Well, my goodness, what an eventful couple of weeks it's been! On Friday my back went into spasm which on the scale of entertainment scores even higher than Breastfeeding With Mastitis. I think of it as Adventures in Horizontal Childcare but really it's very inconvenient. Although I don't generally back away from a challenge and flapping leaflets in front of my child's face bought me whole minutes of entertained-infant-peace at a time. Indeed it would be much more dire had humanfemale not kept us company for two days to lift my spirits and my child's body. We spent a lot of time watching the L Word and Daytime Television while the baby napped which is pretty much what I hoped life would be like when I had a child.

My son turned two months old and decided that Pooing Is For The Weak and Unsophisticated and that indeed it is a much more rewarding experience to Not Poo and then wake yourself and your parents several nights in a row at 3am as you wail with abdominal agony but then continue to stubbornly Not Poo until The Moment Before Each Nappy Change contains more suspense than the footage of a calm sea in Jaws and your mother wails "Why won't he Poo? Why? WHy why why?" and your Not Pooing becomes like this conversational black hole that has consumed all other topics and the brains of your parents and your parents start soliciting advice from your grandmother OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL and your mother eats prunes by the handfuls which turns her digestive system to mush but has no perceptible effect on yours and all your relatives call several times a day to inquire Whether There's Been Any News and demand to be updated on all y our digestive goings on.

(Also, the only thing more unnerving than a child who refuses to poo for a week is advice about how to make a baby poo which begins with the words "Take a sharp knife and run it under very hot water...")

Having a baby has turned out to be the best diet ever. In between the having no time to eat and lugging heavy weights around all the time I'm thinner than I have been in years. My back yields the curvatures of my ribs, the lines of my face are sharper, the hips stand out. And despite the small red lines that appear like a midget's handprint on each hip, or the multitude of buggy-bruises on my legs, or the fact that many times per day another human being clamps himself onto my bosoms I like this new body although in future I would really prefer one with sturdier back muscles.