Two weeks ago I was feeling distinctly un-Christmassy, so bogged down I was in nappies and trudging through the snow. What a shame, I thought, (I usually love Christmas) not to be revelling in the festive spirit for our babies’ first one.

And why? In pre-baby days, the pretty street lights and wafts of mulled wine promised a last day of work for at least a week, a train journey spent reading a novel, lots of feasting and even more long, lazy mornings in bed. This year Christmas posed no relief. Unlike work, babies don’t break for Christmas. Our planned six hour car journey to grandparents seemed like a marathon we had not trained for and the coming nights in a new environment for the babies were set to be even more restless. There would be feasting without the resting, snatched bites between jiggling an overwhelmed baby up and down. New Year’s Eve and its fireworks – we couldn’t even bear thinking about it.

What pessimism. Christmas transpired to be a wonderful break for us and a lovely chance to have our babies adored by all and sundry. The babies slept and babbled their way through most of our journey. There were no traffic jams on the motorway. And it turns out grandparents are happy to see babies at 7am and entertain them for a couple of hours whilst you slumber on. They are also keen to wash baby bottles and clothes because they want to provide you with relief from your everyday grind. They should perhaps be renamed Santa’s elves.

It just goes to show that life with babies is not quite as inflexible as I thought, stuck in my pre-Christmas rut. What’s more, it does you the world of good to go away somewhere for a while, where other people can cuddle your babies, tell you how gorgeous they are and what shining eyes they had when they first saw the Christmas tree (really an adult invention – babies’ eyes shine at all sorts of pretty things that have nothing to do with Christmas – but never mind). Oh and New Year was fine too.

So in retrospect, all very festive and very special because we could share it with the two little ones.