So, you’ve had your baby, eh? Nice wan, sister ;o)

Week 1  – You think that you’ll never walk properly again, and mentally kiss your vagina goodbye (awwww).

Week 2  – You convince yourself that your boobs will forever resemble those weird-looking milk dispensers with the cream-coloured rubber tube that you find in some coffee shops on O’Connell Street.

Week 3 – You’re paranoid that even sleeping in the same bed as your partner will get you pregnant again, GOD FORBID, and pretend that you’re addicted to watching all episodes of The Good Wife on Netflix so that you can ‘accidentally’ fall asleep on the couch.

Week 4 – You figure out how to get your baby from Point A to Point B in the car without stopping every 5 kilometers to check on them because you’re convinced that they have stopped breathing.

Week 5 – You try on some of your old, pre-pregnancy clothes. BIG MISTAKE. (What are you thinking?!) You stop eating cakes.

Week 6 – You’re told this is the exercise ‘all clear’ point, so you join a hardcore zumba-body sculpt-yogafitlates hybrid class and completely fuck up your back.

Week 7 – You start physio and resume eating cakes. This is a GREAT week.

Week 8 – You start to feel guilty about all the thank you cards that you haven’t written on behalf of your baby and then your mother makes you feel worse because she AGREES that you’re extremely rude. You order the bleedin’ cards.

Week 9 – You throw your hair up in a bundle, fire on some make up and sneak into a gig in town by yourself so that you can dance this Wrecked-New-Momma feeling away and as soon as you walk your VERY post-pregnant body in the door… YOU BUMP STRAIGHT INTO YOUR EX BOYFRIEND. Fuck my life.

Week 10 – Enduring a colicky baby and her wayward older toddler brother every night for 10 weeks causes your brain to start asking these questions: ‘When is too soon to put her into creche?’ ‘Why did I decide to leave New York?’ ‘Do you think I could get away with a week in Ibiza with Nicola/Karen/Olivia/Siobhan?’ ‘Do you think I should bleach the brown bin?’.

Week 11 – You realize that you haven’t answered a single email or text message for three and a half weeks. Your once-cute pink laptop now represents the entire old life that you know you won’t get back to for ages and so you side-shuffle it under the bed so that it stops LOOKING AT YOU IN THAT WAY.

Week 12 – You go on your first family holiday, get ten minutes in the jacuzzi by yourself every day and pat yourself on the back for A) finding a swimsuit to fit, B) insisting that if you didn’t go on holiday IMMEDIATELY, that you would force-feed the entire family your really shit shepherds pie every day for seven weeks, C) going to physio so that your hand now reaches your back in order to, in fact, pat it, and

D) being responsible for these guys ;o)

You’re doing great, pal xxx