The situation of Mummy-ness

Firstly, my apologies for the poor grammar in the title. It's been a big day.

I've just been thinking about the mental knots we tie for ourselves as parents. I'm not sure whether it's unique to the feminine side of the parental spectrum, or whether it's a universal parent-type phenomenon. It's something that can leave us discontented, exhausted, and sometimes with patchy bald spots where we've torn out our hair.

Let me outline a common chain of events to illustrate:

1. We have sleep, intellects, jobs that satisfy, and the taken-for-granted feeling that we can handle the world.
   
2. We have children.
3. We love said children deeply, and think the way they crinkle their little noses is the most beautiful thing we've ever seen.
4. We have no sleep.
5. We lose intellectual discussion/feelings of mastery as we struggle to learn how to wash clothes 57 times a week while covered in mashed pumpkin.
   
6. Love for aforementioned children is muted beneath ever-growing desires to regain sleep/intellect/mastery.
7. We desire "a break". Grandparents/significant others step in to give us one, and send us out of the house.
   
8. We wander aimlessly through "the break", wishing we smelled like mashed pumpkin and desperately missing that crinkled little nose. If at shops, we may pick up baby knick-knacks.
   
9. We rush home early from the break to see the little crinkled noses and hope that they missed us as much as we missed them. We're often disappointed.
10. The cycle begins again at point 3.
    

I know. It's a little pathetic. It's an interesting mix of love, selfishness, and fatigue that puts us there. We're dissatisfied when we're at home (particularly at 3:35am), and we're dissatisfied when we're away. Who'd be a parent?

Still, I don't think I'd change it for the world - I might miss a nose crinkle!