I remember high heels. And clutch bags. But not my kids’ names

THERE’S many ways to discover you’ve become a total mum, and it’s nothing to do with having kids, writes Kerry Parnell.

Handbags are useful to carry a mobile phone, a lipstick and a tampon. Unless you’re a mum, in which case they double as vending machines. (Pic: iStock)

1. YOUR handbag is a portable vending machine

You know you’re a mum when you don’t leave home on a journey longer than six minutes without a buffet in your bag. Wars have been prevented through a strategic box of sultanas.

2. You wear ‘mom jeans’ unironically

They might be the height of fashion, but you just find those high-waisters really comfy.

3. You own a mum calendar

You know the ones — they’re long and thin and made of paper and you hang them on your kitchen wall. You had an epiphany the day you realised using a thing called a pen to write down school dates would seriously streamline your life.

4. You have more flat shoes than heels

It happened by stealth. Even though you (or maybe just me) swore blind you’d never wear practical shoes, one day you looked in your cupboard and realised you owned a single pair of heels that you last wore three years ago.

Sensible shoes are no longer my enemy. (Pic: Supplied)

5. You can’t remember your kids’ names

Despite detesting it when your mother called you an amalgamation of your siblings’ names, including the dog’s, now you regularly address your daughter by her brother’s name.

6. You can’t remember movie stars’ names

Try to extract the name of the film star you liked in that movie you watched on Netflix last night and you enact a kind of torturous Pictionary description to your childless colleagues’ dismay, who look at you as though you have lost your mind. Which you kind of have because…

7. You can’t remember anything anymore

Well apart from childbirth that is. Because despite the myth, YOU NEVER FORGET.

8. And yet you achieve more in one hour, than you did pre-kids, in a day

What, exactly, did you do before you had children? On reflection, you could have used those years to achieve something a little more worthwhile than quaffing white wine and waffling on interminably about yourself to your best mate. Now, the number one thing women realise when they go back to work post maternity leave, is they could feasibly do their entire job in 60 minutes, and head home again.

One of these women will be in a cab by 9pm. (Hint: it’s the one with the kid). (Pic: Supplied)

9. You have a Spotlight loyalty card

Who even knew craft shops existed? Despite having no arty skills or knowledge that having a child meant you were expected to morph into Mr Maker, now your essential household items include a glue gun, for things like Easter Bonnets and bloody Book Day outfits.

10. A night out is over by 9pm

Pre-motherhood, you were bemused by mum-buddies who would knock back two glasses of prosecco, shrieking in glee at their temporary freedom, before peaking by 8.30pm and in a taxi by nine. Now, a date night costs you $430 in babysitters and is over before you leave.

11. And you’ll still spend two days recovering from it

Hangovers and small children. It’s a no.

12. Your daily shower counts as “me-time”

If you manage a shower with no toddler banging on the door, with a leisurely hair wash and, hey, let’s go crazy, shaving your legs, it’s a fist-pumping kind of day. Living the dream, ladies.