43 Tracksuit bottoms

After a year out in the fashion wilderness, I have gone back to working part-time in the centre of town and realised that a revolution has occurred while I have been gone. One that hasn't quite filtered out as far as my suburban high street, where it's still OK to wear bootflares and trainers (actually I'm not sure skinnies ever made it out here to Zone 4 to begin with).

Skirts are now strange and difficult shapes: they bulge unflatteringly at the hips, and thighs, and are called 'tulips'. Obviously its helps if you are incredibly young, thin or preferably both. 'Treggings' is apparently no longer a silly made-up term used only by fashion editors, but an actual item of clothing that women – lots of them - wear. For the uninitiated, treggings are incredibly tight jeans or trousers that are indistinguishable from leggings, and that show off every bump and lump. The young and thin thing obviously applies here, too. As does it with harem pants, miniskirts and any number of current trends designed to strike fear in the heart of thirtysomething women with real figures everywhere.

And don't get me started on the shoes. I knew that ridiculously high heels were supposedly all the rage, because believe it or not they still have style magazines out here in fashion's hinterland. But I hadn't realised women were actually wearing them in such vast numbers. Yesterday I found myself wistfully eyeing up a shiny black pair with a particularly vicious heel in a shoe shop, the sort you could use to bludgeon a small rodent if you were so inclined. However, as I spend half the week running manically past kebab shops and crazy men to get to the nursery before the doors shut and I get fined, I don't think they fit into my new lifestyle somehow. Somebody should invent a pair where you can just slip the heel off and they become practical, rubber soled flats (there's a Dragon's Den idea, if ever there was one).

For now, I am a fashion martian, marvelling at how differently they do things here. The shops are full of mysterious items in strange colours and weird shapes, that I don't recognise or understand. I have no idea how these could be put together to form a complete outfit that won't make me look like I'm wearing fancy dress to a 'mutton dressed as lamb' party. For the first time, I relate to all those souls who have so desperately lost their mojo that they are prepared to undergo total humiliation on national TV, and consult Trinny and Susanna or Gok Wan as a last resort. And for the first time, I feel properly old. Still at least at home, I can pull on my tracksuit bottoms, the ones with snot and baby puke all over them, and feel no shame, and know that across the land other new mothers are doing exactly the same thing.

42 Buying clothes in the supermarket

Remember that rhyme that went round when you were at school? ‘Oh, let’s all go to Tesco’s/ Where [insert victim’s name] buys her best clothes/ La, la, la, la etc?’
Well, unfortunately for you, now that is the truth. Of course, supermarket clothes have come a long way since the 1980s, and we’re certainly not knocking the sartorial delights of Florence & Fred, George at Asda, Sainsbury’s Tu and other similar ranges. In fact, we like them a lot, especially the ones that don’t exploit developing world sweatshop labour too much.

It’s just that there is something a little sad, a little deflated and disappointing, about chucking a new blouse into the trolley alongside a bottle of ketchup and packet of smoked mackerel. Clothes shopping by its very nature should be an indulgent and uplifting experience, even during a credit crunch.
However on-trend and pretty the clothes are, the glaring lights, piped muzak and surly supermarket shop assistants guarantee that, as an experience, shopping in Selfridges this ain’t

Only thing is, if you don’t buy your clothes in the supermarket, you might just never find time to buy any at all. Supermarket clothes shopping enables you to multi-task, something we new mums are good at – and let’s face it, even making it to a supermarket is a treat these days (see also our love affair with Ocado).
Yes, we know there is always Asos.com or Ebay, both brilliant in their own way for those cheap and instant fashion fixes. And, yes, OK, every few weeks there is that obligatory trip to John Lewis/Bluewater, which you now look forward to in the same way you used to look forward to afternoon tea at the Wolesley.
But sometimes we want New Clothes Now, and we want to touch and see them in real-life not as a collection of pixels on a screen. Even if we have no chance of being able to actually try them on – have you ever seen a supermarket changing room that is actually open, even if you had the time to use it?
So. Best clothes. Tesco’s. You know it makes sense.

41 Ikea

I can hardly wait until my son is three years old, and it's got nothing to do with him learning to talk and sharing exactly what's going on behind those golden curls of his. It's because that'll be the day I can safely deposit him in the Ikea creche, amidst the field of mult-coloured plastic balls, to share bodily fluids, germs and who knows what else with scores of other strange children (do they ever clean underneath those balls? I have my doubts).
Then I'll have a whole hour to myself while I cruise the Lack shelves, dither over dinnerware in the marketing hall and watch other couples arguing about which colour sofa to buy. If I'm feeling really indulgent, I might treat myself to a cinnamon danish in the cafe.
But until then, even now Ikea is still a pretty good option for a daytrip - it's a sad reality that these days, for me, heading to a grey concrete retail park in Edmonton actually constitutes a treat. If it's Monday to Friday, you get a free cup of coffee or tea thanks to your Family Card (though whatever you do, don't choose the mint tea. This isn't actually herbal peppermint tea. It's ordinary black tea that has somehow been infused with essence of After Eight. Except nowhere near as nice as that sounds. Some things aren't worth having for nothing.) The restaurant has a circular sensory soft play area, surrounded by a sort of breakfast bar where you can perch and watch your tiddler – watch and learn Starbucks. And of course, if you so wish, you can buy any number of cheap-as-chips stuffed toys, storage baskets and tupperware. Fact: it's simply not possible to go to Ikea and spend less than £100, even if you have no idea exactly what it was that you bought when you get home, except for a couple of drinking glasses and a lightbulb.

40 People who don’t ask when number two is due

Before you had a baby, people were relatively polite. Most of them didn’t ask too nosily if you were intending to spawn any progeny in the near future. They rightly guessed there were all sorts of reasons why you hadn’t had children yet. Perhaps you didn’t want to – yet, or possibly ever. Perhaps you couldn’t, and you were already researching all sorts of pricey, incredibly emotionally wearing and painful fertility options. Perhaps you were just waiting till the time/job/house/partner was right. Perhaps deep down you wanted to, but found the idea of childbirth too traumatic to deal with right then.

Whatever your own particular reasons, most people, even close friends, rightly knew that ultimately it was really nobody’s business but your own, and if you wanted to talk about it, then you probably would.

But now it’s different. Now you have already gone forth and multiplied, your fertility is apparently everybody’s business, a subject for open debate amongst relative strangers. A chorus of ‘Are you thinking about number two yet?’ greets you practically before you’ve even had your stitches done and checked out of the maternity suite. And of course there’s: ‘Wouldn’t it be nice for Magenta/Clarence to have a little sister or brother to play with?’ which is just designed to make you feel guilty, selfish and totally inadequate, something we already do plenty of without any outside help, thanks.

There are a number of reasons why this line of inquiry is vaguely annoying. For starters, while we love, love love having our little ones around, some of us are still figuring out if we have the energy, patience and ready cash for another one in the next financial year. We wouldn’t mind another few months of having a (relatively) flat stomach before we resign ourselves to stretch marks and morning sickness all over again. We don't know for sure if it will happen even if we want it to (in fact, just like the first time round). And some of us have other things to consider too. For example, I live in a house the size of a shoebox. It’s a pleasant enough shoebox, but I’m definitely not going to be able to swap it for a bigger shoebox any time soon. I know in Victorian times they just used to shove the new baby in the bottom drawer, but my bottom drawer is full of old socks and mothballs right now.

Of course, we don’t mind other mothers or old friends or even relatives asking us about our plans. But if you’re the postman or the woman who works in the local Co-op, if we haven’t actually swapped names yet let alone mobile phone numbers, then I’m probably not going to share my ten year plan with you just yet. Especially when I don’t even know what it is yet.

Still a couple of recent comments have stuck in my mind, and I can’t quite get rid of them. A friend of mine said her beauty therapist – a mother of two - told her: ‘I don’t know what I did with all that time I had when I only had one.’ Argh. Better write that novel and climb that mountain, like, now. The second is even pithier. ‘One is like having a pet. Two is like having a zoo.’ And I really wish they hadn’t told me that. Because if there’s one thing in life, I really love, it’s going to the zoo… I’m just not exactly sure I want to live in one.

39 Spitting On Tissues

Do you remember how much you hated it? You knew it was coming, there was nothing you could do and then there it was - the dreaded tissue, your mum wetting it ever so delicately with her warm soggy saliva and rubbed energetically all around your face. The thought still makes me cringe.

And yet. I have been there. I've been searching for the half-used tissue in my overstuffed handbag spitting away and rubbing jam-stains and toothpaste-marks like a maniac. And loving it. LOVING IT.

Is it a way of getting my own back? I mean, it is kinda cute the way she makes a 'yuk' face when I do it... Or is it some kind of deep-buried cat-like maternal instinct - a small evolutionary step away from simply getting my tongue out and licking my daughter clean on a crowded commuter train?

What's sure as eggs as eggs is that this is one of those things you'd NEVER consider doing pre-baby and can look forward to doing as naturally as shrugging once that sticky-faced child is part of your life...

38 Exercise DVDs

I've been really lucky since having my baby. I have this great personal trainer who's helping me get back into shape, and it's only cost me about a tenner to use her as many times as I like. In fact, you might even have heard of her - her name is Davina and she's got this funky kickboxing-type routine that she does with the odd wry aside and cynical wink to let you know she's finding it a little bit tricky too.

When I'm fed up with Davina, I could always turn to Nell, one of the Stricly Come Dancing presenters or even a C-list actress who used to be on Emmerdale if I'm feeling desperate. There's just a couple of downsides. I have no motivation whatsoever, my living room isn't big enough to swing a pygmy kitten in (which means I end up crashing into the wall or sofa every time I do a half-hearted high kick), plus I also get lost following any exercise instructions more complicated than 'now touch your toes'.

However, if you've had a baby and like me, your partner gets home at gone 8pm, you have little hope of ever getting to the gym again, exercise DVDs are still your best bet. They're also mercifully cheap, often less than £10 - the going rate for the average London fitness class these days. And, of course, you don't have to pay for them on direct debit for the rest of infinity. (Why don't more gyms operate modest pay-as-you-go schemes? Obviously something to do with the fact that while most of us are great at signing on the dotted line, usually in the bleak winter light of January, we're not so good at the actually 'going' bit.)

Since having my baby, I have bought no less than seven exercise DVDs. Two of them still have the shrinkwrap on. They vary in quality, but while cruising on Amazon one sleep-starved evening, I stumbled upon a particularly brilliant series of 10 minute workouts - surely even I could find a pitiful window of ten minutes a day to do a few crunches and squats? Um, try a bit fat (literally) no. It's just far more tempting to sit down with a plate of digestives and the latest episode of Mad Men. I'm not completely giving up though. For one thing, my baby boy finds it far too hilarious watching me make an idiot of myself in front of the TV. Who needs Teletubbies when he can watch mummy attempt and fail to perform a downwards dog?

37 Sniffing your baby's bottom in public

You swore you would never, ever become that woman. You said you would rather die. You were convinced that this was the action only of awful, mumsy women with no regard for basic social conventions. The type who thought that the fact that their darling son or daughter had snot on their chin, and seven different types of dried puree plastered to their cheeks, was actually somehow cute rather than merely disgusting.

Yet somehow, without warning, you have become her. You are the woman who holds their baby aloft and sniffs their bottom. In front of other people. Possibly people without children. Possibly people without children who have no intention of ever having children, and possibly people without children who are also eating or drinking at the same time.

'I think Jasper has pooed' you then announce loudly to anyone present, and with no shame, as if anyone else gives two hoots. Because either they haven't noticed the smell of fresh number twos wafting across the table. Or they have noticed, but are just too polite and British to do anything other than hold their faces very slightly at an obtuse angle.

Either way you are now engaging in activity that pretty much puts you on a par with the average chimpanzee. I guess that's what having babies does to you though.