Tonight my daughter is sleeping in her own bedroom. I’ve never been able to say that before. Yes, she’s slept in a room with her bed and her things, but it hasn’t been truly hers until now.

It’s been a rough few years. When I had my daughter, I brought her home to the toxicity of my relationship with her father, in the studio we shared. She slept in a Moses basket suspended over our bed for a while. Until I discovered co sleeping was so much easier for us both. Then she had a travel cot she would spend a few hours in, before she’d wake and spend the rest of the night on my chest. I left my abusive ex early last year after his affair paid me a visit. How it is possible to be simultaneously devastated and relieved is still a little beyond me, but I can testify to the fact that it is indeed possible, and bewildering.

I took what I could carry of my daughter’s. It was weeks before he condescended to permit me any more of our belongings. We moved in with my parents, and shared a bedroom. Her cot, and then first bed squeezed in between my bed and the wall. Our possessions spilling into this space that was not ours, yet somehow we came to dominate. At night I would fold myself into her tiny bed and nurse her to sleep. Later, she would climb in with me, and there she would stay until morning.

Just before Christmas, the house was sold, and for a while, I had no idea where we would end up. Facing emergency and then temporary accommodation was unsettling enough for me, and I feared for the impact such transience would have on my daughter. Outwardly, I maintained that we would be fine: we would have one another, and that would be enough to get us through whatever changes life demanded of us. And I think that would have been true. But I’m lucky enough to have been spared the trial.

We moved into our current place the week before Christmas. Chaos abounded. She was adamant that she didn’t want to move; and wanted to live with nanny and grandad forever. My only bargaining tool was the promise that she would have her own bedroom. Her own space to play, and do in as she pleased.

On moving day, I stuck a Peppa Pig sticker on the wall, identifying it as her room. Hung Peppa curtains, laid a Peppa rug, and gave her new Peppa pyjamas. The rest of the place could wait: for that first day I feverishly unpacked every box of hers, determined that she would feel at home. While she slept, I unpacked the Christmas tree and set it atop unpacked boxes in the lounge, strung it with lights and charity shop baubles bought at the last minute. Her room and the lounge were all I focussed on. It was Christmas and I was damned if it wasn’t going to be festive and magical for her.

On our second morning here, I was lying in bed when she came in and announced she’d drawn a rainbow in her bedroom. I went to look, and true to her word, she’d drawn a huge rainbow across one wall with a freebie pack of restaurant crayons that had somehow ended up in one of her toy boxes. It was adorable, but I tried to explain to her that the walls aren’t for drawing on. She looked sad and said “But you said it was my room, and it is a beautiful rainbow”. I agreed that it was indeed beautiful, and as it was her room, we’d leave it on the wall, on the proviso that she kept her drawings to paper from now on.

Christmas Day was spent together. We visited family, her dad, and friends. And it was wonderful to come home at the end of a long day to our own place.

I’d still wake with her in my bed every morning. Most nights I’d wake when she padded in from her own bed. Sometimes I wouldn’t, and would jump when I woke to find her sleeping next to me.

She’d still ask when we could go back to the old house. And speak of how she wished we still lived with nanny and grandad. And it broke my heart every time. I so wanted her to feel at home here, with me, and to be enough for her. And I know she does really. That she just pines for the fun of having grandparents on tap. And for me to have the time to dedicate to sitting and playing. Now I have housework, cooking, laundry. All the stuff I could, and did, leave to my parents in favour of spending time with her, when we all lived together.

In May this year, we went to choose paint. She chose purple and silver and pink. These were the colours I would decorate her room in to finally make it her own. But as with everything in the past couple of years, this didn’t prove to be the simple redecoration I’d planned. I got ambitious with how much I wanted to change, and then suddenly I was waiting on plasterers and I was months down the line.

But today I finished. My boyfriend could see I was at the end of my tether with it, so called in a favour, and I accepted. I’m not very good at admitting when I need help. Nor at accepting it when it is offered. My stubborn insistence on doing things myself have probably contributed to “project bedroom” dragging for months. But this was my responsibility. I’m her mother, I was going to be the one to give her her first bedroom.

But things were getting too much. Her room had been uninhabitable since the end of July. I needed my bed back. I needed my lounge back from the mountain of her belongings it had disappeared under. And I needed some semblance of order back because chaos was looming, and I didn’t like how it was making me feel.

So today the carpet was changed, and the paintwork was finished. I spent the afternoon dressing and adding the finishing touches: bits that she and I had been choosing for “her new room” for months, and storing away for the day it would eventually be ready.

Today was that day. It’s not quite finished, but the jobs that remain are minor and manageable. Her things are still all over the lounge, pending a good sort out before they go back into her bedroom. And I’ve fallen behind on everything else I’m meant to have done / be doing.

But that’s all ok. The “Wow” when she walked in and saw it earlier made all that worth it. Yeah it should have been done months ago, but we got there in the end. And no I haven’t done it all by myself, but that’s ok too. There’s no shame in asking for, or accepting help. It takes a village to do a lot of things, and I’m learning to take the help graciously, rather than stubbornly plough myself into the ground.

And it’s beautiful! It’s not to everyone’s taste. It’s not really to mine to be honest. But it’s hers. Uniquely and wonderfully hers. For the first time in her life, she absolutely has her own bedroom.

It isn’t going to solve everything. It isn’t going to mean she stops missing her dad. It isn’t going to make her asking about him any easier. And it isn’t going to stop my nightmares. But tonight, I’m sitting on the floor of her room, in the glow of her fairy lights, listening to her sleeping, and I’m glowing with pride. I made this happen. I worked, and I laboured, I upcycled, and I bargain hunted, and I stepped up and asked for help, and got it done.

Single parenthood doesn’t feel quite so overwhelming today. For the first time, possibly in her life, I don’t feel guilty for winging it and flying by the seat of my pants everyday. I’m actually doing ok.