Rather than ‘shutting up shop’, she got back on the dating scene. But pals were not impressed with her saucy escapades…
AS I push my pram, my baby sleeping, it takes me a moment to realise that someone is talking to me.
Another mum, on the way to the same baby class, is asking how I am – and I stammer as I push my phone into my bag, my cheeks bright red with embarrassment.
I’d almost been caught in the act listening to a very vivid voice message from a man telling me exactly what he was hoping to do with me the next night.
As the other woman confessed she was finding maternity leave a boring cycle of laundry and nappy changes, I lied and agreed: ‘Me too.’
The truth is, I’m having a ball.
As well as being a first-time mum, I’m single again and enjoying dabbling with online dating, which I’ve never done before.
I met my now former husband fresh out of university, when Tinder had only just hit the most tech-savvy singletons, and so the app revolution was never part of my dating experience.
And I never thought I’d need dating apps until my marriage ended when I was 30 and mother to a four-month-old baby.
That Christmas, I was still heartbroken and staying with my parents when my cooler younger sister mentioned an app called Feeld, meant to be great for low-commitment, open-minded dating.
A relationship was the last thing on my mind, but I was touch-starved, desperate for human contact, so I downloaded it.
All I’d previously ever heard about apps were horror stories – that the men were pigs and it was an endless hell of getting ghosted, breadcrumbed, benched and lots of other terms I didn’t understand.
So I entered this new world with a lot of trepidation.
But to my shock, it wasn’t awful. In fact, it was amazing.
Sure, I spoke to some unappealing men and received my fair share of unsolicited intimate pics. But for the most part, the men I chatted to were funny, interesting and, crucially, interested.
My mum friends wanted to talk about breast versus bottle, sleep regression and when to try for the next baby.
These men wanted to hear about my career, my favourite music and TV shows and my personality.
Even better, despite the fact my body was still stretched out from pregnancy and I’d very much not lost the baby weight, they seemed to find me passably attractive.
‘Ego boost’
The ego boost was totally addictive.
Before long, I was in a whirlwind of sexy messages, having to put my phone on airplane mode every time I went to a baby class so it wouldn’t keep vibrating in the pram.
I had to make sure I didn’t open WhatsApp in the park in case someone had sent me an adult image and I kept headphones to hand so I could listen to saucy voice messages in privacy.
I’d sit on a bench while my daughter napped in her buggy, and it probably looked as if I was doing a supermarket order or asking about availability of nursery places, not sending a double entendre to an attractive man who wasn’t her father.
A lot of single parents use their shared custody to enable dating – using that needed but emotionally tricky time apart from their child to take their mind off all that with a bit of adult fun.
But I have my daughter full-time, an enormous privilege yet also a bit of a block on spending the night with a man.
Luckily, when she turned one, my mum suggested I needed a regular break and offered to have my child for a sleepover one night a month.
Some women might have used that for a bubble bath and a really long sleep.
But I’m an extrovert and what I needed to recharge my batteries was company, excitement and, honestly, some great sex.
As I could also get a paid babysitter in once a week, this became my time to have adventures.
I went to Brighton for a night with a guy I’d just started seeing and we barely left the hotel room.
I was whisked out for expensive dinners by a lawyer who was time-poor but cash-rich and only wanted to meet for two or three hours before he went back to the office, which suited me fine.
I shared nude images with a stand-up comedian and exchanged long, graphic email fantasies with a guy stationed on an oil rig.
Suddenly I had a double life. Most of the time I was just someone’s mum, but once a week I could swap the T-shirt and jeans for a little black dress and cocktail bar.