Susie lay in bed and looked out the window at the rain that had fallen for five days straight. It’s June, she thought, pushing the unwashed hair out of her eyes. Maybe this is our version of global warming? She’d skim-read the headlines earlier that month when she’d grabbed five minutes to herself in the toilet and noticed something along those lines; that the UK could expect wetter summers as a result of global warming, but she’d not read the whole article, so she couldn’t be sure. She never read full articles any more. She was pretty sure nobody did. From the bedside table, her phone vibrated aggressively; a message from her mum shone brightly from the screen, “Just been to the big Tesco, but they didn’t have the ham your Dad likes. It was chaos! Hope you make the most of your childfree morning! Ring me later. Xxxx”

As Susie lay in bed, stretched beyond the invisible parameters of her side, she thought about how she would know if she’d done the most. When would the most have been had? When would she be satisfied? She wasn’t sure. In the current fog of satiating the needs of others, she’d lost sight of what might satisfy her own.

In anticipation of maximising this rare window of free time, she’d approached the empty schedule in the only way she knew. She’d made a list. Over the initial 12 weeks of motherhood, she’d compiled a list of things she might like to do with this first block of freedom. The list was comprised of new things to try, jobs that needed doing around the house, and activities she’d once enjoyed or had regularly made space for when she was in control of her own time. Creating the list had initially helped her feel calm; it was something to look forward to when the monotony of nappies, feeding and endless walks with the buggy closed in. The existence of the list in her phone notes represented an end goal of when she could get back to normal, but the presence of older lists in the same app under the headings, Injection Times, Fertility Diet, and Specialists to Contact reminded her that it had been a long time since things had felt normal or carefree.