Nausea, sleepless nights, tantrums and tummy aches: I just don't think I'm cut out for nursery. I wasn't ready for it when I was three and I'm still not ready for it now at the age of... considerably older than three.

My mother still shudders whenever nursery is mentioned. She points at me with a quivering finger whenever the subject is raised and just says "you, young lady, you were, my God, you" in a hoarse stage whisper before falling back against her cushion in something akin to a Victorian fainting fit.

I was - allegedly - not too keen on being left at nursery and would scream until puce in the face with what looked uncannily like two church candles dangling from my nose. Then after my mother had managed to prise herself gently from my vice-like grip, with a crowbar or other handy implement, and had escaped out of the building, she would still be able to hear me banging on the door and howling as she stood at the bus stop some 200 yards down the road.

Unfortunately, the Munchkin seems to be taking after me. Maybe I am giving out negative vibes about nursery or perhaps it is some genetic defect that makes us both violently allergic to stickle-bricks and sandpits, but whatever the reason, he is having none of it at the moment.

He leaves the house in a perfectly jovial mood on the two mornings I take him to nursery and chats away quite happily about what he is going to do when he gets there. Meanwhile, I sit in the front seat of the car with a rigid smile on my face making fascinating ripostes like "ooh, that sounds smashing" and "wow, you're going to have such fun" while trying not to be sick with nerves on his behalf.

We arrive at nursery - a lovely purpose-built affair with more toys than Hamleys and cheerful staff who could give Mary Poppins a run for her money - and he skips in, takes off his coat, slings it at me and trots up the stairs to pre-school.

Then it is time for me to say goodbye. Not that I have ever left the building so far, mind you, I'm still at the stage of hovering in reception watching the Munchkin's progress on CCTV. And not that I have actually said goodbye yet either: it is more a case of the staff distracting my now quiet and quivery-lipped boy while I sneak out the door and slope off down the corridor.

What happens next is not pretty. There are tears, screaming, yelling and choking sobs that have on occasion been known to lead to actual vomiting. And before you ask, I'm talking about him here, not me.

He just won't give in to the inevitable. Even though he is only three, he already seems to realise that his time as the most important person in his own little world is coming to an end and that a new era, an era in which he is just one of many in a nursery group, a class or in a workforce, is dawning.

And it is all my fault. That's what being a mum is all about. When you sign on the dotted line for kids, you sign yourself up for a lifetime's supply of guilt too.

It goes with the territory and no one is exempt because there is no right way of doing it. I feel guilty for not taking my son to nursery earlier so he could get used to the idea before becoming a more militant three-year-old. But my friend whose daughter has attended nursery from about the age of one feels guilty because she feels she has lost some precious time with her child.

We're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. Whatever we do, the guilt is always going to be lurking round the corner, so we might as well just do what we damn well like.

I'm sure when the Munchkin is married with six kids and a Volvo, I will still be beating myself up about not breast-feeding him for longer or for working when I should have been baking my own socks and knitting my own bread.

But by then he will be sending his own little monsters to nursery and I will be the one pointing the quivering finger, whispering "you, young man" and falling into a dramatic faint. Well, an old lady's got to have a hobby I suppose.

Updated: 09:33 Tuesday, February 05, 2002