A few years I was spending upward of €15,000 per annum on putting two children full-time in a creche. I was earning pretty good money and resented it when stay-at-home mothers got any concessions. I felt that I had to work, like my husband, to pay a big mortgage etc.

However, after my third child I became one of those stay-at-home mums, and am now equally anti-creche. I now know for myself how damaging creches are on the children, under-stimulated as small babies, under-loved mostly. I did not breastfeed these children for very long as I knew I was going back to work soon.

One son took a febrile convulsion while in the creche, the creche workers were too busy to give me all the details I wanted about this, exactly how long etc. I did not want to annoy by being a pushy parent. I thought I was lucky to get places in a busy creche relatively close to my work. 

Today I see the input I now invest in my other children and feel guilty about the first two. We all lost out, and I cannot get those years back. When I was working my husband and I bickered constantly about housework etc as I was never there. Home then was just stress. Going to work was easier. I nearly dreaded five o’clock, knowing the amount of work I had to do after I picked the children up from the creche. My husband and I nearly separated. 

Ironically, despite less money, we went immediately from a one/ two star lifestyle to a five star one with me at home; nice, regular meals, ironed clothes, harmony restored from the previously hectic lifestyle. 

We didn’t even lose that much money after I got off the little rat wheel that had been dazzling my brain. When I left work I realised that a significant amount of my money was being spent on new clothes to look good in the office, expensive lunches with colleagues discussing cases, travel costs and of course most significantly the stupid childcare costs I was paying. I can budget now, shopping in the morning, availing of the offers, rather than after work, stressed out, buying expensive convenient foods or getting take-outs when too exhausted to think about cooking. And I did not even have to commute. 

Before you shoot yourself after reading this depressing story, Thank God, I now have four children and life is great. I definitely would not have this big family if I had continued to work. Probably I would have settled for a conservatory in which to try and chill out, but in reality I would hardly have got sitting down in it! I wish other mothers dazzled by their own rat wheel, afraid of what a break in their CV might look like, would realise just exactly what they and their children are missing out on.