It was lying in bed last night that I began to question why I started keeping this public record of my experience of motherhood. Our windows were open to the summer air, a light rain fell and, understandably, I was feeling contemplative.

Casting my mind back, I thought in the very early days, it felt like this island of my old self in amongst the physical and emotional wreckage that having tiny twins had left in its wake. It linked me and my immediate alien state to the controllable and intellectual life I had known before.

As the months passed and life took on a new and less exhausting structure, my motives changed. I enjoyed hearing other people’s thoughts on what I was writing, and the idea that it gave them an insight into our life with babies in a new country, without me having to spend hours I didn’t have to spare on the phone.

Ever since my new life has come closer to my old life – intersecting professionally in at times quite a surprising way: my work takes me back to the office I sat in daily before the children were born, to the city where many of my friends still live, to the odd evening in restaurants I used to go to before I knew the less romantic reality the patter of tiny feet at 5am really meant. Now I am very busy and I have plenty of islands guiding me to myself.

So perhaps this record has become less essential? But, I thought watching the silhouetted leaves play their game on the curtains, it hasn’t: it’s just that its purpose has changed. No longer purely an overly-stylised record, nor a reminder of what I could do before my mind was addled with sleep deprivation, it has become a precious space for me to reflect on being a mother and what that means to me.

It is where I work out how I feel about certain challenges put in my way. It is where I muddle through how I ‘should’ be dealing with certain three-year old challenges to my desired status quo. High-blown as this may sound, I believe it is where I make note of my ideal of motherhood, in such a way that helps me act like that too (most of the time at least). Indeed, I would even go so far as to say that in writing this blog I possibly become a better mother, which is most likely why I persist.

Now enough pontificating and time to collect the children from nursery. Words are easier than actions.