A 23-year-old mother who was arrested Friday over the death of her two toddlers at their apartment in the city of Osaka after apparently neglecting them has told investigators that she wanted time for herself, police sources said Saturday.

Sanae Shimomura was quoted as saying she had "got sick of feeding them and giving them a bath" since moving to the apartment in around January when she began working at a sex parlor after getting divorced in May last year.

She was arrested on suspicion of abandoning the bodies of her 3-year- old daughter Sakurako and 1-year-old son Kaede in late June. Autopsies found that they died around June after several days without food, according to the police.

She allegedly disappeared from home in late June, leaving behind the two children, and was also quoted as telling the investigators, "I thought about a week later they might be dead," but that "I didn't feel like I should return home to save them."

It was only this Thursday when Shimomura, who had been moving between friends' places, returned home to find the kids' bodies rotting, a day before their naked corpses were found by police officers, the police said.

They made the discovery after a report by her male colleague who had been contacted by the apartment's caretaker, the police said.

Her 49-year-old father, meanwhile, told Kyodo News that he had not been in contact with his daughter nor met his grandchildren for more than a year since her divorce.

Shimomura moved from Mie Prefecture to Osaka Prefecture after her marriage in December 2006, according to the police. The apartment at which she lived with her children is used as a dormitory by the sex parlor she worked for, they said.