Steak and beans

So this diet, then. I know you want to know about it, even if you have no intention of going on one. I have been a journalist for too long, you see: I believe all that anyone truly cares about are diets and Princess Diana.

I waited until we returned from a blow-out all you can eat bucket and spade holiday in Devon before embarking on my regime: while we were on holiday, I didn't want to ruin the atmosphere by going on about how I wasn't eating anything. Then with the cold, dead heart of a Dementor, I imposed a chilling food timetable on myself.

The rules, as mention before, are: no carbs, no sugar, no drinking during the week.

The first three days were simply awful. At one point I was so desperate for sugar (but refused to eat a biscuit) that I strapped Sam into the sling and galloped up to Sainsbury's for some yoghurt-covered cranberries.

But I also realised in those first three days just how much sugar and snacking went on in my life simply because of the number of times I found myself standing in front of the biscuit tin with no recollection of how I got there.

My daily diet went something like this:

Breakfast: 3 pieces toast, 3 cups tea with sugar
mid-morning: 1/2 bagel (sometimes whole thing?) sugary, full fat latte
post-mid morning: more tea, custard cream?
lunch: nothing
1.30pm: tea, custard cream(s)
1.35pm Kitty's lunch leftovers, custard cream (cup of tea?)
2.30pm: "balancing" (possibly "fat burning") diet coke
3pm: some digestive biscuits
5.25pm: Kitty's leftovers, mini cornetto
7.30pm: dinner - something with rice or pasta
7.50pm: telly and 1/2 bar Lindt "Orange Intense" chocolate (AMAZING)

... and I wondered why my weight was stubbornly at 11 stone. I told myself that I was on the Shitty Food Diet, but the thing about the SFD is that you have to be very busy for it to work. If you are sitting about with a newborn all day long, very close to cupboards full of toddler treats, simply replacing lunch with custard creams doesn't really cut it.

So now a typical food day looks like this:

Breakfast: punishment museli with banana (yes I know that's carbs, but barely - and also carbs are free before 8am)
mid-morning: apple
lunch: ham and cheese omelette
teatime snack: diet coke
dinner: 1/2 steak with a soy bean salad

Then after the babies go to bed I go for a 10-min run and do 80 sit-ups.

I know it sounds utterly fucking ghastly, but it's actually not going too badly. My run is very short, I go slowly and I listen to very loud, very bad music. It is a critical 10 mins alone after a day of listening to other people's problems, (YOU have to listen to MINE), I get to leave the house, which I don't do much at the moment and I really think the sit-ups might be doing something.

The thing about diets, the thing you have to do in order to make them work, is to mentally adjust to being okay with feeling quite hungry quite often. A couple of nights of my new regime were spent awake, hungry, with aching legs from the running. I just kept telling myself that hunger is fat leaving the body and the aching legs are just because I haven't done any exercise for 33 years so of course it's going to hurt a bit.

Once you get used to feeling hungry, diets are easy. Once you know that being hungry isn't going to make you faint, or die, you can ignore it. And then your stomach starts shrinking and adjusts to the new amount of food you are eating, and then you're away.

Diets can often seem anti-food, like food is the enemy. And the things you are allowed to eat when you are on a diet just don't seem that appealing when you are existing on Planet of Anything-Goes Pregnancy Food Blow-Out.

But - the simplest of lunches and the most punishment of dinners tastes like the best, most fantastic gourmet plateful when you are really, truly hungry.

Not "starving", you understand. I have become one of those disapproving old biddies who leaps on the use of the word starving as abhorrent and silly when people actually ARE starving in Afghanistan, in Syria - even in parts of this very country.

So if you are actually on a diet, calorie restriction or Atkins or anything, it doesn't matter much what actual things you are allowed to eat - you will fall on them like a ravenous wolf and scream "WOW THIS IS THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER" as you sip some scalding miso soup.

Having said that, I do try to make an effort with dinner. My husband has gamely joined with me on this strict diet and the Lord knows he likes a bit of effort when it comes to food.

The most successful dinner I've conjured up recently has been steak and beans. Because I disapprove so massively of eating steak we never have it, but just for the moment I am relaxing and allow us one very expensive organic steak between two of us, accompanied by a soy bean salad and some fried courgettes if I'm feeling really wild.

The secret to the soy bean salad is a dressing made of:

1 handful parsley, finely chopped
5 or so mint leaves, ditto
1 spring onion, chopped
3 tbsp good olive oil
1 tbsp capers, chopped
the juice of one lemon
a sprinkling of chilli flakes (if you like)

You boil the soy beans (available frozen from Waitrose - and many other supermarkets, I'm sure) and then dress them with this sort of salsa thing while still warm.

It really is delicious!! Although I might only be saying that because I am just so hungry.

Fried courgettes, if you are interested, are also nice. Take one courgette, chop it into pieces about 3cm x 1cm long then fry in hot groundnut oil turning occasionally for about 20 mins. They brown up surprisingly nicely. Drain on kitchen roll and sprinkle liberally with sea salt.

Eat all this with an abstemious glass of tap water and remember to work your core muscles while chewing. 

Leftover pork

Someone said to me the other day - it must have been on Twitter - that she was annoyed by suggestions from television or celebrity chefs of what to do with "leftover cheese".

"There is never," she said "leftover cheese in my house."

I know what she means. I know what to do with leftover cheese, or leftover chicken or leftover lamb: you put it in a fucking sandwich. Or you eat it out of the foil, cold, with your tremblingly ravenous fingers, dipped hastily in mayonnaise, or recurrant jelly or mango chutney or whatever.

But - I had cause the other day to have some leftover pork belly. If you do not cook pork belly frantically at any opportunity, then you are a fool, by the way. It costs about 9p to feed 18 people and you just rub it with salt and then put it in the oven at 140C for 4 hours. If you want crackling you turn the oven up to full whack for 20 mins at the end.

Anyway so I had this leftover pork belly and I couldn't put it in a sandwich, because dun dun DUUNN I am on a DIET.

A very serious diet, too. No carbs, no sugar, no drinking during the week. And no sandwiches.

"Oh but you've just had a baby" everyone says. "Give yourself a break."

NO THANKS!!! Don't want to be fat anymore, ta. Bored with it now, bored with my fat arse and my thighs that rub together at the top and my back fat and my beefy shoulders. And if having two children has taught me anything, it's that if you want something, you have to get it your fucking self. I can't just sit around with my fingers crossed eating custard creams hoping that the weight will fall off by itself because it won't. Not at my age.

When you are young and single there is a vague sense that you are the star in the movie that is your life. There is the sense that when you find yourself in a dramatic situation that some dramatic solution will present itself. A handsome man will appear with an umbrella, a handsome man will pay your taxi fare, a handsome man will fix your broken down car. You get the idea.

This feeling can linger on in the early days with your first baby, as you find yourself stuggling with a buggy and a screaming infant, who then vomits and then your trousers fall down or whatever and you can find yourself in a glorious maelstrom of self-pity and sort of feel "look at me! It's like in a movie and I am a hopeless new mother!!"

Then you realise, quite soon, that nobody is coming to rescue you. No-one is coming to help. It's just you. And very quickly getting into scrapes with your child or really scrapes of any sort ceases to be funny.

I realised this one day when I didn't put the brakes on the buggy properly, (Maclaren buggy brakes are bizarrely wobbly and shitty and hard to apply properly), and it rolled down some steps with Kitty in it. Fuck it was so awful. I have never forgiven myself. I squirm around in actual physical distress when I recall it.

Kitty was just screaming and screaming with blood in her mouth and I couldn't get the stupid buggy harness off and the buggy was squashing Kitty and not one person came to help. I mean, I'm not surprised they didn't - a screaming kid on our street is nothing new. But it was at that moment that I realised that this is it, now - this is real, now: so don't fuck it up.

And it brought back to me powerfully that line in The Secret Garden when Mary Lennox is alone in her house in India because everyone else has died of cholera and two British civil servants come to send her back to England. "Why does nobody come?" shrieks Mary. "There's nobody left to come," says one of the men.

So if you want something done - if you want to be thin, if you want to be successful, if you want your kids to say please and thank you, you have to do it yourself. This is why women with children can, if they're not careful, end up being really quite bossy, because there is a strong sense in their lives that if they don't do it, no-one else will.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes leftover pork.

The thing about a fatty piece of pork, like a pork belly (the same applies to bacon) is that to get the best results you have to cook it slowly - this makes the fat render and then crisp up.

So with some leftover pork belly what you do is cut it up into small squares - about 2cm by 2cm if you want me to be exact about it, and then let it all sit in a dry frying pan over a low to moderate heat for about 30 mins. The fat will melt and crisp up the pork.

If you would like your crispy pork also spicy, then add in a teaspoon of dried chilli flakes, some finely-chopped spring onions, some chopped garlic maybe? A fine grating of ginger? A sprinkling of Chinese five spice? Any or all of these things would be simply capital.

Serve with a salad. No sandwiches allowed.

Tapenade (NOT)

It is frustrating, I remember, when close friends or relatives have children when you don't. They disappear, for days, weeks, months - years! - on end with no explanation. What can they possibly be doing, you think, that is so incompatible with replying to emails and text messages? Why do I always get the sense that they would rather do anything than come out for dinner, or go for drinks? Don't they care about me, their friend, any more? Don't they understand that they cannot, should not, let their children take over their lives? It's hard not to take it personally, to write them off.

But let me tell you, please, what we are doing, (as I wipe vanilla ice cream off the buggy, the screams of newborn who does not like getting out of the bath ringing in my ears). If you have one child you are in a constant state of semi-anxiety, if not in an actual no-sleeping, neurotic dark, dark, dark meltdown, and if you have two children you are not so much anxious as spread incredibly thin, like the last scraping of butter (where the FUCK is the Ocado man???) on the last slice of toast.

If I am not with one child, I am with the other. Or I am with both. If I am not with either, I am with my husband, trying to make up for completely ignoring him most of the time. If I am on my own I am organising four peoples' lives. I am doing Ocado orders, I am making lists, I am writing cheques, I am writing pieces for newspapers, I am frantically checking that I am on top of upcoming birthdays, thank you notes, RSVPs, two sets of medical appointments, the administration requirements of our summer holidays, the administration requirements of Kitty's nursery, where she starts in September.

And this is all with me having desperately tried to buy my way out of trouble in advance of the birth of Sam. Let me say this: it cannot be done. I've got help coming out my fucking ears, it's like Downton Abbey round my house, and I still feel like I am only just keeping a grip on my life. I feel like I spend all day every day just answering questions. Where's my this, where's my that, should Sam wear this? Or is it too hot today? What do you want Kitty to have for lunch? Is there any more bleach? Where is Sam's passport application? Can I watch Peppa Pig? Can you sign here, love? Where do you want these? Where is dinner tonight? What is dinner tonight? Can I have a biscuit? What's that noise? WAAAAAHHHHH?? Have you seen my keys?

Then there are the hormones. (At least I hope it's hormones and therefore temporary.) Oh my god the hormones. Horrifying, massive zits and I feel like if I dared to start crying I'd never stop. After I had Kitty, there was only Kitty to really see the mess Mother Nature's uppers and downers made on a 30-something woman - but now there are so many more people to be victim of my moods.

This has been made doubly worse by the fact that I've had a troll. Yes an actual internet troll, who wrote me a series of emails saying absolutely unspeakable, unrepeatable things about Kitty - the general tone of which was "if you hate Kitty so much, why don't you kill her?" One email's subject line was "Kitty is such a little bitch."

I felt:

1 Horrified: why have I exposed my family to the grossness of the internet by writing this stupid pointless blog.

2 Baffled: WHY would someone bother to send emails like that?

3 Guilty: do I make out like I hate Kitty? Is that how it comes across? Because if that is the case then that is a disaster.

I mostly assume, when I am crouched down next to Kitty, holding very tightly on to her arm and saying in a not-unthreatening voice "You do NOT throw sand. We do NOT DO THAT. If you do that again we are going home" or praying hard for bedtime, that this is a pretty average experience for a parent of toddlers. Some days are delightful, some days are ghastly, surely?

And when I write about it, I write about it reckoning that no-one needs help having a good time with their children, no-one needs help loving their children, or finding them funny or delightful, or clever, or beautiful. All that is easy.

Where we all need help, where I think I help - if at all - is by describing the shit, difficult bits of life when it comes to cooking, relationships and children, in the hope that you will read it and maybe feel less alone.

But maybe I'm not right. Maybe most people just have a brilliant time with all their kids, all the time, and never have to bite their hands to stop them from dishing out a fury-smack. Maybe I am just a fucking witch.

Anyway, where was I? Sorry, I'm just all over the place. I don't know what I think about anything anymore. I don't think I actually really have any thoughts about anything at the moment. I used to have all these ideas and theories about parenting but now all I do is plan, organise and make lists and wonder why there is always someone in my house who is miserable. I'm no longer able to deal in ideas, I deal only in plain facts.

I thought I had a recipe for tapenade to give you here - a great, inexpensive dip that can be whizzed up at short notice for an impromptu warm-weather gathering- but I've realised that the magazine feature, which I gave it to as an "exclusive" recipe (snort) keeps being delayed, so I cannot print it here yet either.

I suppose not everyone can be as organised as me.

Rocky road

I know a woman from the playground whose husband has just lost his job. It's not a big deal, he'll get another one. But for the moment he is unemployed, getting under my friend's feet in the house, driving her nuts.

"He just hangs about," she hissed hysterically to me at Babygym the other day. "He doesn't DO anything all day. I mean, I don't really fucking do anything all day either, but I know how to do nothing. Do you know what I mean? That's what kids teach you, how to do nothing and make it look like something."

Oh yes. Yes I know what she means alright. I have been thinking a lot recently about why baby no.2 (unless it does some awful screaming/no-sleeping/reflux thing) is so much easier than no.1 - it's because you know how to do nothing.

When no.1 comes along, you've probably just come off some job, or at the very least, come out of a place when you could do what you liked and basically kept yourself quite occupied, doing meaningful things out of duty, or fun things at the drop of a hat. Then a baby arrives and you are required to be in its constant attendance, but you don't really have to do anything. Feed it occasionally, change it. Some laundry maybe, get an Ocado order in. But you don't seem to be actually doing anything. It's just baffling. You cannot get your head round the idea that you don't actually need to do anything, except sit there. And wait for it to start talking.

I dealt with this doublethink by inventing all sorts of utterly bizarre rituals, mostly based around things being incredibly neat and tidy and a light obsession with germs, which then descended into a full-on neurotic breakdown when Kitty was 10 months old. Doing everything and nothing, holding something faceless, nameless and unidentifiable at bay... sitting around making sure the sky didn't fall in, or warding off some other potent disaster I couldn't describe, sent me crazy.

But slowly, gradually, I learnt that that is not what you are doing. You are just doing nothing. No wait, you are not doing nothing, you are bringing up a child - but it feels an awful lot like nothing most of the time. And now I am an expert at getting busy killing time. I potter like a pro. We go to the bank, we pick up some groceries, we are the go-to people if anything needs to be taken to the dry-cleaners or posted in complicated way. We rule the high street with our Maclaren and jute shopping bags. We are always busy, busy, busy - but busy doing nothing.

As Kitty has become gradually more and more genuinely demanding as she reaches the peak of what she can do at home and at playgroup and starts needing, desperately, to go to nursery five mornings a week, I have learnt how to absolutely 100% savour actual quiet, downtime, relaxed time. I sink into it like a £500 Hungarian goosedown duvet. I do not fidget and twitch and feel like I ought to be doing something. I drink in the quiet like a massive gin and tonic and feel as at peace as a master yogi.

And the acres of downtime with a newborn, (when you manage to palm off your toddler onto someone else), is unbelievably luxurious compared with the 8 second interludes you get with a screeching toddler.

Newborns are just SO undemanding! They don't fucking ask you for things all the time; sometimes a series of bizarre requests in a row you can have no hope of fulfilling. Newborns don't want to do fingerpainting, or want to have a long rambling chat with "Rabbit" (i.e. me holding Rabbit) about whether or not he wants a biscuit, or watch Peppa Pig at 400 db, or flood the downstairs loo. Newborns just sit there and let you get on with gazing at them, or poking about on your iPad, without saying the dreaded: "Can I play Happy Mrs Chicken?" in a shrill little voice and then drinking all your caramel frappucino.

Sam just lies about with his lips in a little "O" of wonder, gazing peacefully around, weeing gently into his nappy, occasionally screwing up his face bravely at a particularly troublesome fart - or he is sound asleep with his mouth hanging open.

And now I am not only used to being confined to the house, I am used to being confined with a fractious toddler, which is only slightly less nice than being in one of those POW bamboo cages where you can't stand up or sit down. So being confined to the house with nothing more tricky than a sleeping newborn is just bliss. And, unless I experience serious rush of blood to the head Sam will be my last child, so in the moments when I am alone with my youngest child, I open my arms wide and embrace the nothing. Then I lean over and give my sleeping son a little lick.

As it happens, I have elected not to do much cooking recently with my downtime, even though I could have done while my husband was on paternity leave looking after Kitty. But the other day someone brought round for me something called Rocky Road, which I have heard many things about, but have never been that interested in.

It's just sugar, isn't it? Put together in a slightly different way and thus not interesting. But I ate some, because I like this woman who brought it round for me. (If I didn't know she was nice, I would have labelled this Rocky Road a hostile gift - i.e. "Eat this, stay fat and I hope all your teeth fall out".)

Anyway it was just mind-blowing. I couldn't really believe what I was eating. It was like sweeties from OUTER SPACE and I ate the entire bag and wanted more. MORE!

I imagine I'm the last person in the world to discover Rocky Road, which is basically broken up biscuit and marshmallows held together with chocolate, but I am including a recipe for it here anyway because I've got some time on my hands at the moment - and the Lord knows I am an expert on finding things to do.

Rocky Road
Makes about 20 bits depending on how small you cut them up

300g milk cooking chocolate - I use the Menier stuff from Waitrose, but their own-brand milk cooking chocolate is really good, too.
2 full-size Crunchie bars
5 plain digestive biscuits
a handful of full-size marshmallows
3 tbs golden syrup

Line a small square or rectangular tin (the actual dimensions don't matter - I'd say roughly 7in by 7in) with a triple layer of clingfilm to make it possible to lift the Rocky Road out later.

1 break up the chocolate into a heatproof bowl (i.e. not metal) and add the golden syrup. If you dabble the spoon in a mug of hot water for a few seconds, it makes getting the syrup out of the tin much easier.

Set this bowl over a pan of cold water, about 2 in deep.The bottom of the bowl should not touch the water. Set the pan and bowl over your smallest burner on the lowest available heat and wait for it to melt - it might take about 20 mins.

A direction in a lot of recipes for melting chocolate that irritates me is "set the bowl of a pan of barely simmering water". This is an insane thing to say as any rational person will then fret and fret about keeping the water "barely simmering". Don't worry about it. The water doesn't need to be "barely simmering" it just needs to be hot so just dump the bowl over the hot water and forget about whether or not it is simmering. The chocolate will probably have melted by the time the water gets to simmering point.

2 Into another bowl break or smash up the Crunchie and digestive biscuits into small pieces.

3 Tip the biscuit pieces into the chocolate and mix to combine. You will worry here that there is not enough chocolate to go round everything, but there is. At the last moment, tip in the marshamallow and give a brief stir. What marshmallows like to do on contact with warm chocolate is melt, which although still gives the Rocky Road a lovely chewy texture, what you're after is actual bits of marshmallow whole.

4 Spoon your unwieldy mixture into your tin and smooth the top with a spatula - it's easiest to do this if the spatula is wet. Chill for 2 hours and then cut into bits.

Toddlers like this.

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.

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).