Our real mummy George talks about how she copes with a toddler and teething baby …….

George is a working mummy to three year old Bertie and nine month old Lexie. Living by the sea in Jersey

Why is it that during one of the busiest weeks when you need both children to be towing the line that teething crops up?

With my son I became familiar with the signs which would also start as we were just about to board the busiest BA flight to the Caribbean or arrive at a party with 15 other runny nosed 2 year olds!  He would scream his way through the party, I would politely leave early and head for the booze cupboard as soon as I was in the comfort of my own home.  With my second I have learnt how to deal with what I would arguably say is the most difficult part about bringing up babies and toddlers: teething.

This week I am juggling plates in a big way.   The builders are knocking the extension into the main house, I have important work meetings, I am thinking of setting up my own business so have lots of meetings to take this forward.  My son has his nursery dance and singing performance so is practicing at every given moment and I have to stop everything to dance and sing with him with a split second of warning.  If I don’t we have total toddler melt down.  My husband is ‘stagging it up’ in Budapest and last called me to say proudly that he was in a hummer with strippers,  we have builders handymen, workmen, cleaners, gardeners coming in and out of the house, constantly and needing me in different capacities.  I have something on every evening from a girls paddle boarding evening, to a networking event for work, to a dinner party for six, to a long run for a marathon I am training for.  I am just about managing all of this with the help of our fantastic nanny when a few things happen.

I arrive home from work to a screaming baby, barking ginger cockapoo,  crazy son breakdance practising whilst holding his fresh garden snails and dust pilling higher into my home so  that I only seem to be able to see the bright white knashers of our nanny grinning manically at me.  I think she is trying to act like this is totally normal and that all her training at ‘nanny school’ prepared her for what I can see is a total cluster ****.  I deep breathe, take off my Jimmy’s and grab my daughter who starts grinning before depositing a huge poo all over me through her dusty baby grow.  She is not a happy baby and I take her upstairs leaving the carnage to ensue downstairs.  Her bottom looks like an iron has burnt her skin and she is so raw that her poor skin is blistering. I cover it in Sudocreme and pop another nappy on.   She is not a happy little baby so I pop in some brick dust (Astons and Parsons) as we have been calling it for the past two months since our house became a building site.   She sucks in her little cheeks and finally begins to smile at me.

I take off my dress, pop on my mummy tracksuit and head downstairs.  Calmer and happier my daughter is happy to relax in her baby walker and I deal with my son.

Hubbie then walks through the door from his four-day stag do and I look at him and realise I now have another child for the next few days.  It is not enough that he has had loads of booze and a lie-in, which frankly hasn’t happened together in my life for longer than I care to remember….. he overdid it in such a spectacular way that he has announced he must rest!  I smile and say welcome home darling (of course always so perfectly wifey in front of the kids and our nanny) revenge will come later, when no one can hear or see.  I love him dearly and he is a fab dad and husband but he has pushed it this time!

Kids bathed, shark story read and milk given.  The bath looks like a snowstorm of dust but at least Bertie has his lovely dark eyelashes back.  I pop them in their cots smothering them in small, medium and large size kisses as demanded by my son every night and head into my ‘resting husband’.  He is sound asleep in all his clothes.  I decide to leave him and head for a run to de-stress and plan for a meeting tomorrow.

We have an electrician popping round, who of course I have to deal with as hubbie is dead to the world. He asks all sorts of questions about fuse boxes and lumber cables.  I have absolutely no idea what this even means let alone if they exist in our home!

I need to head for an hour to a networking drinks event so I pop my dress back on and dust off the poo-stain with a baby wipe, cover myself in perfume and a scarf strategically placed and act as though I have just come from the office!

Two hours later I jump into bed for a restful sleep.  At about 3am I hear the wimper of little Lexie.  She rarely cries at night so it must be her teeth.  It feels like I have only just got to sleep.    I turn to my husband with a big grin on my face and sweetly shout in his ear ‘darling it is your turn’,  he opens one eye and then his dribbling mouth and begs me to see to her instead.  In his desperation he a says  ‘I will get you anything you want if you do it for me’  with that I bounce out of bed, administer some brick dust, smile and think about the latest Mulberry that I have been coveting. Lexie falls straight back to sleep now her little gums are soothed by the fizzing and I fall asleep dreaming sweetly of handbags.

The next morning I wake up at 6am with a spring in my step, I grab my ipad and type www.netaporter.com !