2024 Olympic Games: Helen Glover aims to be 'best athlete and best mum'
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Helen Glover (left) and Heather Stanning won Team GB's first gold medal at London 2012 in the women's pair
"Most days it's just absolute carnage to be honest, it really is getting through the days - you can plan a perfect day and it very rarely happens."
Helen Glover's words will strike a chord with thousands of parents with young children, although few of them will be aiming for an Olympic medal this summer.
The 37-year-old is on course for her fourth Olympic Games in Paris having twice retired, only to come back each time thanks to the lure of the five rings.
Now Cornwall's Glover, who has a five-year-old son and four-year-old twins (a boy and a girl) with husband and TV naturalist Steve Backshall, is hoping to add to the pairs gold medals she won at London 2012 and in Rio four years later - but she knows it will not be easy.
"Every Olympics has has been a really different goal and motivation for me," she told BBC Radio Cornwall.
"The first Olympics winning gold was the absolute dream, and then in Rio to sustain that and back that up with another gold was what drove me.
"Then I left the sport, I had four years off, retired, started a family, had three children and then coming back in that final year was almost more of a statement, saying 'I can do this, anyone can do this after having kids'.
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"Now this one is a little bit more about I've shown that it can be done, now let's do it as well as possible.
"I'd love to come away with a medal, I'd love to be on that podium.
"I've kind of got that eye a little bit more on performance, but I want to be the best athlete I can be alongside the best mum I can be - that challenge and that balance is what motivates me now."
Glover's journey in rowing began late - she was picked up by UK Sport's Sporting Giants programme as a 21-year-old.
The scheme was designed to find sports people who may be suitable to a different sport in the run-up to London hosting the Olympics 12 years ago and Glover, who was seen as a good all-rounder at school and university, was selected after going for trials.
Now she has three golds among six World Championship medals - the latest a bronze in Belgrade last year - plus four European golds to go alongside her two Olympic titles.
But she is still not finished. Last summer she was part of the women's four that won European silver and a podium in Paris is not out of the question.
European Rowing Championships: Glover helps Romania Great Britain win women's four silver
But she will be 38 by the time the Olympics come around and says it will be the final chapter of a stellar career - for someone who for much of their life had never picked up an oar.
"I feel like I should never say never now because I've retired twice - once after Rio and once after Tokyo, so I guess this is my third comeback," Glover added.
"But I think so, it feels like the right time and it's time where I definitely want to be a little more grounded at home for the children and things like that."