Christmas has been celebrated, the Three Kings have come and gone, presents have been opened and now the children are back at school, leaving me to enjoy my maternity leave with my new baby.

All three weeks of it. Hang on a minute, I have a baby who is three months old today, who still wakes in the night, every night, to feed and in just 21 days she and I are supposedly ready to be separated so that I can go back to work? In Spain 16 weeks or 112 days is considered sufficient time to care for and bond with your new baby.

So what about breastfeeding? Aren’t we being told that ‘breast is best’? Yes, even here in Spain the doctors are becoming more and more pro-breastfeeding. So how exactly am I supposed to continue giving my baby the best start in life while going back to work?

Truth be told I’m one of the lucky ones as my work is quite flexible and I think, if I organise myself well (not one of my strong points though) I should be able to get through the two months until she starts on solids, with a combination of feeding and expressing.