This is how much it costs to be a working mother

I can’t afford to work full time, writes Rosamund Hall. My partner and I are both self-employed and the eye-watering cost of childcare would leave us with less than nothing after we’ve paid our monthly bills. Full-time nursery – plus wrap-around care – would set us back £1,600 per month

‘The secretary of state for education, Gillian Keegan, says a new childcare package, which will be rolled out in April, will help mothers like me afford to work again’ (Getty)

Every single day begins in the same way: I go downstairs to put the heating on, listening for the boiler to fire up; breathing my daily sigh of relief that it’s not conked out again – at £250 a time to fix, it’s something that we can’t afford to have happen.

My partner, meanwhile, cracks on with nappy changes, dressing our boisterous two-year-old and playing “hiding under the covers”, while I make breakfast. The mornings are better now it’s light at 6.30am. Everything feels so much harder when it’s still dark.

I feel like Mummy Bear: getting the porridge bowls out of the dishwasher from the day before, lining them up in their places before I start preparing our breakfast, each of them slightly different. This aching monotony used to make me feel so frustrated. I couldn’t understand how I’d gone from a “footloose and fancy-free” woman with a buzzing career – only answerable to myself – to living a day-to-day life punctuated by inputs (food for my child) and outputs (this should be obvious).