You know, I thought it would be hard to return to the work force after four months of sitting at home on maternity leave, but I was wrong. Of course, I use the phrase "sitting at home" with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. There is not much sitting going on. Yes, life is lazy when one looks after an infant: I would spend hours on or in bed with her on my breast, I would kneel on the ground and watch her asleep in her pram, I would roll on the carpet doing baby gym. Zero stress, maximum happiness. But household chores don't miraculously go away while you're entertaining a screaming mouth. All that meant I didn't get a lot of me-time.
And that's the crux of the matter. Me-time is very important to 30-somethings. We are the selfish generation, the generation of consumers and navel-gazers. We shop, we visit health spas, we chat to electronic friends about our psychological problems. We sleep till midday, we don't iron, we have take-aways more often than we bother to cook in our gadget-full modern kitchens. We, the 30-somethings, take it for granted that the world owes us.
The world owes us happiness, for example. In humankind's entire history, I don't think there's ever been such a drive towards receiving fulfilment. In the old days, a person's ambition was to survive and to procreate. If you were poor, you worked from sunrise to sunset, often hungry, sometimes whipped. If you were rich (and we're talking aristocracy-rich), you lived in a huge castle which was freezing and damp, you had a smelly night potty and uncomfortable clothes and lice.
And now? Just look at the topics of an average glossy: how to make more money, how to have a better sex life, how to find a satisfying career. Who is hot? Should I have a baby? How can I lose weight and still stuff myself on chocolate lying in front of the TV? It's all about me, me, me and how to make sure I glean maximum happiness from the forage called life.
So anyway, last month, I made one of the most difficult decisions facing 30-something women in the Western world: to be or not to be a working mother. On the one hand, I liked staying at home looking after my daughter. On the other, I longed for my old lifestyle. Ultimately, I wanted the best for my baby. Choices, choices, choices.
And let me tell you something. No matter what choice you make in this matter, you feel guilt. You find yourself justifying your decision to everybody who would listen: quality time versus quantity time, motherly sanity versus motherly love.
And let me tell you something else: whichever choice you make, you ultimately make it in the name of happiness, both yours and your baby's.
And that's another thing we, the 30-somethings take for granted: that ability, nay - that right, to choose whatever lifestyle suits us: married or single mum, double income, a child-free lifestyle: it's all there for the taking. You are in control. Don't worry, be happy.
So here I am at work, happy that I don't have heartburn (an affliction I had to live with in the last trimester of my pregnancy), happy to be sitting down and happy to be able to fit into my work blouses. You know, sometimes it doesn't take a lot for a 30-something to be happy.
Now I take it for granted that the status quo will remain.
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