A fortnightly series featuring real words from real mummies…

This week…Anna Whitehouse, founder of mother pukka and mother to Mae…

Journalist, editor and mother in search of pukka things for her kid, founder of Mother Pukka Anna Whitehouse previously worked as the Vice Editor at Time Out Amsterdam before writing about shoes and handbags for fashion labels SuperTrash and Tommy Hilfiger. Looking for a change of pace, she recently returned to London and now works as a writer at Shortlist Media. Likes: super hero cape-making classes. Dislikes: the naming of celebrity couples (TomKat, Bennifer, Brange etc.)

My little Munchkin is… Mae (2)

No-one ever tells you that…your nappy bag will always be a mash-up of soggy rice cakes, old tissues, smudges of Sudocrem, a handful of pennies and mangled old receipts. There is nothing that can be done so don’t fight it.

I couldn’t have survived the first three months without… The sleep sheep, Tracker bars (they reminded me of school break time when I was 10), the aptly-named Miracle Blanket that somehow got Mae to sleep for more than two hours in a row, and my mum.

I wish I’d known before that…It gets a lot easier. I heard people say it, but when I was in the thick of those first six dark months, I just could not believe everything would be OK.

It used to drive me mad when people said…“We’re really lucky he/she [insert anything from ‘sleeps through the night’ to ‘never seems to cry’].

The best present anyone gave me was…A hand-crocheted baby blanket from my best mate Melissa. She’s not a natural crafting talent so it meant so much she’d spent an evening toiling over this blanket which Mae sleeps with every night. Double love.

“Just because someone manages to pop their disco pants on doesn’t mean everything’s OK…”

Our first holiday was…To Italy with our mates Bella and Joe who have a toddler roughly the same age as Mae. Mae is obsessed with Rex their son. Like, she points at things and says, ‘that’s Rex and I will marry it.’ I’m proud in a way.

The most important that I’ve learnt is…not to judge a mother by her cover. Some of my most together mates – who managed to whack on the slap and trim the tummy flab almost before the placenta had been delivered were sometimes fighting a tougher battle than you’d think. Just because someone manages to pop their disco pants on doesn’t mean everything’s OK.

I wish…Instagram would allow you to zoom in on photos. It gets me every time – especially when I want to turbo stalk one of those Scandinavian show homes.

I want my children to know that…it’s not about having it all. It’s about having something

W: motherpukka.co.uk
F: .facebook.com/motherpukka
T: twitter.com/mother_pukka
Instagram: @mother_pukka
YouTube:  youtube.com/c/MotherPukka