Page 21 of The Bad Mother's Diary

Nick is Daisy’s daddy and I love him.

Tuesday February 10th

Trying the Nutri-Soup diet today: soup for every meal, no white carbs, no caffeine, no alcohol, etc.

The plan is to be all puritanical and wonderful and cleanse my body with lovely nourishing vegetables.

By eleven o’clock I was starving.

Lunch was parsnip and ginger soup.

In the book it looked really nice. A lovely white bowl of bright orange soup with a single parsley leaf floating in it. But after boiling the parsnips, all this scummy stuff appeared. I couldn’t be bothered to clean the blender AGAIN. So I just mashed everything up with a fork and got this lumpy brown stuff that looked like a muddy puddle.

Wednesday February 11th

Still feel guilty about not breastfeeding.

It’s hard being a mum. I’d wanted Daisy to have the very best of everything, but the milk just didn’t happen.

It was like my boobs were broken.

In the hospital they strapped me to this 1970s pump the size of a Ford Fiesta, but no milk came out.

I got so upset and worried.

Mum said, ‘Oh sod it, Jules, give her a bloody bottle. You and your sisters had bottles and turned out just fine.’

Althea said I had a lucky escape.

She said, ‘Breastfeeding makes you fucking thirsty all the time. You wake up in the middle of the night with weird Indian takeaway BO. Your sheets smell of sour milk. And you’re like a sodding human dummy. It’s bullshit.’

When I asked her why she was still doing it, she said breastfeeding gives her ‘amazing porn star boobs’. Plus she hates washing up.

Thursday February 12th

Made the wedding invitations today.

Helen found me trying to scrub PVA glue off Daisy’s baby gym.

She pursed her lips and said, ‘As long as it hasn’t gone on the Berber carpet.’

Then she asked me how many invitations I’d made.

I had to admit I hadn’t actually made a whole one yet.

There were bits of ones all around the room, though.

She gave me her ‘you’re an idiot’ look and said, ‘This is a wedding, not make do and mend. For heaven’s sakes,buythe invitations. I gave Nicholas three hundred pounds yesterday – you can’t have spent it already.’

When Nick came home, I asked him about the money.

He said he’d taken a theatre director for a meal at Claridge’s. And the director had drunk a lot of wine. Nick got a new role though – a dancing biscuit in a Jaffa Cake advert.

I told him Helen was criticising my beautiful handmade invitations.

He said, ‘Theydolook a bit Blue Peter. Where’s bubba?’

I told him to fuck off (sequins are very fiddly!), adding that it was nine o’clock so Daisy was sleeping.

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