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Saturday 19 November 2011

She's a lady......

I recently returned home from my first, post-partum night out, looking like I'd been on the lash with Pete Doherty. I had every intention of indulging in moderate behaviour, but a few drinks in and I was already trying to figure out whose willy I could try out my breast pump on!

I'd been hoping for a dignified return to hearth and home. After all, I'd left the evening before, having achieved, I like to think, an understated, yet on-trend, high-waisted trouser combo and once I'd stopped gawping gormlessly at people, I thought I'd got this socialising lark licked! The fact that my most astute response of the evening was something along the lines of 'yeah. Yep. I'm fine thanks,' accompanied by a couple of snorty laughs like a drunken horsey type called Jacinta, is neither here nor there!

This alien, uninterrupted adult time left me wide-eyed and a little skittish, so I sensibly decided that my best course of action would be to drink through my discomfort. I managed that admirably! I just forgot to stop drinking. I ought to have known that it was only a matter of time, or rather a number of drinks, before my best-laid plans to be civilised, stylish, mature and insightful completely went to pot. After all, I can only mask my true bawdy nature for so long.

Needless to say, I didn't greet the morning with a sun salutation and a rejuvenated skip in my step. Once back on familial territory, I promptly had to stick my head down the loo, retch the very life out of me and go back to bed. At this point, I was crying and bemoaning my obvious lack of sobriety, sobbing 'look at me! I have children!'

The ensuing recovery period was inevitably punctuated with bouts of the beer blues, infinite gratitude for the love and care administered by my husband and guilt at my unworthiness as a mother and wife.

Thankfully, as the day drew to a close, like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, I finally regained my full height and stopped skulking in the household shadows like some sort of dehydrated Gollum. As I went into the bathroom, I caught my husband unscrewing my pot of Clarins. My shriek of 'fifty quid!! That costs fifty quid! Get your big, fat sausage fingers out of it' was met with a knowing glance and a smug 'I can see you're feeling better then darling!'