I wore a dress this morning. Nothing dramatic, just a dress instead of the usual jeans-and-tshirt uniform of the school run. My daughter looked me up and down at the front door, in her own uniform, and asked: why don’t you have to wear a school uniform?

I gave her the answer that I could think of as we rushed out the house. “I’ve done my school. When you grow up, you get to wear whatever you want.” She seemed satisfied with that. Phew! And I walked her in thinking, well, that’s the promise, isn’t it? That’s what we tell them growing up is. You get to choose, you get to wear the dress. What I didn’t tell her is that there’s still a uniform. You just can’t see it. Nobody hands it to you, nobody irons it, and there is no end of term. It’s the version of you that gets up regardless.

Because this week, the children have had a cold, with a cough that starts the moment they lie down, the call from the other room in the middle of the night, the tissues, the water, sitting on the edge of the bed with a hand on a hot little back until the breathing settles. Then the other one wakes (and in my case, a third one too). So I didn’t sleep, of course. All parents reading this know the drill.

And then it was morning, and a meeting to get to and emails that had arrived from people who had slept. So I put the dress on, partly because it was clean, partly because it was the only thing that morning that made me feel presentable this morning.

But tough. That’s the phrase, isn’t it? That’s what we say to ourselves. Nobody gives you a sick day from motherhood, and nobody gives you a tired day either. You don’t ring in. To who? Which brings me to the question that we ask ourselves often: who mothers the mother?

When they’re ill, I’m the one who knows which medicine, which cup, which cough is nothing and which cough isn’t. When I’m ill, or just running on empty, the day carries on exactly as it would have. Last week I wrote about the village we’ve lost, and this is where you feel it most. Not in the big moments, but at 3am, when you’d give anything for someone to say go back to bed, I’ve got this.

And then there’s 5pm. By 5pm, the woman in the dress has gone. What’s left is the 5pm mother, and she is not the one I want my children to remember. She’s short. She’s sighing. She says just put your shoes where they go in a voice a notch too sharp, over something that doesn’t matter at all. It’s not that she doesn’t love them. It’s that everything she had went somewhere else first: the meeting, the replies, the night before. They get what’s left over, and by five o’clock there isn’t much.

The worst part comes later, when they’re asleep and look like babies again, and you stand in the doorway replaying it. How sweet they look, as you take a breathe in, thinking and feeling like you’ve won the marathon.

What I’m trying to learn, and I’m not there yet, is that the snap isn’t the end of the story. The repair is. The next morning, over breakfast: I was tired and I was cross, and that wasn’t about you. I’m sorry. Children don’t need a mother who never runs out. They need one who comes back. So this week, less about coping and more about being looked after, even if, for now, it has to be by you:

Answer honestly, once. Next time someone asks how you are, tell one person the truth. “Tired. The kids have been ill. I haven’t slept.” It isn’t complaining. It’s letting someone in.

Lower the bar in a sick-house week. Freezer dinners, extra screen time. None of that is failing.

If there’s anyone to hand over to, let them. A partner, a grandparent, the aunt who offered. And use it to sleep, not to clear admin.

Do the repair. If the 5pm mother made an appearance, say sorry at breakfast. It’s one of the most useful things you’ll ever teach them.

Keep one thing that’s yours. A walk, a coffee drunk while it’s still hot, a dress on a weekday for no reason at all. It counts.

My daughter thinks growing up means you get to wear what you want. She’s right, in a way. I just hope that when she’s grown, and it’s her on the edge of a bed at 3am, someone is there to mother her too.

Sheena