And that's why you shouldn't travel long distance with small babies

With the cot bed debacle and mile high tantrums behind me, I thought the hardest part of our trip back from Europe was over, but hooooooo no.

In fact bambino was quite well behaved on the plane, chatting away with 7-month-old Octave, who was sitting next to us, and smiling at everyone who passed the cot, including my elderly neighbour who thought I needed her advice about everything. In fact she literally grabbed him from me when she saw me sitting him up, telling me that I was doing permanent damage to his spine. Needless to say, I didn't close my eyes for the duration of the flight, just in case she decided to sneak him some orange juice while I slept or something.

Once in dried seafood street (nothing like dehydrated abalone to remind you that you're back in Hong Kong) I even managed to get the suitcase up the stairs alone (well, actually, someone else carried it for me, but you know), and when I closed the door behind me, I was quite pleased to be home.

But then I sat down. And the tiredness kicked in, my eyelids suddenly feeling like they had been cast in the heaviest iron. And for the next 12 hours, I fought to keep them open while Oscar laughed and squealed and demanded to be picked up.

Around bedtime I tried to put him to sleep, to no avail, until he started whinging pretty loudly, probably wondering why I had shut him in a dark room when it was only 3pm back in Frrance. This continued throughout the night, with me just falling asleep for five minutes until he woke me up with a cry. Carrying a 7kg packet around at 3am when it's all you can do to just stand up demands a level of effort I hadn't even imagined until now.

It's one (very difficult) thing dealing with jet lag, it's an entirely different thing dealing with my baby's while dealing with my own.

Hopefully it'll all be back in order soon (some websites reckon it takes babies up to two weeks to adjust; please, no...) and I can enjoy Hong Kong again. Once I get used to the noise and the people jumping queues and the stifling heat of typhoon season, that is...