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#FashMum #pla ygrouphell

#remindmewhyI'mhereagain?

Nine forty-five, Tuesday morning. In normal life I’d be:

a. knocking back my second grande soy latte of the day, courtesy of the work-experience girl who’s now sulking in the samples cupboard because coffee runs really aren’t part of her job description

b. busy convincing some puffed-up fashion editor that fluoro-print parachute pants really are about to make a comeback, even though in truth none of us would be caught dead in them

c. sending out a press release that would literally change the face of fashion as we know it.

In short, as Senior PR of the prestigious fashion label Moda, I’d be a very important person doing very important things. Instead, I was here. At Happy Mummies Time. In a dirty school hall, surrounded by twenty badly dressed mums and their snotty-nosed kids, as we all pretended to be having the time of our lives. Oh, hang on, that was just me: everyone else, it seemed, really was having the time of their lives.

‘And now for the Sing Song!’ announced our self-appointed leader, Nikki, a brusque Mama Superior type in no-nonsense hiking sandals and a dog-hair- covered fleece.

A cacophony of delighted yelps and whoops filled the air, and before I knew it they were all plonking themselves down cross-legged on the floor with the fluid ease of lifelong yogis.

I hesitated. Being forced into close contact with the questionable hygiene of an assembly-hall floor was a bitter childhood memory I’d managed to suppress until now. And this time the lack of hygiene wasn’t even in question: only moments before, we’d all seen little Crystabella demonstrate how she could yank up her dressing-up frock, pull off her dirty nappy and slide butt-naked across the floor. And the real kicker?

Her mother had found the whole thing so completely adorable, she’d made her do it all over again so she could catch it on her iPhone. If God could have granted me superpowers beyond surviving on three hours sleep I’d have rewound eighteen months and shown my flat-bellied, pre-baby self a snapshot of this. So this is what you want to swap your fancy job and your gorgeous clothes and your monthly magazineallowance for? Really? Is it?!

For a second I thought about grabbing Coco and making a run for it. But then I looked down at my excited baby girl, covered eyebrow-to-chin with the remnants of Mama Superior’s 100 per cent free-range, sugar-free chocolate crackle, and realised that one of us was very happy indeed.

Sing Song, here we come. I eased myself down awkwardly onto the floor in my still two- sizes- too-small Sass & Bide jeans, and artfully positioned Coco on my lap so that no-one would be forced to see my gut spilling out of my pants if they suddenly gave out.

‘How would our new mummy like to lead the Sing Song?’ asked Smug Mummy, Mama Superior’s eagle-eyed wingman and another fan of the Velcro-strapped hiking sandal.

I glanced around the circle to see who this clever Sing Song–singing new mummy was.

Oh shit, she was looking at me. I thought about her question for a moment. Hmmm, let’s see. In terms of desired activities, leading Sing Song would sit somewhere between stabbing hot forks into my eyeballs and reliving the second stage of labour. In slow motion.

‘Sure,’ I beamed. ‘I’d love to!’ ‘Great. Shall we start with “Fruit Salad”? We’ve got props!’ Mama Superior pulled a hemp bag labelled ‘Fun Time’ from the jaws of one of the drippy-nosed twins, and presented the room with an armload of musty-smelling old junk that might once, a very long time ago and by an extremely generous stretch of the imagination, have resembled apples and bananas.

As Snotty Twin One wailed and the assembled mothers oohed and aahed as though they’d just been presented with the secret to everlasting youth, it occurred to me that there must be an app out there for calculating how long it would take – in seconds – until Coco turned eighteen and I would finally, mercifully, be free of all this.

‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Now, remind me how it goes.’

Cue much laughter and tut-tutting from around the circle.

‘Are you kidding me?’ asked Smug Mummy. ‘It’s a Wiggles song.

Surely you know The Wiggles?’

‘Of course I know The Wiggles. As a matter of fact I’ve met the Wiggles. The original line-up.’

I let that sink in, looking around to see who was impressed. Not a sausage. ‘Coco and I just, you know, prefer

our music a little more current.’

‘Do you have a suggestion?’ asked Mama Superior, pointedly stuffing the knitted fruit back in its hempy hideaway.

‘What about that Nicki Minaj song?’

‘Nicki Minaj,’ she repeated, throwing me a hefty dose of side eye.

‘Yes, Nicki Minaj. You do know Nicki Minaj, right? “Anaconda” is actually an incredibly empowering song. Which you’d all know,

if you weren’t so busy listening to “Fruit Bloody Salad”.’ Silence. They all looked at me aghast, as if I were some foul-mouthed

bogan crack whore who’d taken a wrong turn off Parramatta Road and accidentally landed in their hallowed midst. Ugh. Where’s a grande soy latte when you need one? This was going to be a long morning.

*

So why, you might ask, were we even there? For the answer, we’ll need to backtrack a couple of weeks to an early morning appointment with my GP, Dr Krudnic.

I’d only gone in to grab a repeat for my eczema cream (burning, scaly skin of the sort most commonly seen on a blue-tongued skink being yet another unfortunate side effect of the stress and interminable boredom of child-rearing that nobody bothers to warn you about).

But once I got there, she’d started peppering me with all sorts of questions about how I was finding motherhood and whether Matt and I were still having sex.

‘Oh, it’s great,’ I said, bouncing Coco maniacally up and down on my knee, as if I’d suddenly developed Tourette’s. ‘Having Coco has given me a deeper understanding of what love really is. Just looking at her fills my heart with joy, and I thank Matt every day for the precious gift we’ve created together.’ I couldn’t remember the exact words Drew

Barrymore had used in her People magazine interview about the birth of her second child, but I figured it was something along those lines. Twenty seconds later, Dr Krudnic was holding the baby and I was a blubbering mess, literally sprawled across her examination room floor.

‘Have you considered the possibility that you might be depressed?’ she said.

I stared up at her, dumbfounded. No offence to anyone suffering from mental health problems, but in my family’s vernacular ‘depression’ was just a polite way of saying ‘complete and utter loser’. Perfectly fine in other people, of course, but we Humphries were supposed to be above such things. In this regard, my family was a little bit like the Royal Family. It didn’t matter how crap you felt about all the horsey-looking ex-girlfriends your husband had secretly tucked away on his country estate, or how many times your wife was photographed sucking on other people’s toes; keeping that stiff upper lip firmly in place was all that really mattered. ‘I’m not depressed,’ I said. ‘I’m just fat and bored, and the thought that I’ve got to do this for, like, forever makes me want to slit my wrists.’

She gave me one of those heavy, pensive looks doctors do so well, while Coco gently gnawed away at the stethoscope around her neck. Hmm, how do I deal with one so stubborn? I could see her thinking. ‘I’d really like to prescribe you a short course of anti-depressants,’ she said at last.

No. Just no.

‘There’s got to be something else,’ I pleaded. ‘Some sort of juice cleanse or tai-chi exercises or something?’

‘Well, do you get out much? Mix with other mums?’

And just how on earth did she expect me to find the time for that? As it was, looking after Coco left me with barely enough time to do my internet shopping, check Instagram and catch up on daytime TV. I was supposed to fit socialising in there too?

‘There’s a very nice playgroup near you – Happy Mummies. They’re a very supportive social group.’ She tore a slip of paper off a pad on her desk and scrawled the details across it. ‘I’d like you to give it a try, just for a few weeks. Then come back and see me and we’ll assess how things are going.’

She held Coco and the slip out towards me, and I took them both gingerly from her hands.

‘You never know. You might actually enjoy it,’ she said with a half smile. ‘You two might make some friends.’

Well, duh, that part was a given: we could make friends in a heartbeat.

What wasn’t there to love about us?