Julie Jay: One of the hardest aspects of parenting is the lack of alone time
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Solitary confinement is a punitive measure meted out in limited circumstances, but as a parent, being on your own is a treat.
Every now and again, when I am in the depths of dishes piling up and washing that needs sorting, I think about the elephants. Specifically, I think about mammy elephants having to endure 22 months of pregnancy to give birth to 200-pound babies. But the real test for these matriarchs comes later, because female elephants can stay with their mothers their entire lives, making the odds of a solitary pumpkin latte slim to none for the world’s largest land animal.
For humans, too, once we become mammies, doing anything unaccompanied becomes the stuff of fantasy — like winning the lotto or having the foresight to note the petrol pump you used before going into pay. (Despite being a driver for the better part of 15 years, for some reason, I never see this coming and am always floored when this information is requested at the till. If only there were numbers on the pumps to help us out here.)
Of course, the strangeness of flying solo can be particularly acute when we initially return to work after maternity leave.
“I’m going to miss him,” my friend informed me when I asked how she felt about returning to work after her firstborn had turned one. “But I just need to be on my own,” she added, and though her job involves managing a team of more than 30 people, I knew exactly what she meant. There is nobody more on their own than a parent flying solo with a baby, with only YouTuber Ms Rachel’s encouragement — telling us she’s proud of us — to save us from losing the plot completely.
The first time you walk away from that childminder or crèche door, having delivered baby and accoutrements, it can feel strange wandering around the IFSC minus a buggy and a nappy bag so stuffed people would be forgiven for thinking the year is 1994 and you are smuggling cheap cigarettes across the border.
Marching from the office to the food emporium at lunch with your hands swinging, you look like any other working person. Only the keenest of observers will spot the dodo around your neck - a dead giveaway that you are less Melanie Griffith of the 1988 movie and more Lois Griffin of animated sitcom .
As an introvert, one of the hardest aspects of parenting for me has been the lack of alone time.
It is an absolute must, if I ever want a battery recharge.
Naturally, this elusive alone time just doesn’t happen when your primary task is to keep two small people minded and happy at all times.
My 15-month-old has been going through a phase for the guts of eight weeks now, where even setting him down momentarily can lead to cries so piercing only dolphins can hear, and my four-year-old screams for my exact GPS coordinates every time I leave the room.
While it is lovely to be needed, we reached a new low last week when personal boundaries were obliterated.
It was a weekday afternoon like any other, as I sat on the toilet, doing what adults with working bowels do, when the baby barged in with such force I was convinced the drug squad had found out about my secret stash of Calpol and were raiding the gaff.
This encounter was how I discovered he could surmount the baby gate by utilising the couch as a vault. Wrestling the toilet brush from his paws, I eventually had to accept defeat and place him on my lap as I finished my business. It was demeaning for both of us, but, thankfully, my baby kept things interesting for himself by squeezing out my foundation all over the sink (it’s a small bathroom).
Doing a number two with a baby on my knee was a new low, even for me. So pitiful was the scene, I am fully convinced that if a burglar had happened upon me at the moment, he would have felt so sorry for me he would not only have left our jewellery untouched, but also given me a free laptop for my trouble.
I’ve got used to not being able to lie down for five minutes minus a tiny human jumping onto my bed like I am a human trampoline or pottering over to see what I am up to when I have the audacity to take a pause from playing Hot Wheels and finish a work project in the back room.
Before the laptop is even turned on, my four-year-old usually appears at the door, looking forlorn.
“Sorry, he just wanted Mammy,” my husband will say as he bundles the child out of the room, much to the clearly neglected child’s opining.
Depending on the register of howling, I will usually give in and return to the hub of the kitchen, where the children can keep me within their eyeline. I will promise to finish my work after the children are gone to bed.
I will also think of the mammy elephants, who are never unaccompanied but will, no doubt, still be sad when their male offspring head off to join another herd. Such is the eternal paradox of parenting: We might yearn to be alone, but we never want them to go.