Before you have children, your life is awash with fulfilling great expectations. Far-flung trips, promotion at work and designer shoes or handbags and a nice lip gloss or posh face cream all tick the happiness box. Post-reproduction, we mums get our kicks from the small things in life…such as:

• Someone, anyone, cooks you dinner. Even if it is a microwaved jacket potato with baked beans and cheese, you are insanely grateful.
• Any performance by any of your children in any sport, show or school thingy.
• A squashed dandelion or daisy from a sticky little hand, whose owner announces: “I’ve picked this for you, Mummy, because I love you”. Never mind that it’s wilting and near where that dog just did its business. – My 6 year old loves to pick flowers for me and I HAVE to keep them until he has forgotten about them!
• Eating a meal, or drinking a drink without either having to breastfeed or wipe someone’s bottom or nose halfway through.
• A hangover-free weekend. Bit boring on Friday and Saturday nights but worth that high when you wake up feeling as good as it’s possible to feel with four children who always get up at 6am whatever day it is (although having said that sleep deprivation can feel like a hangover sometimes)
• The children ask to go to bed. So rare, it’s officially the most potent form of ‘legal’ bliss going. So far only my eldest has made this request!
• Being left alone long enough to let your nail varnish dry so it doesn’t go smudgy when one of the children asks you to immediately perform a most urgent task for them.
• Eating outside weather, ensuring that rather than you needing to sweep, mop and vacuum the floor you can say… “don’t worry the birds will eat it”! – Ah, I love these times!
• Having fought all the way to a particular destination in the car, the children behave impeccably when it matters.
• Being told “you’re beautiful, Mummy” or “I love you Mummy” for no reason – again my 6 year old is an expert at this.
• Having a drink which is still hot when you finish it.
• Relaxing in the bath for a whole ten minutes, unpolluted by those who magically need a poo when you turn on the taps.
• A scrawly egg-person drawing of the family which has a larger-than-life mummy smack-bang in the middle.
• Hearing your child’s voice above all the others on the school yard at the end of the day as they run towards you and into your arms.

Being a mummy rocks!