Fear not, new mothers. Having a baby need not be a barrier to a career. When New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave birth last week and the world got drunk on what this, ergo, means for all women, Wide Awoke was delivered this “empowering” memo over and over again. You, too, can expel a tiny dependant from your body and be back up and running a country in six weeks. Inspiring, no?

Then reality kicks in. Sometimes, having a baby can be a barrier to getting dressed. Routinely, it is a barrier to earning a living. My youngest is 10 months old, my state maternity pay has run out and I’m looking after the baby and working in any free moment I can. Being a stay-at-home parent, as Ardern’s partner, Clarke Gayford, will be after she returns to work, is not an option for me, my partner or most people. Neither, for us, is full-time childcare in the UK, one of the most expensive countries in the world in that regard. Then there’s the matter of choice: I want to look after my baby. My partner and I want to work flexibly. I would have been terrified at the thought of returning to work after six weeks.

For those of us looking after babies in a society where workplace discrimination against mothers is standard, there is a disconnect between news affirming the victory of feminist choice and the domestic reality. Yes, it’s inspiring that Ardern is smashing glass ceilings, but the fact that she is only the second serving prime minister in history to give birth (Benazir Bhutto was the first) reveals she is the exception, not the rule.

The rule? Mostly exhaustion, love, loneliness and toilet humour. Recalling that you used to be a person who went to a place called “work” where adults sit down, drink warm beverages, get paid and don’t burst in on each other on the toilet shouting: “ARE YOU DOING A POO?!” The rule is job insecurity. Feeling distressed about being separated from your baby or desperate to return to work. Perhaps both. The rule is guilt.

Hidden behind the valorising of returning to work asap is an implicit denigration of the much harder graft of looking after a baby full-time. So, Wide Awoke is here to remind all the mothers who are not running countries or winning tennis matches in catsuits, whose bodies are not “snapping back” and who are not returning to work after six weeks, that you, too, are inspiring. Looking after a baby in a society that doesn’t care is more than enough.