1. All the parent and child spaces in the multi-storey car park will be full.
2. You’ll have to park in a space next to a pillar before spending five minutes trying to wrangle your baby out of the car without bumping her head.
3. You’ll be lured into the first shop you walk past because of the pretty dress in the window, only to realise the clothes rails are FAR too close together to wheel a buggy around the shop.
4. Topshop will suddenly seem far too full of young people wearing impractical clothing.
5. You’ll wonder when you got so old that “practical” became a necessity of any clothing you own.
6. The perfect dress will call to you from the corner of Zara. The perfect dress before you started breastfeeding and needed to have instant boob access, that is.
7. You wonder if you can carry off a jumpsuit / playsuit / dungarees less than nine months after having a baby.
8. You resolve to start a proper exercise regime the following day and lose the “mum tum”.
9. All the clothes in every shop will have been made for supermodels who are a size 6 and don’t need to worry about breastfeeding or covering a slightly wobbly belly.
10. Just as you brave the changing rooms, your baby will wake up.
11. The buggy will be too big to take into the changing room.
12. Leaving the buggy outside, you’ll attempt to carry a baby on one hip while carrying the ten items you optimistically picked up when the baby was asleep.
13. The changing room will be tiny. Far too tiny to try on ten items of clothing with a howling baby.
14. You’ll hold one thing up against you and decide that you definitely can’t pull off a playsuit yet.
15. Sitting on the floor of the changing room you’ll attempt to breastfeed the baby and remember the days when clothes shopping used to be fun.
16. The baby will have a loud nappy explosion as soon as you’ve finished feeding.
17. The doors of the changing room will have ridiculously big gaps at the bottom, so the entire store will have a full view of you trying to change your baby’s stinking nappy without its contents being spilled all over a floor full of impractical clothes.
18. You’ll abandon all ten items of clothing and vow from now on to only buy clothes that look like they’ll fit without being tried on.
19. To cheer yourself up from the disastrous changing room experience you’ll buy yourself a piece of cake, deciding that the diet most definitely starts tomorrow.
20. You make a rash decision to pop into Primark for a quick look. You pop out again less than two minutes later, stress levels through the roof.
21. Realising you’ve been shopping for over an hour and a half and are still yet to buy anything you give in and wonder into a baby shop.
22. You leave the baby shop £40 poorer with a bulging bag full of baby clothes you didn’t really need – but at least your shopping trip hasn’t been a total failure!
23. A group of students will walk past you chatting about what they’re going to wear on their night out that evening. You’ll try to remember the last time you had a night out. You can’t.
24. Giving up on clothes, you decide to buy yourself a statement necklace instead.
25. Then you remember statement necklaces really aren’t compatible with grabby babies.
26. There’s a gorgeous bag you want to buy in Accessorize. But it can’t fit ten nappies, a packet of wipes, a change of baby clothes, dummies, nappy bags, cream etc etc in, so you leave without it.
27. You wonder if it’s acceptable to return home without one single item of new clothing for yourself.
28. You panic-buy a top in River Island. It has buttons and looks like it might fit, although you’re not entirely sure you actually like it. Still, it’s practical…
29. Relieved, you head home, safe in the knowledge you will never attempt to go clothes shopping with a baby ever again.
30. Once home, you add the Asos and Zara apps to your phone. Clothes shopping while breastfeeding, win.
31. You wonder if you could have pulled off that jumpsuit after all.
(Stripes – the most common pattern in our wardrobe. I blame the baby.)
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There are so many times I’ve gone out for clothes for me and come back with things for the kids even when I’m on my own because they’re cuter and it’s so much easier to find clothes that fit them than a post pregnancy me! One day there will be clothes for me, one day!!
Glad I’m not the only one!
Love love love this! I remember so much of this from when G was a baby, and actually we still go through a similar rigmarole now she’s nearly 5 because she gets bored going around shops and starts to moan!
Frog is the same – she likes it as long as we’re shopping for her! Imagine how *fun* it is with both of the baby AND the 5 year old in tow…
Wonderful! I was in Zara today trying to bribe Roscoe with banana to give me enough time try on a couple of dresses. Totally came home and jumped online.
haha, all so true. I hope you’re buying a jumpsuit on your phone tonight when you’re up feeding. You could totally carry it off! x
Haha I always end up buying the kids clothes and me nothing!! x