Recipe Rifle goes shopping: BABY ESSENTIALS

When it comes to baby kit, especially with your first baby, I say get everything. EVERYTHING. A tummy tub? Why not. An £8,000 buggy? Go for it. Fourteen different kinds of dummy? Great!

Because all babies are different and they like, weirdly, different things. And some things might work for you, others not. Both Kitty and Sam for example like Avent bottles and dummies and immediately spat out any dummy that was not made by Avent.

Avent's anti-colic bottles do, I think, work in reducing what is known in my family as "squirty tummy" in newborns. ALL BABIES have "squirty tummy" to varying degrees, whether you use an anti-colic system or not because they are new and rubbish at everything and their stomachs don't work for ages, resulting in "squirtiness", which is an unspecified gas/digestion problem that makes them screw their faces up and go "meerrggghgh" or even "WWAWAAAHHAHHAHHAHAH!!!" I like to try to avoid this.

So I also use Infacol, which is an orangey-tasting liquid that helps babies bring up their wind. You can give it to babies from birth, but I find that wind problems only emerge at about 3 weeks onwards. You give them a little dropper of it before a feed and then they bring up lovely rich, orangey burps and sleep like logs and are less "squirty". Kitty lived on it for about 3 months.

I also believe, with swivel-eyed evangelism, in swaddling. This, for the uninitiated, is when you wrap a newborn up very tightly in a long strip of cloth to replicate the squashed-in feeling of being in the womb. There are some cloths specially designed for swaddling called Grobag, which are very good

and also the terrific giant muslins from Aden + Anais, which used to be very niche and hippy when I had Kitty, but now everyone uses them. They are absolutely brilliant for all sorts of things, from swaddling to using as a blanket, a sunshade, rolling it up into a sausage to wedge newborn into sleeping on its side if you feel a bit neurotic that the baby is going to puke in its sleep and choke on it, (but are too scared to put it down on its tummy), using as a vomit sheet to stretch over the bottom sheet of a cot belonging to a child with noro - you get the idea. They are quite expensive but they will last you for years.

There are millions of swaddling tutorials on YouTube - I urge you to look them up if you are about to have your first. Just do it before every naptime until they are about... I dunno... six weeks old.

Chloramphenicol antibiotic eye drops.

Available over the counter at any pharmacy. If your baby's umbilical cord is taking its sweet time to come off and is starting to stink, slosh this over it to prevent any infection. It is mild enough to go in your eye, so it's perfectly okay to use on a tummy button.

Lansinoh cracked skin balm

This will rescue your nipples if you are breastfeeding - put it on every time you breastfeed or any time you express, or any time you remember to. Buy one for every room in your house so you are never without it. You can never have too much because it has a million other uses - it mends cracked heels overnight, works as a basic but effective night eye cream and is officially the world's best lip balm (second only to Lanolips - available at Waitrose).

Gap make the only socks that babies will not kick off.

Seraphine make very nice nursing bras. They have one that comes in a small, medium and large and another that comes in traditional bra sizes. I'd say that the one that comes in traditional sizes is better.

I've got this bra in a size 1 million. And also some others that I had specially made... BY NASA

Aptamil formula. I fed Kitty a combination of formula and breastmilk from pretty much day 1 and have done the same with Sam. My personal attitude to breastfeeding is this: I do not like hearing babies cry and if I don't have to, I don't want to. So if my child is crying or unsettled because it is hungry, and I do not have enough breastmilk to sort it out, I give them formula. I partly breastfed Kitty for about six weeks and will probably do the same with Sam, unless with two children in tow breastfeeding and expressing becomes completely impractical, in which case I will stop sooner.

For expressing, I use a Medela Swing, which is about 10 years old, but gets the job done. Muy sexy, no?

I must also give a plug to a company called notsobig.com, which sent me a lot of babygros for Sam. They couldn't possibly have forseen that babygros with slogans on the front are my least favourite thing ever, but it was a kind and thoughtful gift. And one with LOL on the front, did make me smile, although I cannot guarantee that Sam will wear it. Looking at their website, they have all sorts of terrific things on there without hideous slogans, so do give it a go. 

Little Clothes Mouse - littleclothesmouse.co.uk - sent me some excellent newborn stuff for Sam, including a Petit Bateau hat that actually fit his weeny head (he was not born small - 7.5lb - but 0-3 month stuff was HUGE on him). In general, the website sells discounted designer childrens' clothes and is a small company run by a very nice lady, so I heartily direct your business to her. She has also kindly and generously offered Rifle Readers a 10% discount at checkout with the code RIFLE. Use it or lose it ladies (and germs). 

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: JEWELLERY

Everyone said "The second baby will be so much easier" and I prayed they were right and I knew they would be. And so far, they are.

I mean, in my experience the fun, (and when I say fun I mean nightmare), doesn't really start with babies until they are 3 weeks old and don't do that thing anymore where they'll just sleep any on any old warm, stable surface for most of the day.

But for now, while Sam is doing this lovely thing that newborns do, I can actually genuinely appreciate it because I know it changes. And, unless I experience a serious rush of blood to the head, Sam will be my last child, which I now - released from the horrors of pregnancy - feel sad about, but in a good way. If that makes sense.

Kitty, (poor, poor Kitty), when she was born, signified the end of my life as I knew it. Sam is the beginning of my future; he is the first day of the rest of my life. Yes, I've got a newborn again, but I have never felt so free. I never left the house with Kitty when she was small because I couldn't quite believe the hassle of it and there were all those what ifs - what if she's sick, or screams, or does a poo? What then?? Easier to stay at home, thanks. Sam and I are out all the time: we take buses, we sit in cafes. Why did I not do this with Kitty? What was my problem?

And it turns out that I have remembered some valuable lessons about babies it took me months to learn first time:

1) if you put a baby down for a sleep and you know it is not hungry or cold or ill, it will eventually nod off, even if it squeaks and grunts and squirms or, even, emits the occasional bloodcurdling yelp.

2) if it's not crying, it's probably ok. Leave it alone.

3) give it a break, it's only a baby. Even if you are a total routine freak like me, deviations here and there - or entire days when absolutely everything goes tits up, don't matter. You have to just write the day off as a fucking disaster and start again tomorrow. Babies and small children respond best to persistence. It has taken an entire year to teach Kitty to say Please. Thank You she had no trouble with, but we've had to hammer Please into her just by saying it over and over and over and over again. Babies and little children are stupid, you need to repeat the things you want them to do, like, a billion times.

4) tiny babies do not get bored.

5) it's probably not meningitis.

Anyway, what OF Kitty? I have been asked over again what she thinks of Sam, how is she taking it? And I reply with what I always say about Kitty, which is that she doesn't give much of a fuck about anything, except the whereabouts of Rabbit, her blanket, Mr Tumble and the availability of biscuits.

She understands Sam is a baby, she gives him kisses, she only tries to jump on his head out of sheer exuberance, rather than malice, and knows that he doesn't like having his nappy changed. Other than that, she's unbothered. I think problems of jealousy and anger come later.

In the meantime, life for Kitty is simply super: her Daddy is around a lot on two weeks' paternity leave and they disappear together, scampering across London all day having an awesome time pointing at animals and eating chips. And most days a present turns up for her at the house, in commiseration for her having this "brudder". So in all, it's pretty nice for Kitty right now.

Me? I got jewellery. I don't understand especially the recent fashion for presenting one's wife with an expensive gift for having a baby. You are only fulfilling a biological imperative and it's not like a pregnancy isn't utterly miserable for fathers, too. (I bought Giles a pair of £140 sunglasses from Zadig & Voltaire to acknowledge this.) But still, I'm not one to pass up an opportunity to direct my husband and his Amex to Selfridges, so I requested this Anina Vogel charm necklace that was quite astoundingly expensive. It did for a birthday, wedding anniversary AND "baby" present, it was that pricey. I love it.

Here it is. You buy a naked necklace and then fill it with charms. Giles chose these - the Star of David is his idea of a joke (he is Jewish). The others are a cat (Kitty) and frying pan (cooking) a pistol (there were no rifles) a moses basket (new baby) and a typewriter (obvious).

GILES BOUGHT THIS FOR ME WITH HIS OWN MONEY

And from lovely Babes With Babies I got THIS little beauty, which I really love. At £158, not as ruinously expensive as the Anina Vogel and if I was on a slightly tighter budget I would have requested this from my husband instead, you can have up to 20 characters engraved on it and Posh Spice has got one.

GOT SENT THIS FOR FREE

My readers get a 10% discount at Babes With Babies by typing RIFLE in at checkout. Don't say I never give you anything.

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: CLOTHES BAGS AND SHOES

I spent so long during my pregnancy longing for it to be over that towards the end I suddenly developed a terrible fear that once I was no longer pregnant I would STILL be fat and miserable with aching feet, reflux and getting up 80 million times in the night to wee.

"What if..." I would fret during the long dark insomniac hours of the night "I have the baby and life is still shit? What if... all those clothes I have bought for myself to celebrate not being this incredibly weird shape never fit?"

But you have a baby - especially your second - and life improves immeasurably. Night feeds are a piece of piss once you can get in and out of bed reasonably easily. And, second time round, a bit of broken sleep is nothing. NOTHING. When you had your first baby you didn't understand what it meant to be tired and it freaked you out. Now, being a little bit tired is normal. Having too much sleep is weird.

Anyway, so although I can't fit into all of my new threads quite yet, I quite often open my cupboard and stroke them lovingly, as I channel daydreams about my future through them.

We'll start with my favourite thing ever, which is actually a handbag. I bought FOUR new handbags in the darkest hours of my pregnancy, because they are a thing you can use no matter how fat you are. This is from Kate Spade and it's the first "expensive" handbag that I've ever had - I say "expensive" because it was not wildly so - it was not £500, it was £178 in a 25% off sale.

Anyway I LOVE IT. If I had been braver, I would have got it in green. I still might. This will be irritating for my readers who are not in London, but you cannot buy this online - only in one of two Kate Spade stores - one in Westfield and one in Sloane Square. I think this is incredibly childish of Kate, but she's from New York and they don't half think they're special over there.

BOUGHT THIS WITH MY OWN MONEY - it is called a "Little Curtis"

Next, my obsession with Hush, a sort of upmarket Gap I suppose. It's a catalogue-based company and they really work that catalogue - it's just really nice, I totally fancy all the models.

I bought a scarf from there, which is really brilliant - called the "Leo" and it's neon pink-and-orange leopard print and even if you're in your pyjamas it makes you look quite "current". A note: it is huge, so when it arrived I cut it in half with the kitchen scissors as it arrives with artfully frayed edges anyway. So now I have TWO and very pleased with them both I am.

Here is a link to the scarf - I'm just waiting for a press image from Hush - I'd take a photo of it for you, but my photo will be bad and won't make you want to buy it. 

So scarf here: http://www.hush-uk.com/daywear/weekend/leo-scarf-orange.html

Another thing I have bought from Hush are these "New Vanessa Trousers". I cannot vouch for them as I am still to big to get into them. But I love the look of them and desperately hope they "work" on me.

They are here: http://www.hush-uk.com/new-vanessa-trousers-concrete.html

I love these neon trainers from New Balance. If you feel like doing a sports-chic thing, wear these with ankle-length black leggings (mine are from this darling little place called Hennes) a coral or grey sweatshirt and a jazzy scarf. I saw next-eldest sister work this look a few weeks ago, (though her trainers were not New Balance, they were similar), and it looked AMAZING. 

This "Lady Penelope" dress is just so terrific. A lovely girl at a preggy clothes website called Babes With Babies sent it to me. I can't quite wear it now, as it's quite clingy, but I tried it on - manically - during my last three days with a bump and it's very, very good for anyone pregnant up until about 7.5 months I'd say, (if you're doing a thing where you are wearing tight things - "I'M PREGNANT NOT FAT"). It is not cheap, but it is very nice - it has a slit roughly to the knee up one side, which is very chic and not slutty. Excellent 3/4 sleeves, too. 

GOT SENT THIS FOR FREE

Babes with Babies is, generally, a very nice website. I don't mean to knock Isabella Oliver or Seraphine, but their websites occasionally feel a bit... draughty and abandoned, if you know what I mean. Anyway, have a look. 

THIS denim dress from Mango is just ace - the fabric is really lovely - sort of slithery and flippy. There is probably a name for it that I don't know. A problem with wearing full denim is that it can be a bit stiff and uncomfortable, but this is silky and lovely but doesn't crease especially badly. It works as a kind of throw-over while pregnant and also later as a VERY "now" denim dress with a belt and your new neon Leo scarf (see what I'm doing here?)

BOUGHT THIS WITH MY OWN MONEY FROM MANGO

Ok this is technically not clothes, but I am in love with this nail varnish from Mavala. I won't show it to you on my fingers because I have the ugliest hands in England and it will put you off buying it. And nothing ought to put you off buying it - it's terrific.

BOUGHT THIS WITH MY OWN MONEY

The jury is still out on these lime green asymmetric sandals from Zara because my feet are still a bit fat for them, but I like the IDEA of them very much. Generally-speaking, I like the idea of this "brights" thing a lot, because it means you can accessorize quite boring clothes like mad, meaning that you don't have to freak yourself out buying neon trousers, or yellow dresses. 

BOUGHT THESE WITH MY OWN MONEY

And that concludes this post on clothes, bags and shoes. Coming soon: jewellery and baby essentials (not in the same post).  

Recipe Rifle goes shopping: FACE

In the last two months of my pregnancy I went quite bonkers about stuff. No wait, not just stuff, but the right stuff, quality stuff. I think this is what some people refer to as "nesting", but my house was already totally nested-out, I didn't need any more muslin squares and a new baby bouncer had been purchased. So my mad, rolling, panting, grasping eye turned to dresses, bags, sandals, jewellery, skincare...

The moment I had Sam, at 4.45am on Bank Holiday Monday, 6th May. I ceased to crave any of it. I'm really, really pleased that I have it all - (I don't think I bought a single new item of clothing after Kitty was born that wasn't just hateful, draggy Mum-Wear) - but I no longer just sit about wanting things. No more this "fiesta" shirt from Anthropologie will change my life, this bright green box bag from Zara will change my life.

It's nice. Peaceful. Like being unchained from a different lunatic.

It coincided, in some kind of cosmic dream, with a lot of companies wanting to send me things to write about.

I don't know why people want to send me things in the post to write about. All I ever talk about is how shit I am, how ugly fat and useless - this is hardly an "aspirational" blog, but nevertheless I have started to be offered some stupendously wicked stuff that I can't turn down.

Anyway it comes attached with a certain moral tricksiness - is it okay to accept things for free and then not write about them if they are no good? Or what about if you're a bit ambivalent about them but you say you like them because, fuck it, why not?

What I have decided to do - and I'm sure you are fascinated - is take everything, with egregious thankings, but only put things on here that I like, that I would spend my own money on. I also feature here some things that I have, actually, spent my own (or my husband's) money on, which I can recommend to you or warn you off accordingly.

We start today with the FACE - i.e. cosmetics and gadgets.

I say gadgetS, I really mean gadGET - the Clarisonic face thing, that my husband bought me for my birthday. I love it: get it. Like a massaging, rotating brush for your face. You only need to use it once a day, keep it in the shower, run it over your visage once you've massaged a bit of cleanser in. It's about 1m% less hassle than cleaning your teeth and it improves skin tone, clarity, colour, all that bullshit. DO IT. If my husband hadn't bought one for me, I would have spent my own money on it. Get the most basic model if money IS an object - you don't need anything more snazzy.

BOUGHT THIS WITH OWN MONEY

Next, please turn your attention to Benefit. They very kindly sent me all sorts of stuff, the best of which was this very pleasing crease-free eyeshadow in Bikini-Tini and, below, a lipgloss in Fauxmance.

The eyeshadow is the sort of thing that you can smear on with a finger in 2 seconds that helps you look less dead, without making you look a bit inappropriate and drag-queeny for a day of gooning around with a two year-old or lying prone under a 3 day-old. On my favourite TV series ever, Friday Night Lights, they coat the lids of their lady stars with something very similar and it looks terrific. It looks a bit orange in the picture below but it's not really, it's a sort of pale gold.

GOT SENT THIS FOR FREE

I don't, generally, like lipgloss because it's a it drying and your hair gets stuck in it. Plus my mouth is massive and I don't need to draw attention to it. This is moisturising with a nice sheen rather than sticky shine and my hair doesn't get stuck in it. The colour really suits ME, but I have got red hair and sort of weird bluey-yellow skin and purplish lips (think Eddie Redmayne) so maybe visit a counter before buying. Unless you are Eddie Redmayne, in which case, this is the colour for you.

GOT SENT THIS FOR FREE

I bought this Garnier BB cream in total despair when still pregnant and my face was simply some eyes and a nose painted on a balloon. Since having Sam, my face has changed beyond belief - I no longer face the morning with weird bloating and blotching, an oil-slicky sheen and terrifying blue-black circles under my eyes.

But when I DID have all that going on, this BB cream helped smooth things out and made me less suicidal. I never really understood BB "beauty balm" or CC "colour correcting" creams before, but they just sort of make you look better, in a way that foundation doesn't and can't. So, I like this as an entry-level BB cream, (I picked slightly the wrong colour, a bit too pale, but this is a constant hazard when you have red hair because your colouring is inconsistent to put it mildly), but I can see myself spending quite a lot on something highly recommended - the one I keep hearing good things about is by YSL - called something like All-In-One BB cream or something.

BOUGHT THIS WITH MY OWN MONEY

I hope you enjoyed that. I did. Next: Recipe Rifle goes shopping for CLOTHES.

Baked aubergine

There are very few things I feel genuinely guilty about - especially when it comes to parenting. Sometimes I pretend to feel guilty, but actually I don't. There are things that I do with Kitty that I know are not ideal, but I do them mostly knowing why I'm doing them and being okay with the consequences.

For example, Kitty probably watches more TV than she ought to at the moment, because I am so immobile I can't sit on the floor and play Megabloks, or toss her in the air or chase her round and round the garden. But I am okay with the odd bad mood and screamy bedtime brought on by too much telly because I don't really have a choice right now.

But there's one thing I do, that I do endlessly, even though it makes me feel really guilty and I'm not okay with the consequences - and that is fucking about with my iPhone while I am supposed to be looking after Kitty.

I mean I love, LOVE my iPhone. It makes me about 70% more productive because I can do an Ocado order while hanging about waiting for something to boil, or reply to emails in the car while Kitty is kipping in the back.

But it also makes me, I think, a 70% less good parent because when I am supposed to be concentrating on Kitty, I am usually scrolling through Twitter. I also love Twitter, by the way. I think it is a brilliant resource filled with excellent people and endless, helpful information. Without Twitter this blog would have fewer readers and it would have been significantly harder (i.e. impossible) to sell any copies of my book, as most sales have come off the back of tweets and re-tweets.

At times, I think Twitter is the only thing that has stopped me from going mad during this most recent long, dark winter - but in fact I now suspect that it may have made everything harder. Trying to combine childcare with absolutely anything else - making dinner, ironing, working, Tweeting - turns something occasionally boring into a real chore just because you are suddenly trying to do two things at once.

Housework and childcare mostly have to go together but anything else that doesn't absolutely have to be combined with childcare, shouldn't. Especially the childcare of toddlers, who have a witchy sixth sense for when they are not your priority; it makes them incredibly nervous and liable to fling themselves down the stairs, or draw all over your Dune embellished pink suede loafers with green Crayola felt tip. For example.

And Twitter has just become a habit now, for me. In any lull I will automatically have a quick poke about and see what's going on - because there's always something going on on Twitter. But the compulsiveness of it now makes me feel a bit ill - staring into that tiny screen, poke, poke, poke. Not looking up, not looking around me. And Twitter sucks me into other areas of the internet that make my day jagged and stop-start, (mostly online clothes shops), rather than relaxed and linear. Rather than surrendering to childcare, I find myself fighting it. And it's not working.

Added to this, Kitty has just got into the nursery at the top of our road and will start in September. Although I don't feel remotely sad about it - she will love it and it won't come a moment too soon - it does make me realise that we have a limited time left together and I should probably be more mindful of what I do with that time.

I don't say all this to sound martyrish or holy: I am never motivated by anything other than laziness. I don't want anything to be hard that doesn't have to be - the Lord knows that life is full of necessary hardships without creating more for yourself. I want anything that can be, to be easy and convenient. Any fool, as soldiers say, can be uncomfortable. If I thought looking at my iPhone a lot made childcare easier, more relaxed and less onerous, I would do it. But when you've only got half a brain to start with, letting half of that half wander off into the internet is the equivalent of a brisk trepanning.

So last weekend I took Twitter off my phone and have a rule now that I don't look at my phone at all unless I get a text message or a phone call, which is hardly ever. Twitter is reserved for when the nanny is here and I am working at my laptop. It's much better already. When I get to the end of the day I don't feel so twitchy.

I'm also allowed unlimited access to newspapers, magazines and my Kindle as a compensation. I have blamed my failure to do any reading recently on being pregnant, but it's not that. It's that I'm always on bloody Twitter. If Kitty is engaged doing something else, like messing about in the garden or drawing, I reckon it's alright to be reading a book because it's not so blinkering, so tunnel-visioning. And it doesn't set quite such a ghastly example to Kitty that one ought to constantly have one's face lit up by a blue screen, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, endlessly scrolling.... if she wants to grow up with her face in Kindles or newspapers - god rest their souls - that can only be a good thing.

Having Twitter on my iPhone also makes me a shit wife. Any second that my husband is not talking - and sometimes when he is talking, frankly - I've got half a mind on Twitter, which isn't fair because my husband is not boring and doesn't ask for much in return for providing me with a roof over my head and private healthcare, other than my complete attention when he is saying something to me.

Other than taking Twitter off my phone, I'm making amends to my husband by being supportive about the no-carb thing he's doing at the moment. Cooking without carbs is a fucking chore, but I might as well get back into the swing of it as once this kid is out - if it ever comes out (despite my due date still being 5 whole days away) - I plan to diet myself out of existence. I want people to say "Oh my god she's got so THIN!!!!"

Anyway, the other night I made for Giles a baked aubergine, which sounded absolutely disgusting from the recipe, but I was running out of ideas, (if we have another chicken salad I might DIE), and I actually managed, using a bit of store-cupboard cunning, to turn it into a really quite appealing thing.

I have used parmesan to top this, but equally you could use goat's cheese. I, personally, ate this with some pitta bread because let's not get too carried away - but Giles skipped it.

Esther's low-carb baked aubergine of devotion

1 aubergine pp
1 400g can chopped tomatoes
2 heaped tsp capers
2 tbs pitted black olives
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 clove garlic, peeled
4-5 anchovy fillets (non-essential, if you are a hater... but if you are ambivalent, I urge you to give these a try - they will not make everything fishy and disgusting, they will just add a salty, savoury interest)
2 sage leaves (if you have)
1 tbsp vinegar - red wine for preference but any old shit will do
some plain yoghurt (again, if you have)
a few strips of lemon zest
1 small handful chopped parsley
1 handful grated parmesan per aubergine half


preheat your oven to 220C

1 Slice your aubergines lengthways and score through the flesh with a small sharp knife to produce a lattice effect. Then sloop over a lot of olive oil and put in to roast for 35 mins.

2 Meanwhile chop up on a board the anchovies, olives and capers. Gently fry in a small pan with some groundnut or LIGHT olive oil. Tear in the sage leaves and squeeze or grate over the garlic. Let this cook together for a bit until the anchovy fillets have disintegrated.

3 Now plop out the tomatoes into a sieve and shake over the sink to let the tinny tomato juices flow away (but don't rinse). Add to the pan with the tomato puree and leave to cook for a few mins. Throw over six or seven turns of the pepper grinder. Now add a dribble of water - maybe 2 tbsp - just from the kettle and give it all a stir.

4 Now add a dollop of plain yoghurt if you have it, the lemon zest and the vinegar. Stir together and leave to cook very gently without drying out. The composition you are after is spreadable and juicy but not too wet. The consistency, I suppose, of bolognese.

5 Take the aubergines out of the oven - they ought to be a bit collapsed and blackened in places. Spread with the tomato mixture, top with whatever cheese you like then finish off under the grill.

Madeleines and lemonade

When my husband and I were first going out, I always used to worry that his female friends with children, or the wives of his male friends with children, wouldn't like me.

I was worried that they wouldn't like me because I was ten or so years younger and I didn't have children. I assumed they would find me annoying and resent my child-free state, my bouncy boobs, my very long, luxury hair that I had 45 minutes spare each morning to blow dry, style and finish with two coats of shellac.

But none of them did. They were all just charming and if I said stupid or ignorant things about children it didn't show in their faces. Not a flicker. Not for a moment. I assumed that if I was them I would find me irritating, but I was wrong.

Then I had a child of my own and I understood why they were all able to be so beatific.They looked at me and saw not a carefree young woman with life at her feet: they saw - consciously or unconsciously - a lamb to the slaughter. And the pity in their hearts for me translated effortlessly into a sunny kindness.

They knew this: either I would have kids and would have my ass handed to me by Mother Nature without them having to lift a finger, or I would not have kids and have my ass handed to me by the whole freaking world asking endless, rude questions about when are you going to and if not why not and don't you want them and shouldn't you get on with it? and can't you have them? and all that shit that people say to the childless like no-one has ever asked them any of those questions before.

They are mostly out the other side of little kids, are Giles's friends - their youngest children are about five and they all just go on holiday all the time and are whippet thin with amazing jobs and beautiful clothes. And they're all still nice to me and sympathetic and generous about the hassles and burdens of new motherhood.

And now it's my turn to be nice. I meet child-free people - both male and female - who, consciously or unconsciously, say blithe, tactless and ridiculous things about children, the freedom of their lives, the things they will or will not be doing in the future, the holidays they have been on and all that. And it's so easy to be nice about it all.

Because although I will soon be starting with a newborn all over again, I can start crossing things off the list: never have to be pregnant again, never have to give birth again, never have to breastfeed again, knicker area more or less in working order, (give or take a few patch-up procedures), back in old clothes, back working, baby sleeping through (ish), baby sitting up... I may have all sorts of unspeakable horrors in front of me but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not a train coming the other way.

But you... I think, looking around at my childless peers approaching the twilight zone of their mid-thirties... you have got to do all of this, from scratch, if you want kids. And the end of fun, the end of your life as you know it when it comes, is so abrupt and feels so much like it's forever, (though it's not), that the pity in my heart allows me to genuinely enjoy, with you, your latest holiday, your skinny bum, your bouyant bosom, that light of blissful, ignorant confidence in your eyes.

I genuinely enjoy it with you as I genuinely enjoy the unfettered delight that my toddler takes in balloons, or seeing a baby rabbit, or receiving an ice cream. I can delight with you because, as with my toddler, I know that quite soon it's all going to be over and you're both, in your own ways, going to have to grow up in the most necessary and horrible way imaginable.

The view from the other side is, I know, delightful. Children are worth it if only because the early years with them can be so very ghastly that it makes you really appreciate life anew (the joys of which, in your late twenties and early thirties, may have become dull and commonplace). When your youngest child hits 18 months it is, I imagine, like being Scrooge and waking up to find that it's Christmas Day and you've got a chance at life all over again.

It is in contemplation of these simple pleasures that I have recently been making madeleines and lemonade for tea.

People coming round for tea is a thing that happens endlessly when you  have children. The morning is a time for adventure and activity, but in the afternoon, people slob about and have tea. I, especially, cannot leave the house most afternoons because we are in a phase of Kitty's nap-drop that means that she won't sleep at all during the day but now has a danger zone from 4pm onwards, where if she's in a buggy or a car she will pass out.

Anyway, if you are feeling generous towards your teatime guests you could make them madeleines, which only involves the purchase of a madeleine tray and the making of a very simple cake batter. They are good for tea because there is nothing more delicious than freshly baked sponge batter, but fairy cakes are stupid and you might not want to bake an entire massive cake.

I bought my madeleine tray off Amazon and I'm not that pleased with it, just between you and me. I think the shell shape it gives is unsatisfying and indistinct - even though it came highly recommended. Maybe you will have more luck with yours.

Then you make the following sponge mix - (courtesy of Michel Roux) - it is a very good, very easy mix, with no need to cream the butter and sugar. Mine came out brilliantly and I had Kitty sabotaging the whole thing, yapping at my heels shrieking "Can I have a go?" every two seconds, so YOU can certainly ace it.

Michel claims this mix makes enough for 12, but I had too much for my 12-hole tin. I gave the remainder to Kitty to wipe all over herself, which she found amusing.

100g MELTED butter
100g plain flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
100 sugar
juice and chopped zest of one lemon (this is optional, but is very nice)

1 Preheat your oven to 200C. This is important - the oven needs to be really nice and hot when your madeleines go in

2 Grease your madeleine tray with some extra butter, then sprinkle with some extra flour and shake out the excess - never a precise job, this - just do your best

3 Whisk together the eggs and sugar. You can do this with an electric whisk if you like. We did it with a hand whisk - Kitty started it off and I finished it. Kitty was a bit useless so I gave it (but not her) a good solid beating towards the end, which worked fine.

4 Then add your other ingredients and give a firm, brief whisk to incorporate everything. Beat until just mixed - don't worry about the odd lump.

5 Leave the mix to sit for a few minutes to allow the baking powder to act before spooning into the tray

6 When filling your madeleine tray, fill to just under the top, so that when the sponge rises it just fills the dip, rather than spilling out over the top.

7 Bake for 8-10 minutes

You can dip madeleines into or drizzle with all manner of exciting things - chocolate, rose-water icing, orange icing - anything you like really. If you wanted to add extra flavours, maybe leave out the lemon element of this sponge mix as it might interfere.

For the lemonade

The cocktail mixer known as gomme, or sugar syrup, is what makes lemonade really easy. It is available from Waitrose or, I suspect, any bottle shop like Thresher's (do they still exist?)

Without gomme you have to do a thing where you simmer the lemonade and the sugar together so that the sugar dissolves and then let the mix cool down, which is a bore.

This is more, really, a recipe for citron presse, another French thing, with which I'm sure you're familiar, where you're given a load of lemon juice in the bottom of a glasss, a weeny pitcher of water and a bottle of gomme, with which to mix for yourself a refreshing bev.

What I do is squeeze a lot of lemons and limes (about 2 per person) into a jug, (using my excellent bright yellow openy-closey lemon squeezer, which I really recommend if you haven't got one already), then pour about an inch of lemon juice into glasses filled with ice cubes and a single spoon, top with fizzy water and then let everyone apply and stir in their own gomme from another jug. You could add a sprig of mint if you were feeling really caring.

Then we all sit around while I patronise everyone like mad, and they all take it because I've just made fucking madeleines and lemonade.

Mushroom sauce

A thing that drives me absolutely wild with rage is when new mothers are made to feel stupid for being neurotic about their childrens' health.

It's almost always only in the first year of the first child's life that mothers slightly lose perspective on health issues anyway; it is in those initial 12 months that you become paralysed with fear, able to talk only in a whisper because your breath has literally left your body with terror when your nine month old has a temperature of 101F.

Any temperature is fucking terrifying the first time it happens. And the first time it goes really high, like 104F or, SHRIEK!, 105F, you can feel quite demented with panic. Because it means your baby or toddler most probably has meningitis. Okay, only in your head. But those long dark nights with a feverish infant are long and they are frightening and you've never done this before.

So when anyone, whether they are a health professional or just any old person, suggests even for a minute that you might be overreacting, it's just not fair. It's NOT FAIR! Okay, I might not know how to react appropriately to a massive midnight nosebleed in a 13 month old, but can you calmly write 600 hilarious, correctly-spelled words about making brioche for a national newspaper in 90 minutes? No, I thought fucking not. Can you write a legal advice for a high street bank wishing to repossess a council property without gibbering with anxiety? Can you think of a brilliant marketing strategy for the "She-Wee" (the portable ladies' loo) with a straight face??? No. And no-one would expect you to be able to. So lose the fucking attitude, yeah, Mr Doctor?

At last, when your child hits about 18 months old, you have more or less seen the full range of horrors, you don't do a vertical take-off at every runny eye or neon snotfest. You have also heard of horrors from others of impetigo, scarlet fever, tonsillitis and kidney infections. You are aware. You have experience. But after that time you do occasionally see something you've never seen before and you're right back there, in that awful place, where you don't know how worried you're supposed to be.

Because if your child's leg drops off, or they go blind or deaf from disease, you will cope. Because it is your child and it doesn't matter what's wrong with them, you will look after them. In fact, if something ghastly happens, they will need you MORE you can be MORE devoted you can sacrifice MORE.

The thing that parents, mostly mothers on the frontline, cannot cope with is the idea that they have in some way been negligent. What keeps us awake at night is the fear that we should, right now, be in hospital, not just lying in bed listening to our baby coughing. What keeps us awake is the idea that we did not go to hospital because we did not want to panic unduly and then in the morning the child is fucking DEAD or irreversibly damaged and it is our fault.

I thought I had seen it all, I thought I had been so out of my mind with panic so often in the last two years, that there were no more panics left to panic. We've done non-blanching rashes, Noro (twice), nuclear fevers, sticky eyes, terrible falls headfirst onto concrete, bizarre nappies, massive nosebleeds and eczema.

But then last week Kitty's hand swelled up like a football and I completely lost my shit. It was a bite - maybe two bites, on her left had, which I am now convinced were contracted in the large sandpit of our local council playground. I can't be sure, though: the biter didn't leave a note.

Anyway she was bitten and her hand went red and swelled up. Then the next day the palm of her hand was covered in disgusting little blisters, which gradually filled with PUS - oh my god... the skin was taught and red and hard.

Disgusting skin infections are my thing, you know? I can deal with shit and puke no trouble - lucky because those are the effluvia you have most exposure to with small children. In fact I have animated discussions with Kitty's nanny about which - shit or puke -  we would rather clear up, (shit every time; puke splatters), but anything involving a rash or blisters or swelling, or pus or any sort of... growth... makes me really freak out.

But the worst thing about it was that I'd just never seen it before. And I was transported instantly back to that awful feeling - that feeling of what should I be doing? Making an appointment to see the GP in 8 weeks' time? Go directly to the Royal Free, do not pass Go and sit there for 3 hours in A&E only to be patronised by some bastard 22 year-old doctor?

What happened next is not important, but basically Kitty's hand was really gross for a few days and she absolutely refused to take the antibiotics prescribed for it, so I shoveled a lot of Piriton and Ibuprofen down her and it gradually got better. Meanwhile Kitty shamelessly held her swollen paw out to everyone she met, to see if they wanted to see her "itchy", not that at any point did the bite or infection seem to bother her. Only me. It just bothered me so much.

I had a similar novice-panic experience in the kitchen the other day. My husband has declared that he needed to go off carbs for a while as his weight is teetering on the edge of unacceptable - so I turned for only the second time in my cooking career to a poached chicken breast.

Regular readers of this blog will know that the essential thing with a poached chicken breast is to camouflage it as best one can, because a freshly poached chicken breast is about as appealing visually as a corpse freshly dredged from a canal. So you must smother it with some sort of fragrant sauce.

I didn't feel like doing some sort of vinegary hollandaise thing, so I decided instead, at the last minute, to do a mushroom sauce.

Only I didn't really know what I was doing. And I didn't have any fresh mushrooms. I turned for inspiration to a book called something like How To Be French, or I Love Garlic, by Julia Child, and in there was basically a mushroom sauce that I could just about knock up from the ingredients I had to hand.

And it worked surprisingly well and was terribly easy, although the actual assembly and cooking of it was not relaxing at all because it was slightly unplanned and I'd never done it before. It's just such a shame that there's no emergency service to deal with that.

Mushroom sauce
for 2

this would go well with either pork or chicken

2 tbsp dried mushrooms rinsed and rehydrated in some boiling water
3 tbsp double cream
about 200ml chicken stock - just out of a cube, I use those Knorr jelly concentrate thingies with Marco's face on them. I actually used the stock that I was poaching the chicken in
1 garlic clove
1 strip of lemon peel
1 sprig of sage - only if you have it
salt and pepper
1 glass shitty white wine, vermouth or leftover prosecco or anything like that. not sherry.
50g butter
2 shallots diced into teeny weeny weeny bits

1 Melt the butter in a small saucepan or frying pan and then add your diced shallots and fry over the lowest available heat for 10 minutes - do not let them catch or your sauce will be bitter and gross

2 Chop up your softened mushrooms and add to the shallots, cook gently for a further 4 minutes.

3 Now pour over your glass of shitty white wine and let this bubble away until there is barely any liquid left. Turn the heat down to low-medium and pour in the stock. Allow this to cook for 8-10 minutes before adding the cream, salt and pepper, sage sprig, whole garlic clove and lemon peel.

4 This can sit about and cook over a very low heat sort of indefinitely while you get the rest of your dinner together. If it's looking too low on juice, just add more stock.

5 Fish out the garlic clove, lemon peel and sage sprig before serving.

Eat and TRY NOT TO PANIC.