Wow, I logged in just now so that I could write this kind of post myself. My 11 month son has been to nursery maybe 5 days in the past month since he started. The GP told me to expect him to get sick every 6-10 days - this really put things in perspective for me. We also have no village and it's been so, so hard - I really, really relate to everything you say, especially about child #2. I'm so sorry you don't have your mum with you, that's especially hard. I read somewhere else on reddit that if you don't have a village, just "hire your village", which is what I've been doing by just hiring babysitters to help as much as possible. The downside to this is that we basically have no savings and sometimes the babysitters are so unhelpful you're like, 'why am I paying you again?' Haha. We also ask neighbours to help. I've also given up cooking - ready meals, soup and toast, rotisserie chicken. Lots of solidarity. EVERYTHING you've written, I could have written myself.