Fiona Gibson finds her other half has no idea what it’s like to be home alone with the children

My partner arrived home after a hectic day at work. He flopped onto the sofa and launched into a 10-minute rant about meetings-gone-wrong and confrontations with colleagues. Finally, he wound up. Pause. Then, hastily, ‘So what have you been doing today?’

‘What, me? Oh, nothing.’

With three children under four, my day had hardly been a seamless round of manicures and reflexology treatments. I didn’t get to breakfast until 11.30am. The house looked like some crime-scene reconstruction: ‘And see how the thieves smeared banana onto every available surface and pulled all the books from the bookshelves. The owner is understandably distraught – especially as she's been trying to tidy up all day.’

By the time my partner arrived home at 7.00pm, I had been on kiddie patrol for 13 hours. Like most stay-at-home mothers, I do not expect a daily ‘well done’ or spontaneous applause from my beloved. But I wonder why I always say, ‘Oh, nothing.’

It's a tricky business, being on baby watch, while partner scoots off to his whizzy (paid) job. Our set-up feels faintly old-fashioned. Rather irksomely, it is also assumed that full-time-mother devotes a generous chunk of her day to nibbling slabs of Galaxy, while on the phone to friends. My partner once suggested that, should my afternoons gape with yawning inactivity, I might ‘knock up a few pasta sauces and freeze them.’ He appeared bewildered when I stormed upstairs, slammed a door or two and muttered the word ‘solicitor’. It's not his fault. Working fathers genuinely have not the haziest notion of what we get up to. We might share edited highlights (‘Our baby took his first steps today!’) but cannot bear to discuss the mundane (‘I used a handy sponge-on-a-stick device to shift poster paint from the rug.’).

‘My partner assumes I watch all those dreadful daytime soaps,’ shudders a friend with daughters aged three and 20 months. ‘He thinks he’s being helpful by suggesting little jobs I could do. Like, the other morning, just as he dashed out, he said, ‘If you're stuck for something to do today, perhaps you could find my dressing gown cord.’

How about he stays at home cord-hunting, while she escapes kiddie hell for a quiet, shiny office? I have considered this option. The frisson I experience when imagining myself on the phone with no one tugging at the cord is not unlike orgasm. But when I suggest a switching of roles, my partner looks as if he might vomit.

Admittedly, staying at home with the children was largely my decision; work, I decided, could wait. My career need not wither and die if I took three or four years' break.

Yes, I still miss my company car – in fact, any car without apple cores slowly putrefying in the back – but I have no wish to hurry back, leaving a nanny to do all the fun stuff.

Sometimes, though, I come over all dreamy when I remember the working world: a proper lunchbreak, not merely snatching a cold fish finger from a child's plate, and having a reason to wear lipstick. In the workplace, you can mooch and even snooze for part of the day when you're tired/hungover/alone in the office. Doze off while in charge of children and they'll be out through a bedroom window, abseiling down the side of the house.

In contrast, the 9-5 was a doddle. When my boss asked what I achieved that day, I would blithely report that I had examined market potential and implemented a new appraisal structure designed to maximise motivation.

Which, roughly translated, means, 'Nothing.'