There I lay in the big bed, a sleeping child grasped tightly in each arm. I had been there for more than an hour, for our children do not fall asleep easily as the children of more organised parents might do, and my hands were starting to tingle. The situation was at once magical and rather awkwardly limiting. You are one of only two people in the world who can do this, I thought to myself, for want of something pleasant to pass the time until I could be sure they were sleeping so deeply that I could carry them to their own beds. But with this same pleasant thought rushed in a sudden overwhelming feeling of enormous responsibility, the strength of which was unlike any I had known since those early days with tiny babies.

Twenty months in and this was my first night alone with both children; tonight is to be the second. Now, of course, I feel very responsible for the wellbeing of our children all of the time, but this night alone represented something different. I, a singular I, had to make this work – we all needed an evening meal, a good night’s sleep and to get to our respective posts in a reasonable state the next morning. Not so hard, you say – and, indeed, it happily wasn’t – until you start thinking in what ifs. What if they don’t sleep at all; what if one of them is ill; what if I am ill; what if I set fire to something in the kitchen, or I forget to turn the tap off in the bath? On a dark night the list can infinitely grow. We live in a city without relatives. Our friends here tend to have children of a similar age, or busy jobs to go to during the day. Probably as generally fatigued by life as we are, to call on any of them in the middle of the night would feel extremely anti-social. In an emergency, yes, but not for minor upsets. Father was two plane journeys away and I was in this on my own. As I might at the start of an important exam, I felt under a great deal of pressure to remain clear, calm and focused.

So I extracted myself slowly and meticulously like a human spillikin, briefly looked down adoringly on my sleeping bounty, tiptoed to the door and proceeded to pass obsessively from room to room, turning off heaters and lights, triple checking the oven, and wrenching at bathroom taps. We all slept (soundly enough) in one bed that night; I was too chicken to risk waking them up. Tonight, I’ll brave it and try putting everyone in their proper beds. There is some leftover porridge from this morning after all.