When I had a baby who fell sick pretty often, having suffered HFMD twice, needing to draw blood for running high fevers every week, I thought I hit the rock bottom of motherhood.

But that eventually passed.

When I had an infant and a toddler – oh, correction: a screaming infant and a needy toddler – and my husband very unfortunately broke his leg and was wheelchair bound for 6 months and I had a full-time job to do, I thought I hit rock bottom again in this arduous journey called motherhood.

But that eventually passed as well.

When I was pregnant with a bigger-than-his-siblings baby who made me breathless all the time and gave me an almost hip dislocation which caused the doctor to order bed rest, and I was towing a screamy toddler who was tantrum-prone and an inquisitive, chatty and eager-to-learn preschooler who needed to field questions at his mother almost every waking minute and still at a full-time job, I thought I was stretched beyond thin in this motherhood gig.

Well, that too, eventually passed.

And then soon enough I had a nursing infant in my arms (who needed to nurse all!the!time!) and two preschoolers; and as if that wasn’t already crazy enough, I made the insane decision to stay home, living those years thinking that I could very well have gone mad with having to cope with 3 kids with such close age differences.

But that eventually passed and although I had lost my sanity again and again, my screw’s pretty tight right now thankfully, so phew.

This is 2016 and there are now 2 preschoolers and a primary school goer in the house. There’s now, in addition to the neediness from the younger ones (because Mama’s back to full time work launching something exciting and can no longer send them to school so they take the school bus), insecurity and uncertainty from the primary one goer who has homework, bag-packing, sorting out pocket money and spelling to do and learn. Add to that also – the new kindergarten is pushing my middle child in typical P1-ready fashion from Day One already, which is totally stressing me out. I saw the words ‘canopy’, ’emergent layer’, ‘understory’ and ‘rainforest’ in my K2’s spelling list for Week 6 which left me FLABBERGASTED beyond words because my dear girl can barely read, let alone spell.

For the first week of the year, I felt nothing but stress to have to rush home in time to make sure everyone is in bed by 8.30pm (which still ended up to be 9ish, 10pm – my poor, sleep-deprived children!) and making sure all 3 bags are packed, that spelling is learned, homework is done and everyone gets some air time to share their day at school. I feel guilty for leaving them in the hands of my helper for most parts of my working day and having to turn on the TV for them so the helper can cook and they would not be up to any mischief shooting catapults at birds from the window or drawing on the walls or making 1000 calls to me. With three of them at different developmental milestones in learning and always wanting to play and be their active selves, it is impossible to implement a self-directed learning routine.

It has to involve me and me setting the routines with them, and helping them follow a schedule while instilling discipline, which I unfortunately can’t do; because this year, I’ve gone back to vesting my time fully at work.

Which leaves me again with three needy kids whose love language of quality time I can’t speak on week days  – well, at least this first week of school – and a definitive surge of suckiness all round.

I feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes. This sucky, yucky feeling.

And this too, shall eventually pass.

RIGHT?