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.

He also struck gold, because the covid baby boom meant he had an instant social circle to navigate and plenty of surgical masks to play with (his favourite toys up until his third birthday).

But while Number One settles in to the rhythm of porridge, school, childminder, more porridge (his hyperfixation is becoming a problem), the baby has decided to kick up a stink about having to get dressed at the uncivilised hour of 8am and go to our childminder’s house.

In fact, he has been kicking up such a stink, I have been trying to work out the logistics of teaching from home, though, as any other teacher can relate, the thoughts of once again having to ask students to turn on their cameras sends a shiver down my spine.

On Monday, so oppositional was he that I really didn’t know if I should leave him at all. He wasn’t himself, and he had been a little out of sorts the night before, so I told my childminder to text me if he was in any way under the weather or still not happy.

Within the hour, I had received a text saying he was definitely not his usual sunny self, and that maybe I should bring him to the doctor.

My heart sank when I got the message, knowing I would have to let my vice-principal know, and fretting about having to go home early so soon in the year. (Technically, this was only my second day of a full timetable, a new record for flaking, surely?)

The feeling of letting people down is familiar to most working parents (specifically mammies, as so often the delicate dance of childcare and work falls to them to navigate).

Thankfully, my school is super accommodating, but, weirdly, this only left me feeling worse as I went off to collect the patient while stewing in a mix of professional and maternal guilt at having left him in the first place.

ARRIVING home, I treated the little guy to lots of cuddles, Ms Rachel, and a beloved bottle.

It came time to pick up his brother, and by then his recovery had been so complete that part of me wondered if he had pulled a fast one to get his mother to give up her dream of holding a job down and getting a mortgage one day.

Every day I leave him, and every day he has a little cry as I go. It is a dagger to my heart. But despite his doorstep tears, I know, of course, invariably, when I am gone, the child is fine, as evidenced by the photos and videos of him reading books with his equally tiny friends, playing in the garden, and tucking in to his dinners with gusto.

Once again, yesterday morning, he had me feeling like I was dropping him off at a gulag. The bottom lip quivered, and he clung to me like I was the only thing standing between him and an austere boarding school childhood, where he would only see me at Christmas and, even then, physical contact would be limited to a handshake at dinner.

“He only wants to be with mommy,” Number One noted as the baby started to cry, throwing more salt into my already gaping wound.

The irony of all of this is that he is probably presuming that I want to leave him, when nothing could be further from the truth. 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.

As I am about to seriously consider packing in my day job altogether, I receive a video, at work, of my baby wrapped in a cosy blanket, having very happily drenched himself out the back. He smiles broadly, bottle in hand, delighted at having found another garden he can destroy (he is basically Diarmuid Gavin’s nemesis).

He will be fine, I know he will. He loves our childminder — last year, he ran into her house every day — and this year he will, too, but we need to give ourselves a minute to settle back in to it all.

At work, I replay the video — over and over again — of my baby, all smiles, cuddled up and safe and loved. I am just about to get emotional when I remember that, for once, the garden being destroyed isn’t mine, and my hydrangeas will live to see another day. Silver linings, surely.