A "break"

I arrived home from Copenhagen at 2am and crashed into bed, hastily pushing earplugs in to avoid being woken by C at all. My husband got up with the girls and I finally emerged at around 10am feeling barely human. We decided to go out for lunch which in hindsight was a seriously bad idea. I was tired from the flight, S was tired having had a broken night with C and my eldest decided that she was going to bring out the big gun tantrums specially for Mummy's return. I know it is her trying to make sense of and deal with the current changes but that doesn't always make it any easier to handle.

It is incredibly frustrating when all you want to do is have fun with her but she is whinging and whining and suddenly jealous of her sister and generally resisting anything that would actually make the day enjoyable. S then had to go to bed early to be up later that night to go to work himself.

That day is what we call a 'changeover day', it's not really a day off together as we really only have a few hours as one lands and one departs, and now I see that it is also going to be a change over day for the girls too. A day where they adjust to whichever one of us has suddenly returned and wonder when the other is leaving. Without them really knowing it I believe this is what causes them to play up, not sleep, have tantrums etc. Both S and I have found that they are much better a day later so either they are better with just one of us around or they have got over whatever caused the upset on the "changeover day".

For us its difficult as we don't really get a break. We get straight into the broken nights and sometimes tiring days that come with being a parent without ever really catching up from the lost sleep thanks to the flying. I remember when I went back to work after having E that I tried to do everything, I would land at all hours of the night and then get up with her at 6am and power through until her naps. It's not living and it wasn't fun I can tell you that. Sleep deprivation is toxic. It makes you snappy, argumentative, unhappy and a generally unpleasant person. It makes you eat badly, have bad habits, not want to do anything... it can very easily take over and you will hardly even realise how bad it has become because you are just surviving. I have promised myself that I will try not go down that road again. I will nap when I can, sleep in when I have to and try to stay on top of it. It means relying on other people a lot more (which is something I find hard to do) but for the sake of my sanity, my marriage and the girls, it is a necessary evil.

Really what I want to do is fly my parents out to Dubai, find them a nice villa/apartment to live in and have Grandparents around to play, help, cuddle and love when I am unable to. There is something so different about it being family looking after the girls and it takes most of the guilt away when you do have to leave them. Distance from family is absolutely the worst part of being an expat, and it has become even more upsetting now the girls are around.

Tomorrow is yet another changeover day, my husband and I have only had 4 proper days off together this month and it looks like it will be the much the same in August. I find that I am always looking into the future and not in the rose tinted glasses way but in the "how many days will we see each other, when are the girls left alone, is anyone around to help and can we change any flights" way. It's already the end of August in my head and I am already stressing about the fact that every weekend next month the girls will be on their own. There has to be a way to to make this work better, surely we can't be the only people in this situation!

I used to joke that I am a "stayathome-working-married-single-parent" but it's one of those 'jokes' that isn't actually that funny when it is reality. As great as equality and women rights and our right to work and all that is, it hasn't half piled the pressure on women to be everything all at once to everyone. If I stay at home with my kids then I've "wasted" my hard work and career, if I stick with the career then I'm not fully mothering my kids. Even if I had the choice right now, I'm not 100% sure what I would choose to do. On a slightly bizarre final note, why aren't men called "working dads?"... seems not everything has caught up with the whole "equality" thing just yet....! More on that later!