Nearly five years since trying to become a mum and nearly five months since becoming one

It's just after 7 and you are snoozing and snoring after a hard day's play.

My thoughts for today little Louse are that a) I don't like being at work, even part time, away from you and b) following reading Why Love Matters I am thinking that I identify with several of the behaviours associated with personality disorders.

a) It breaks the parenting continuum in a way that I don't like. It's just too soon for me to have gone back, but we had no choice. I worry that it's affecting you negatively, but I hope that I'm wrong. After all, you are with Dad, not bundled into a nursery already, and your days with him are entertainment-filled. And I make sure I can get home in time for dinner / bath & bed. That last bottle is the time I most enjoy because I have you all to myself, you're clean and sleepy and we have a good old cuddle. It's my quiet time as much as yours. At some point I suppose I have to give it up? Before we got you, I thought oh it'll be fine, three months is ok. But I soon realised it's nothing, for either of us. I feel cheated and quite angry that I had to go back, but it's not anyone's fault, just the way things ended up. Pa Cooke, much as he loves his days with you, misses working and I think would love to swap places with me. Look at us all modern, role swapping, and not liking it. Typical. I tell myself this will change within the year. Not sure how, just thinking that it will.

b) In the same way that many many things from serious to utterly non life threatening, have general symptoms like nausea & headaches, since reading the chapter on personality disorder types in that book, I find myself thinking, hold on, that's me, I do that, I'm like that, I had a bit of that growing up. Then I think, oh god, am I going to mess you up? Then I think about the nappy rash or the food we're feeding you and I wonder if we've already broken you, as it were. Parenting is a mine field. But I choose not to read the manuals because I think they will only confuse me further and I will fixate on things eg things you should be doing and will no doubt do in your own time anyway, but might not be doing in the exact week the book says you ought. I find the whole NCT mums' groups draining for the same reasons. Individually all very nice women, but put them together in a soft play area and arrrgghhh, I want to run screaming. I start to behave in a very juvenile way, being a bit aloof and pretending to be way more casual than I am, just so I'm not like them. Of course I can't join in the pregnancy/birthing/breast feeding/when am I having the next child conversations anyway, but it's not even that. Or is it. Am I in denial. See, unable to identify my feelings = personality disorder...

This week you have learned how to make your hands into a jellyfish and sing the first two words of Bah bah black sheep.