You can be my Travel Lodge fantasy
02.02.18, 9:49 am

I’ve made it – I’m back at work. For three days a week I drop Lara off at nursery and then get to spend the day talking to adults, doing non-baby tasks and having a peaceful sandwich on my own. It’s BLISS. And I say that knowing that I love Lara more than anything in the world. But sometimes you need some time for yourself, even if that time is spent stuck in a chilly office eating a Boots Meal Deal.

Nursery transition wasn’t the smoothest – I had to take more time off work to ease her in, and she HATED it for a while, and it was all a bit stressful. But she’s fine now, or at least she was before she got ill. Bronchiolitis hit a couple of weeks ago and Lara’s been really unwell with it, so much so that we ended up at the walk-in centre on Thursday night because she’d fallen asleep on my chest (something she usually never tolerates) and I noticed how fast and shallow her breathing was. She’s OK now, not better but at least her fever seems to have broken. She’s so solemn and sad most of the time though, and it feels like she’s been ill for such a long time. I do miss her little smile. Hopefully she’ll be fully recovered soon.

The rest of maternity leave passed uneventfully enough. I went to a baby group every day, hiked around Sheffield’s parks every day rain or shine, and generally did the household tasks as slowly as possible so as to fill up maximum time. The second half was definitely easier than the first half, mainly because Lara was a lot easier to look after, but it was still boring and slow at times. I think I just got better at dealing with it though, so it didn’t feel quite so much like my life had stopped. And now I’m working the week goes so much quicker, and I look forward to picking her up from nursery, and spend a stupid amount of time looking at photos and videos of her, so… yeah. Basically, you can’t win!

She’s very fun at the moment, bar the illness. She’s started crawling, or at least a kind’ve mortally-wounded-trying-to-eascape-the-field-of-battle commando crawl. Once she gets her knees properly under herself she’ll be a menace. She’s also discovered clapping, waving and shaking her head at things, and loves to high-five people. Looking after her is a lot more fun now. And I’ve lost all of the baby weight, which feels pretty good. Combination of breast feeding and carting a sack of Lara spuds around the park every day. I celebrated by buying some new jeans and drinking the bottle of cava that my boss had bought for me for the previous Christmas with James . Was the most delicious thing ever.

James is off work today but Lara is still at nursery, so we’re going to meet for lunch and have a lovely hour of just us two. I bet we spend the whole time talking about Lara girl. Two of my friends have recently had babies, and I legit can’t wait to go meet them and experience cuddling a newborn again. It’s funny, before Lara I genuinely wasn’t arsed about babies at all, and now I can’t get enough of them. I CAN get enough of still waking at least twice in the night every night though. 9 months of broken sleep is no joke – when I’m particularly knackered, I dream about booking myself into the nearest Travel Lodge and just have 8 blissful solid hours. I may still request this for a birthday present, no lie.

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