Julie Jay: I'd prefer to stay at home but someone has to pay for our babyccino lifestyle

Despite having a childminder sent from the childminding gods, my youngest has been kicking up such a fuss in the mornings you'd swear I was delivering him to a gulag

I feel like telling him that I don’t want to go to work, either, but someone has to pay for the babyccino lifestyle to which we have grown so accustomed.

Up until now, I would nod sympathetically when friends would recount traumatic goodbyes in creches when their babies had to be peeled off them to facilitate a speedy exit.

When it came to my first child, the handover at my godsend of a childminder’s was nearly always seamless. In fact, I can barely remember Number One shedding any tears as I handed him across the threshold, probably because, being a covid baby, he was only delighted to be mingling at last.