I saw a comic the other day that made me chuckle. A new mom opens her apartment door, newborn in one arm, another kid peering out next to her. The visitor — the grim reaper. “Relax, I’m just here for your career!” he says. I laughed, not a wholesome ‘this-is-hilarious’ laugh, rather the laugh of morbid disbelief. The illustrator succinctly captured the deepest, rawest, most disturbing reality of motherhood in the twenty-first century. Obviously, this comic was drawn by a woman, and I’m hitting myself on the head for not having archived it, because I’m unable to find it now. It’s among my many research oversights; part of the malaise of being forced to underperform as a home-office-going mother.

My difficulties with productivity have been compounded by my recent diagnosis of postpartum Hashimoto’s thyroiditis — a chronic autoimmune disease that many women find themselves with after having given birth. In short, my body decided that my thyroid gland was an enemy and attacked it. Now, I need to take a certain milligram of the hormone it would have otherwise produced in order to keep my body and its metabolism in working order. It’s annoying, because I need to take blood tests every three months to measure TSH levels. For the rest of my life, I need to medicate myself every morning on an empty stomach and wait for a 30-minute interval before I can eat. On weekends, I’ve been prescribed a slightly higher dosage. For a long time, I was sure I had no symptoms, but then I read that the fatigue I have been experiencing of late could be attributed to the disease. Speaking to the editor of the German edition of my upcoming book — a mother now navigating menopause who has also had the disease for many years — I wondered whether the fatigue is a symptom or simply the consequence of parenting amid the absence of a robust support system. I’m not gutted about my diagnosis, because among the larger array of chronic diseases, this is perhaps the better one to have. It’s easier to manage and I’m privileged to be living in a place where the chronic nature of the condition means I don’t have to pay for the medication or for my visits to the endocrinologist, or for the blood tests. Still, it’s hard not to read this disease as the grim reaper who has come for my career. Where before, I would try to slink into a book around 8.30 pm, when both kids were asleep, now I sit on the sofa, unable to even enjoy a second of leisure. There’s a tiredness that runs through my bones that I’m still learning to shake off.