Celia Walden

On feeling small in the presence of mothers who Have It All

gets annoyed by perfect women; What happened next Sir Philip Green turns Britain’s last remaining libraries into shops

‘DIf you’re going to elevate motherhood from endurance test to art form, the least you can do (out of sisterly charity if nothing else) is let your body run to ruin

on’t get me wrong,’ I’m telling the brunette to my right at dinner, ‘I love motherhood more than a maraschino cherry in my Singapore Sling, but come 8pm Sunday you’re likely to fnd me rocking and twitching – Chief Inspector Dreyfus-style – in a darkened room.’ I’m thinking we’re having one of those moments of maternal synergy where the air between you actually quivers with shared warmth; she’s squinting at me in confusion. ‘I thought you only had one child?’ ‘Oh I do,’ I stutter. ‘You?’ And, of course, the woman has made more miniature people than a Mattel factory. In fact there’s a ffth on the way, looking – just as it should – like a football stufed beneath her Dolce sheath. Oh, and did I mention that she’s also written three books? Which is great because for a minute there I was in danger of feeling like a real underachiever.

I think I’d fnd XXL mums – the defantly unfrazzled women who remain in some degree of pregnancy for a decade – easier to stomach if they had XXL vital statistics. Because if you’re going to elevate motherhood from endurance test to art form, if you’re going to be so bloody efcient at it – launching healthy-eating school vending-machine campaigns and not once being caught clearing your iPhone spam folder during prize-giving – the least you can do (out of sisterly charity if nothing else) is let your body run to ruin. But no. The likes of Natalia Vodianova and Jools Oliver (both pregnant with their ffth) seem to look better in a trikini the more human beings they produce. The ones I’ve come across also have the temerity to excel professionally – which is far more galling than any six-pack-faunting Notting Hill multiple-mum using her brood as a status symbol. It’s as though these women have stared sacrifce in the face, shrugged and said, ‘On second thoughts, I think I’ll have it all.’

Perhaps someone should explain to XXL mums that sacrifce isn’t something you subscribe to. It’s not there on your life plan. But all too quickly the 10 or 20 acts of micro-denial every mother makes a day (the Special K bar instead of the scramble, The Week instead of

The Economist) add up to fairly major renunciations. Clearly, you reason with yourself, even with all the help in the world (because help makes things easier, not easy) you can’t tend to the needs of a grizzling litter, hold down a good job, spend an hour a day at the gym and uphold an informed and vociferous dinner-party defence of fracking. Yet this is precisely what the XXL mum to my right is now doing – casually regurgitating phrases like ‘dirty electricity’ and ‘ambitious climate targets’ from the

Economist piece she somehow found the time to read from start to fnish.

Which is why the only question I have for her is not ‘How?’ but ‘When? When? When?’

‘You know how the more you have to do, the more you’re able to cram into the day?’ she smiles.

‘Totally,’ I fing back unconvincingly. And having ascertained that we have almost nothing in common aside from our gender, we turn away from one another.