up work. I’m trapped. My occupational health doctor says I have a ‘Cinderella complex’ – she says we can always change things and do things really, it is just ourselves stopping us. I nod my head and smile, but I’ve yet to find the fairy godmother who is going to wave her magic wand and turn me into a stay-at-home-mum over night with the financial security to support it.

So in the meantime I make plans and little inroads, and I have my escape route mapped out. But it will take time, and the kids are growing up…Perhaps I’ll be able to afford to do it when the kids have kids of their own, and then I can be a stay-at-home-grandmother and look after my grandchildren while my kids go out to work. Come to think of it, that might be better, you get to hand them back again at the end of the day!

Right – off to make a heart-shaped cake and fairy biscuits for my little princess who turns five tomorrow (no, I haven't invested in the gingham apron yet). Five years – a whole term in office for a government – plenty of time to have turned around the working mother’s situation to provide some real choice – wouldn’t you have thought..?