34 Frozen Peas

What would mothers do without frozen peas? You've just got home, your little one is starving and you're down to a slice of manky ham, half a Babybel, the usual pasta screws (you never allow yourself to run out of those) and you know you ought to give your little darling some vegetables but you didn't get a chance to visit the organic greengrocers* in between racing between nursery, bus, train and work [check emails, look busy, munch lunch, check emails, look busy], then train, then bus, then nursery and then home. Not if you live in the back end of arsewhere anyway. Because your corner shop doesn't stock vegetables seeing as the locals survive well enough on kebabs. But enough digression already.

So we grind out the bottom drawer of the freezer (when will you ever have time to defrost that damn receptacle again?) and tumble some peas into a garish coloured Ikea kids bowl (every mummy has a set of these, it's mandatory), shove it in the micro. Bob's your gay uncle, you have something resembling a meal without so much as breaking into a sweat. Of course, that's if your 2-year-old hasn't yet developed that peculiar aversion to anything 'green' which afflicts 75% of all toddlers at some stage or another. In which case just keep a bottle of food colouring handy. Purple works a treat. Or go the sweetcorn route - another sure-thing standby. There isn't a kid under 5 who doesn't love the yellow stuff - fact.

*mythical outlets of overpriced superhealthy food which were invented by health columnists and baby guide authors to make mummies feel guilty for feeding their precious ones frozen peas

33 Day nurseries that stay open late

What is it with nurseries and their crazy opening hours? Perhaps it’s just the ones near where I live, but none of them seem to stay open past 6pm. That's if you're lucky. If you're unlucky, it's 5pm.

I’ve never ever had a job where I didn’t have the best part of an hour commute door-to-door. And I’ve never had a job where I finished working before 5.30pm, usually 6pm. Even when home time arrives, there is the obligatory few minutes where you round off the day’s tasks, shuffle papers and basically try not to look like a work-shy clockwatcher who’s waiting for the big hand to hit the six.

Shooting out of the door on the dot of half five is frowned upon in many offices - so really we’re talking about a working day that ends at 5.45pm or 6.15pm. OK, that gives me two minutes to get out of the building, 12 minutes to fly home and one minute’s grace before we go into bank-busting overtime. Now where did I leave my time machine?

Who exactly are those mothers who finish work at 5pm then make the leisurely ten minute stroll to their nursery? What do they all do? Where do they work (and can they give me a job)? Do they just spend their days shopping? This a mystery I have yet to solve.

Life is hard enough for working mothers. We go to the office, half-dead from lack of sleep, with porridge on our sleeves and snot in our hair. We have to apply mascara on the Tube, while other people stare at us. Commuting should be a break for us, a chance for us to catch up on reading trashy novels and London Lite. Not 45 minutes of blind panic and shallow breathing as we will the Central Line not to grind to a shuddering halt yet again. We need nurseries with long opening hours, so we don’t arrive at the gates panting and sweating, and then find we’re being charged another tenner for those extra five minutes after all.

Maybe longer hours would be tough on nursery staff. But aren’t they supposed to be providing a service for the rest of us? Couldn’t they work shifts? Or are we the only people out there with such difficult lives? Answers to these questions and more on a postcard…

32 Watching Loose Women with the subtitles on

For me, it all started a couple of years back with Deadwood. For those unfamiliar with this superior US drama, it’s set in a lawless 1870s goldrush camp and stars Ian ‘Lovejoy’ McShane as a Machiavellian saloon owner. Pride and Prejudice this ain’t, with profuse swearing and brothels on every corner. The language that the characters speak is almost Shakespearian in its eloquence and wit, some of it apparently even written in iambic pentameters – and with subtitles on I found I was able to appreciate it to a whole new level. Then came The Wire. I had no idea what the hell was going on at the start, only that it looked a bit scary. But the jargon of Baltimore's inner city drug runners suddenly became poetic – rather than plain incomprehensible – with the subtitles switched permanently to ‘on’. Before long I was watching loads of things with subtitles on – films, Frasier, Mad Men.

And then I had my baby and subtitles really came into their own. With the constant crying, gurgling, babbling and plinky tunes that now forms the background noise of life, subtitles are no longer handy for catching those missed witticisms and asides, they are darn well crucial for following the plot. OK, I know Loose Women doesn’t have a plot but you know what I mean (actually live subtitles tend to be annoyingly hit and miss, it has to be said - see above image).

Now if I don’t have subtitles on for anything other than Teletubbies, I feel I am trying to play snooker underwater or the piano blind-folded. I never realised quite how much dialogue I missed before as 'method' actors fashionably mumble, grunt and slur their way through scripts. For instance, the brilliant new 30 Rock on Five USA doesn't have subtitles, unlike the DVD box set - and I find it irritating beyond belief when I do miss the odd line here and there.

Anyway. Subtitles. Try them. I promise you’ll be hooked before you know it too.

31 Big Slobbery Kisses

Nobody in their right mind would enjoy being slobbered and schlicked by an over-salivating old aunt. But switch the aunt for your bubba and - my oh my. Bring it on. We can't help it, we go weak at the knees, we go all gooey in our brains and we go all slush-puppy in our hearts. There's nothing like your first smacker from your little one. And once they learn how to make you melt they have you round their little pudgy fingers. So what if it's 6am and you know any minute the first tantrum of the day will screech its way around the corner. She's sucking your ear, slobbering your nose and squelching your eyes with an "I love you Mummy" to break your heart. And all you can think is: So. This. Is. Why. We. Do. It.

30 Mistresses

'Mistresses' is great. It features sassy, older female characters misbehaving horribly, and is utterly brainless. In short, it's perfect veg-out-after-four-hours-sleep evening telly.

However, I don't know if this struck anyone else as so brilliantly laughable as to be insane, but the new series also features a character, Siobhan, who has a young baby - possibly six-months-old judging by the size of her (and we new mums love to endlessly analyze TV babies).

At night, when baby has gone to sleep and her unsuspecting husband is similarly out for the count, Siobhan sneaks out of the house, hangs out in upmarket hotel bars and picks up strange men, before having hot, nameless sex with them. She then pops back home again, and slips back into bed, where hubby is still snoring. All without once checking the baby monitor.

Obviously I understand this is a mainstream BBC1 drama and not to be confused with real life in any shape or form. But even so. At six months after the birth, most of us are just about getting used to sex with our own partners let alone sharing our episiotomy scars and taking our clothes off in front of complete strangers. The idea that after months of deliriously wide-eyed nights, when our darling baby is finally sleeping through, we would then actually want to dress up to the nines (in the dark mind, with full make-up), and drive off into the night for a bit on the side is too fantastical for words. Most days we don't even put lip-balm on. And what happens when, inevitably, baby wakes up at 2am? Sorry angel, Mummy was too darn busy getting jiggy with that creepy older guy in room 402 to worry about changing your nappy or feeding you. But don't worry, she'll probably be back in the morning, just looking a teeny bit worse for wear. And smelling of unfamiliar aftershave.

Of course, this is partly why we like 'Mistresses'. We may not actually want to be Siobhan. We would frankly much rather have another ten minutes shut-eye than a meaningless brief encounter in some godforsaken Travelodge. But we like the fact that she is supposed to be a new mum who is still sexy and still being naughty. It just makes us feel a bit exhausted watching her.

29 YSL Touche Eclat

The question isn't what do we do with it. The question is, what would we do without it?

A miracle cream? That may be a slight overstatement. But it's a jolly good item of make-up that is pretty much essential for any new mummy.

Of course, pre-baby I already used YSL Touche Eclat. I'd already succumbed to the near enough blanket coverage in any women's mag I've ever read. But I couldn't truly see the reason why it was raved about. I'd use it to make myself look a little fresher on a night out. I'd use it after a late night made me look a tad shadowy under the eyes. But after a while I'd kind of forget about it and it would languish at the bottom of my make-up bag.

The truth is, I was never tired enough to appreciate the incredible way it makes you look, well, eye-bright alive! As opposed to eye-sunken dead. You see, if you've been in and out of bed like a flipping yo-yo all night to breastfeed/change nappy/soothe/rock/walk around bouncing baby/stop toddler bouncing on top of you, and so on, ad finitum, come 6am you look like you would be more at home in a morgue. But slide some of that stuff underneath your eyes and dab on a bit of blusher, and you can just about fake it for another day.

28 Strangers who ignore your baby crying

I’ll never forget my first trip to the supermarket when my weeks-old son started screaming his tiny little head off. A passer-by with copious amounts of time on her hands helpfully pointed out that he seemed ‘very upset’. Not having been struck deaf and blind a moment earlier, I could only, mortified, agree with her before slinking off down the chilled meats aisle and making a quick exit.

Here's a helpful tip for complete strangers who decide to inform stressed-out new mums that their baby is obviously a) hungry b) tired c) cold d) crying. Don’t.
Anyway a) He isn’t hungry because he has probably just necked half a pint of Aptimel or breast milk. b) He isn’t tired as he’s been sleeping all morning (just not a single millisecond during the night, but we won't go into that). c) He isn’t cold; like most babies he just has cold hands and anyway last time I looked we didn’t live in Antarctica which means he doesn’t need to be swaddled in 20 layers of fleeces, blankets or miniature shell suits. d) Ok, you’ve got a point he is crying. That’s because he’s a baby. You’re blocking my way. Bye!

27 Doorway baby bouncers

Imagine a baby sitter who didn’t charge you ridiculous rates. Who popped round immediately whenever you needed to have a bath or make some proper coffee. And who wasn’t a female relative/in-law who subtly implied, with her very presence, all the many ways in which you were failing as a mother and raising your baby to be a backwards sociopath.

That in a nutshell is the beauty of the doorway baby bouncer. This marvellous contraption is a fabulous way to reclaim just a little me-time in the sea of changing nappies, doing laundry and sterilising bottles that occupies your baby‘s first year. It means five minutes off from having to be a pitiful Mr Tumble impersonator, or reading that bloody book about the brown hares who love each other, one more time.

OK, the osteopathic community might be in two minds about whether it’s bad for your baby’s hip joints. So we suggest you don’t leave him or her in the bouncer for, say, the entire duration of This Morning, Loose Women and Murder She Wrote. Fifteen minutes will probably suffice. And I have to confess, my son developed a disturbing after-effect whereby he would bounce around on any surface you placed him on for days afterwards, like a disturbed meercat at the zoo. (I can only think it was like that dizzy seasick feeling you get hours after going on a particularly vigorous fairground ride.)

But all things considered, for a few minutes’ peace, baby bouncers are well worth the money. Do it. Just, for heaven’s sake, make sure the thing is hanging in the middle of the doorway, so they don’t repeatedly bash their tiny little skulls against the frame…

26 Talking About Babies (2)

We like talking about babies because if we didn't we'd explode. Unlike our days pre-mummyhood, which were semi-predictable and comprehensible in comparison (and dang it, didn't we blabber anyway - bluddy work, bluddy tube, bluddy wobbly tummy), our days post-baby are impossible to predict and thoroughly flummoxing (bluddy potty training, bluddy buggy, bluddy wobbly tummy). If we couldn't blather on about it to somebody else (mummy or not) we'd end up, probably, chewing temazepam to keep our mouths busy with something. Which women did, in droves, before we woke up to the fact that - actually - we COULD admit to ourselves that motherhood was just slightly more difficult than we'd presupposed.

At around the same time being a mother was accepted as a valid 'role', society realised that children and babies weren't only to be 'seen and not heard' but little people with real feelings. Instead of leaving them at the bottom of the garden to 'exercise their lungs' mothers went with them to the bottom of the garden and pointed out the flowers. So sue us that we found our 10-month-old's first word "fowa" as cute. At least we heard them. And instead of smacking them into submission we cared to find some other ways of disciplining. Ones that involved rather more thought - and, woe betide us - some discussion with others! And, for better or worse, advice gleaned from books and websites.

And we talk about babies because we have to. Modern motherhood is a talking point because today's hi-tech fast-food world is frought with obstacles and contradictions. We are harangued to breastfeed from the off but are treated as pariahs in public life when we do. We are told to get back to work and pop the poppets into pre-school at 2 years old [never mind the finances never add up]. Next day we're told we're selfish cows for wanting some independence and to go home and knit some sustainable wool nappies [this time the finances definitely don't add up]. We are told by our own mothers we're doing everything wrong and are told by society we are doing everything wrong. Is there any surprise we have a little chat amongst ourselves?

Yes, there's a point at which we even bore ourselves. But if you're mothering 24/7, isolated in your corner of a big city, sites like Mumsnet can provide true solace and - incredibly - conversation NOT about babies including movies, celeb gossip and jobs. Meanwhile you'd hope your good friends would put up with your witterings in the same way you put up with their endless boyf troubles and 'search for the perfect pair of jeans' saga. Suffice to say, broadsheet bints who blather on about the latest glossy members-only bar or their obsession with 80s clothing would probably become the worst baby-bores of all, endlessly comparing this season's Bugaboo fabrics and whether to update their latest armcandy, sorry, baby with the latest eco-trend.

26 Talking about babies (1)

Following on from the last entry. Of course, we also like talking about babies. While certain members of the broadsheet press (see Observer Woman last week), apparently suffering from terminal lack of empathy, might find this irredeemably dull and offensive, we like talking about babies because having a baby is a completely life-changing experience and frankly, it’d be weird if we didn’t ever talk about it to our friends. Especially within the first few months, when your world is turned completely upside down.

To couch it in terms that such journos might understand, imagine if you had a really important new job, and didn’t discuss it at great length with your bezzy mates. Or were in a terrible car accident. Or fell head over heels in love with a fantastic guy. Or, I don’t know, you went to a really, really GREAT bar (at last, a comparison they might understand). They might think you weren’t really their friend anymore, that you didn’t want to share the important details of your life. And if your pals seemed unbelievably bored by the details of your amazing new job or boyfriend, perhaps even slagged off the fact you’d talked about it a little bit too much, say, in a newspaper column, you might then reassess that friendship. Possibly. Or just think they were incredibly self-obsessed and not-very-nice people.

To be clear: Just because we are mothers and talk about our babies to a greater or lesser extent, doesn’t mean we have all transformed into brain-dead, lactating cows with no outside interests. Even we get bored by other mothers talking about babies sometimes. Guess what? Some people are just boring, parents or not.

And the thing is - we truly don't care if our own friends have children or not. If we get on with someone, we get on with them, regardless of our progeny. OK, if they do have kids, we might have extra common ground in this particular area, but if they don't, we have plenty of other stuff we'd love to talk about as well. Remember, we do know what it's like on the other side - we didn't actually have children for the vast majority of our life thus far.

And on the subjects of baby websites. Of course, there are all sorts of websites dedicated to babies and motherhood, some of them catering to the kind of ordinary mother you’d never perhaps want to be. Big deal. There are also plenty of websites variously dedicated to music, literature, automobiles, hardcore porn and lots of other subjects you might or might not be interested in. No-one’s forcing you to read them if they’re not aimed at you. Complaining about the fact they exist is akin to complaining that not everyone in the human race fits your criterion for being a worthwhile, interesting person. I don’t like canoeing, should I then complain that someone on a canoeing forum made a comment that I didn’t quite relate to?

By the way, we’re the first to admit that the media seems a bit too obsessed by babies, and fertility stories and older mothers and ‘can-wimmin-have-it-all debates’ these days. Is that our fault? Or is it, I don’t know, partly the fault of newspaper journalists like them who endlessly commission these features and force the issues down our throats so that we’re left in a cycle of endless maternal navel-gazing?

Perhaps the fact that these childless-by-choice female journos are sensitive about the fact that everybody seems so baby-obsessed is simply a) A function of their age - most of their friends inevitably have kids now. Get over it. b) Made worse by the industry they work in, as described above. c) The fact that secretly they are haunted by whether or not they’ve really made the right choice. We sympathise with this as they wouldn’t be human if they weren’t. But our real sympathies lie not with them but the women who would desperately like children and can't, but also have to put up with the endless baby talk in our culture. For them it's not merely dull - it's painful.

Anyway, on the evidence of it all, seems like these journalists are even more baby obsessed than we are.

25 Not Talking About Babies

I’ve always found the words ‘mum’ and ‘mummy’ a bit cringy – they’re just, well, so mumsy. It took me a good few months to associate the term ‘mummy’ with myself (OK I’m still getting used to it). And even now I sometimes wince. Let’s be honest, the very fact the word ‘yummy’ had to be stapled onto the word ‘mummy’ to begin with, suggests our culture reckons that usually they’re not.

But at some point during your baby’s first few months you realise a fundamental change has happened, not so much to you, as to others' perception of you. While you are pretty much the same person you ever were, albeit a bit tireder and with slightly worse hair, to the man (or woman) on the street, you are defined by your ‘mumminess’.

I’m not sure exactly when I had the uncomfortable realisation that, when I walked down the road, strangers no longer saw a young woman (OK youngish) who coincidentally happened to be pushing a buggy with a small person inside it. They saw a mother, and that was it.

But while new mothers are famous for boring single friends to tears by droning on about breastfeeding and nappies and the price of childcare, the truth of the matter is that we don’t just want to be mummies. We do, desperately, want to talk about other stuff. We want to start sentences that don’t begin with the words ‘I think little Felix has pooed, or that don't involve the words 'breasts', 'sleep' or 'crying'.

We were a person before we had children, and dear readers we are still that person. It’s just that all the other thoughts and worries and passions we had before have had to jostle along a little bit so some new thoughts and worries can fit into our heads as well. Think of our brains as an extremely crowded Tube carriage. On the Central Line. Think about your own brain during the first flurry of love, while perhaps you also have a really important meeting at work to prepare for. That’s our brains, all the time.

But we still love seeing our single friends and indeed our married friends without children. And let’s be hones, while we do love, love, love talking endlessly about our children and all their infinitely fascinating little habits, we – or certainly the mummies I know at any rate - also particularly love not talking about them. We love talking about books and films and fashion and politics and music and new hot restaurants (even if we probably won’t go to them).

In fact all the things we talked about before we had children. Funny that, us still being the same person isn’t it? With basically the same interests, the same personality and the same sense of humour, just some new interests and concerns too. Who on earth would’ve thought.

24 Wooden toys

Before you had your baby, you had a vision in your head of your nursery. It would be painted a serene milky white with a few incredibly tasteful wooden toys scattered around, perhaps one or two embroidered throw cushions. Basically it looked like the inside of The White Company store.

‘I will only buy wooden toys,’ you said to yourself. ‘I know everyone else succumbs to mountains of Plastic Crap everywhere, but I alone will have a beautiful, tasteful modern house full of enchanting things for children. A vintage rocking horse, an old-fashioned teddy bear with movable limbs, a picture book-worthy Jack-In-The-Box…

Ha. As if. Like any infant under the age of about 9 wants anything that isn’t fluorescent yellow and made of toxic materials that will clog up the planet for the rest of eternity. See that tasteful white cloth bunny rabbit? Not interested. And that lovely wooden spinning top? Give me a break, I’m six months old. I want garish, ugly, Plastic Crap. Playing god-awful music and irritating sounds. Now!

And because you wanted some peace and quiet, you gave in. But sometimes, in quieter moments, you still daydream about that nursery and those gorgeous wooden toys.

23 Milestones

Oh yes! Milestones. We love them. For one, they make us feel grounded during a time when our daily existence is one of emotional exhaustion and confused frustration. Or is it frustrated confusion? They help us make sense of this unreadable teeny creature we're somehow responsible for and lays our fears to rest when we're convinced there's something wrong with them. For instance it can be comforting to know that all new babies make weird grunty choking noises and jerk their limbs like they're fitting during their sleep.

But best of all, they can imbue us beleaguered souls with a sense of superiority as we discover that our child is not merely normal, but quite clearly well advanced for their age.

"At one month old your baby should be able to gurgle..." [Child obviously a genius seeing as gurgling is precursor to talking] "...and smile..." [Yeeees, sort of anyway. Nothing wrong with my baby. No it's NOT wind.] "At 28 months your child should be able to put three words together in a short basic sentence". [Ah ha. My child is a genius. Quite obviously. She was doing that at 27 months. I mean, seriously. A GENIUS. How do you check IQ at this age - is there a test? She should surely be a member of Mensa.]

Like with horoscopes we check our milestones regularly and crosscheck them with other milestones. So the NHS milestones are compared to the Babycentre milestones which are then compared to the Mumsnet milestones. Compare the NHS's "You'll usually hear your child's first word when they're around 15 months old" to Babycentre's more vague 12-17 month guide: "She's using one or more words and knows what they mean".

So, as with horoscopes, we choose which brand of milestone we'd like most to believe depending on what they say at the time. If our child hasn't quite reached a particular milestone ("Your child should now be able to hop on one leg") we decide the milestones are too generalised for our little genius. I mean, only average kids hop on one leg because our little one is too busy learning the letters of the alphabet to be doing something so, well, childish.

22 Price-drop TV

You haven’t lived until you have spent an entire afternoon watching Price-Drop TV, your eyes glued to the set just in case you miss a particular jewel. An Anthony Worral Thompson saucepan set for a mere £9.99! A jewel-encrusted globe of the world for £17.50! A giant furry slipper you can fit both of your feet into for £7.99! Truly such treasures are almost too much to behold.

During your maternity leave, once you have exhausted the numerous thrills of daytime TV and the afternoon stretches before you like a dreary prison sentence, you may find yourself turning to this and other auction shopping channels. Price-Drop TV and similar channels operate much like QVC but with an exciting added twist. As the seconds tick away, the price drops until enough viewers have rung in to purchase all the stock and everyone gets it for the minimum price. The presenter’s job is to sell each item as enthusiastically as they can, until eventually enough mugs – sorry happy shoppers – part with their hard-earned cash.

This is how I found myself bidding, on one such channel, for a tomato red leather handbag I didn’t need, want or even particularly like a few weeks after my son was born. OK, it was only a fiver, though admittedly after a hefty £7.99 postage and packing fee it was looking less of a bargain. A few days afterward, fraud was committed on my credit card. I am not suggesting for a moment the two incidents were linked, but fortunately this event brought my short-lived addiction to daytime TV shopping channels to a shuddering halt. But there are some great bargains on there honestly. It just helps if you mostly have astonishingly bad taste.

21 Kerry Katona

Those who deride Kerry Katona misunderstand her function as a celebrity. It’s not about talent. It’s not about admiring her wit or her sartorial brilliance. It’s not even about wanting to shop at Iceland (though have you seen their party platters of frozen mini chocolate orange profiteroles – delicious!)

We like her, because Kerry Katona exists to make us feel better about our own sorry existences. She has her ups and her downs (some of them captured live on breakfast TV). She gets papped looking less than perfect. She shacked up with a dodgy-ish geezer (we don’t mean Brian McFadden, we mean the other one). She allegedly smoked during pregnancy - um, ok we’re not actually with her on that one. She also gave birth while being filmed for a TV show before going on to have shitloads of plastic surgery – um, ok we’re not with her on that one either.

But Kerry Katona has at least shown some signs of actually being human. Which is more than you can say for the average Hollywood A-lister. What we’re sick of is seeing stars like Nicole Kidman who, at nearly nine months, looked like she was pregnant with half a grapefruit. We’re talking about the types of celebrities who are in their skinny jeans two minutes after labour, doing fourteen hours of Pilates a day or whatever, and who just make ordinary mums, like us, feel absolutely rubbish. Wow, it must be so tough being a celebrity and having a whole flotilla of nannies, wet nurses, personal trainers and make-up artists to make sure you don’t lose a nanosecond of beauty sleep or get snapped looking anything but perfect.

So bring it on, celebrity mums who lose it in the full glare of the public eye - Kerry, Britney et al we salute you.

20 Calpol

The answer to everything. Teething? Calpol. Fever? Calpol. Insomnia? Calpol. Of course, like all good things, the age of Calpol had to come to an end. The second research linked the innocuous strawberry flavoured paracetamol-containing liquid with increased asthma, mothers everywhere shoved their stash into the back of the medicine cupboard and tried not to panic. Oh, not about whether they'd overfed their rosy-cheeked 2-year-old and had committed them to a life of inhalers and wheezing, but about what on earth they could use instead of dosing up said 2-year-old with the calming elixir. Without regular unmitigated access to that particular sleep-inducing medicine, mothers everywhere saw before them one enormous five-year-long broken night's sleep. Homeopathic teething granules? Don't make me laugh. Ibuprofen? Works well on fever, for sure, but cue hyperactive bedtimes ("I feel all betterer now!") Oh damn the evidence, everything gives you asthma these days anyway. Bring on the Calpol!

19 Multiple lists

Mummies write lists. Lots of them. We write our first list because our brains are like slurried overcooked potatoes and we know that if we write it down we WON'T FORGET. Then we write another new list because we can't remember what we did with the first list. And after a while we resign ourselves to the fact that it doesn't matter how many lists we write or lose, we always forget something off one of the lists. So we write as many lists as we can in as many places we can in the hope that one day we can combine all our lists into some kind of master list and thereby salvage some of that raw potato and stuff it back in our slurry-like brains in order to feign some semblance of normal intelligence. Or at least not forget to buy some potatoes.

So now you know.

18 Ocado

Online supermarket shopping is like a modern day miracle. I'd put it up there with stickers and play-doh for making parenting bearable. It's not really because shopping with babies and toddlers is that bad. It isn't if you have the right attitude. That is, the attitude that you're actually there to keep your child entertained while somehow filling a basket with stuff you can't recognise when you get home ("Ham offcuts anyone?") and that's past its sell-by date (those days when you had time to study packs for saturated fat content are long gone).

Speed is of the essence. A baby is relatively easy to entertain - give them some keys to munch on and they're pretty happy (unless they drop them - which they do, numerous times, sometimes on purpose, you know, for effect). Downside is they need feeding round the clock so you're constantly checking your watch to see if you can fit in the frozen food isle before milky time. And they seem to pooh their nappies at the most inopportune moments forcing you to leave your half-finished a trolley outside the loos while you deal with disaster leakage in record time, only to find trolley gone and contents tidied away for your return. Thanks guys!

The converse is true of a toddler. They can go without meals as long as you've brought with you your usual 4 years' supply of raisins and chocolate buttons. They are either toilet trained or they have developed some kind of immunity towards their own soiled nappies so can go for days without a nappy change*. So far so good. Except their concentration span is now at an ultimate low. So you have to work even harder on keeping them interested in something, anything, while sitting in the trolley/buggy before they realise that sitting in the trolley isn't half as much fun as hanging out of trolley, jumping out of trolley or (if you've been insane enough to take them in on foot) running away in a bid for freedom.

In short, mums today love online supermarket shopping. Wait until child/children are in bed. Pour glass of wine. Log in, upload last week's shopping list. Edit if required. Checkout. Wait for nice Ocado man to pull up and carry the shopping in for you. Added bonus - time it for toddler's dinner time and you can pop about 10 mouthfuls into said child without them realising while Mr Deliveryman provides a welcome distraction.

*please note this is conjecture and has not been tested in practice

17 Smock tops

We know that smock tops went out of fashion in 2007. We know, as dedicated Grazia subscribers, that this year it’s supposedly all about peg legs and body-con dresses and any number of trends designed to make the average thirtysomething’s thighs look like a chicken drumstick.

But are as far as we’re concerned, smock tops will never be out of fashion. It goes without saying that they hide our woefully wobbly tums and our disappearing waistlines. With their pretty folksy, gypsy-ish prints, they also positively exude yummy mumminess. And if there’s one thing worse than being patronisingly called a yummy mummy as if you are some horrible whiny character in a chicklit novel, then it’s not being called one.

One word of warning though: while smock tops can conceal a tummy, they can also occasionally suggest a tummy worse than the one you actually possess. If you don’t enjoy repeatedly being asked, ‘when is number two due then?’, you could always try swapping your smock top for a longer, slightly more tapered tunic. Or a sack.

16 Spontaneous outbursts of singing

Are you more familiar with the complete musical works of the Tweenies than you are the new Lady Gaga record? Is the Iggle Piggle theme tune on constant replay inside your head? Do you find yourself spontaneously breaking into song and dance routines in public places in a desperate effort to postpone yet another crying fit? In short, does your entire existence feel like you're living in a bad - and we're talking Andrew Lloyd Webber bad - kiddie musical?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, don’t worry, it's completely normal. You’re just suffering from a minor mental disorder brought on by being a mother and being bombarded by horrific plinky, plastic 'music' during every waking moment of your life.

Other symptoms include: Musically intoning ‘eh-oh’ instead of hello, and saying ‘tubby bye-bye’ instead of good bye - to other adults. Mouthing the words to 'Yummy yummy yummy, I've got love in my tummy,' every time you eat or drink anything. Walking across the living room floor and accidentally setting off three different versions of 'If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands' from various hideous discarded toys. Lying awake at night trying to remember the final line of 'There was an old lady who swallowed a fly'.

All together now: you are the music man – you come from down my way– and you can play, what can play - you play the piano. Pi-pi pi-ano, pi-ano, pi-ano... (continue until time itself grinds to a halt)

15 Jaffa Cakes*

Back in the foggy early days, when your darling baby first came into this cruel world, lots and lots of people came to visit. They all brought biscuits. Even though you were the size of a small beached whale, you ate all the biscuits because somewhere at the back of your mind was the vital piece of information that breastfeeding burned off 500 calories a day. And you’d been through childbirth. You deserved biscuits.

Eventually the people mostly went away, some time after that the breastfeeding may even have stopped or significantly reduced, but somehow the biscuit habit remained and now many months after the birth you are still the size of a beached whale.

This is where Jaffa Cakes come in. Jaffa Cakes have a measly 1g of fat in them and only 46 lovely chocolate-covered calories.

You do the math. There are 12 Jaffa cakes in a packet. 46 x 12 is 552 calories. If you are still breastfeeding, you could theoretically eat almost a whole packet a day and still be calorie neutral. Patently this is the thinking of a mad woman, but there is a logic in there somewhere.

If you aren’t breastfeeding - if not only that, but your toddler is walking, talking and possibly in pre-school - well we hate to be the ones to tell you, but perhaps it’s time to start think ing about eating some fruit. As well as the odd Jaffa Cake. We wouldn't expect you to give up pleasure in life entirely.

* Other orange-jelly based, chocolate-covered sponge biscuits are available.