Читать книгу Mummy Needs a Break - Susan Edmunds - Страница 15

Do you know what drives me nuts? The concept of ‘me time’. You’re meant to have a bath, or go for a massage, eat a whole block of chocolate in bed or skive off for lunch with your girlfriends and feel good about taking time out for yourself. Except I get into the bath and I can’t get out, and even before I got pregnant I couldn’t bear the idea of strangers massaging my body. All my friends are juggling workloads much too heavy, and with childcare far too limited, to break for lunch with me.

Between work and looking after Thomas, I manage to squeeze in a couple of minutes of ‘me time’ for frivolous things such as washing my hair. I can’t bring myself to believe that half an hour of indulgence makes up for the fact that I do 99 per cent of the drudgery the rest of the time.

But try to explain that to anyone else, and they look aghast. ‘No me time? Oh but you must have some me time. Can’t pour from an empty cup …’

So it’s another thing added to my ever-growing to-do list. No one wants to be an empty mother cup.

One thing I still do try to squeeze in between the frantic dash for work deadlines, and the seemingly interminable bedtime battle, is yoga. Although I’ve long since given up my dream of being a teacher myself, I find ten minutes of stretching can turn around many of the aggravations of a day of child-wrangling. I’ll never be a YouTube yoga star – while those women get the tops of their heads on the floor in a forward fold, my palms are still only halfway down my shins (I blame my short arms). But I happily follow them through the motions, and even Thomas is starting to enjoy finding his own tree pose or a comfortable seated position (although sometimes that is in front of the television).