Seen strollers these days though…? things called a bob revolution or strollers that resemble 4X4′s – huge three-wheeler things, bulky, wide and only room for ONE baby in them! the rest is all storage space and fancy design. I reckon a steering wheel is all these things lack. Mums today – why do they choose them and spend so much money on them? they are a hassle in the supermarket aisle, impossible on public transport (just watch the bus driver’s face when he sees a mum with one of them…) and, I suggest, anti-social. Few young mums know how to handle them in public and shave half your ankles away as they pass you.

Nope – lets see a return to basic strollers, leave the fashion statements to the men and their fancy cars.

It happens so slowly that you don’t even notice anything different; gradually – day by day, week by week, etc – your habits change until one day you realise it has been at least 5 days since you touched the bottle of shampoo and the elastic band has become your stock fashion accessory. As you comb the your child’s hair before school one morning, making sure every hair is in place, you recall somewhere at sometime that you too once did something with a can of mousse and spray and the result was wonderful…but that was a long time ago and who uses mousse foam these days anyway? and that stupid lipstick in your bag that keeps lurking at the bottom where your loose change is…how long ago did you buy that, or even wear it?, because the price tag shows a currency no longer in use…and I’m sure that those CD’s you used to love driving along to on your way to work (remember having your own car?) still exist somewhere…or were they cassettes? no matter, Marvin Gaye would only stir up memories of that guy your husband will have hoped you had forgotten. As yet another brochure for the opening of the latest candle-lit-incense-fuelled Day Spa drops through your mail box you think for a brief moment how nice it would be to be smoothed with orange scented oil and covered with warm pebbles as whale-mating music plays gently in the background, but who has 2 hours and £95 to spare for such folly? the one day, all of a sudden, you stand thinking in the middle of it all – the lost moments for putting on lipstick, for looking for that darned matching sock, for blowing £95 on a 2 hour back rub – and you wonder where the hell you went…where YOU went!

Well you know, she’s there. She’s combing other people’s hair, matching other people’s socks, picking out nice outfits for kids to wear for ‘no uniform day’, admiring other women’s hairstyles and outfits. All you have to do is get a shovel and start digging because she is not too far below the surface, she just needs a little help escaping. Identity is something we all have but in order to keep it alive you need to nurture it, and doing that requires time – everyday – and you have to be the one to do it because nobody else can or will. But it is there, in the back of your mind and inside your heart, as crowded as those places have become in the past few years, ‘she’ is still inside you. Give her some attention now and then and she will stay right there, even if you are the only one who still recognises her.

I have always wanted a ‘real’ Christmas tree but my youngest son has severe allergies to all manner of plants and pine trees are among his worst enemies, so we have always opted for the good old artificial christmas tree. Nothing wrong with that though because ours has special optic fibre lights on it which looks just fabulous when we turn off the room lights. The kids love it – and in a few short weeks we will be putting it up!

Here’s the facts: just two weeks after returning from a second bout of maternity leave in two years, Natasha Kaplinsky has quit her job as the £1 million-a-year anchorwoman for Five News. The 38-year-old became the highest-paid newsreader on British TV when she signed the deal in late 2007, but since then has spent only a paltry 252 hours on screen – that’s the equivalent of just over five weeks’ work for those on a 48-hour-week. Now she has quit the channel and in so doing has dealt a hammer blow to working women everywhere.

For while Kaplinsky (or Spangles, as some readers may recall I dubbed her) may get away with it, ordinary working women will suffer the fall-out. Speak to any employer, large or small, and there’s an unspoken fear that appointing high-flying females brings with it an unwelcome level of risk. And who could blame them? With the recession hitting the bottom line hard, what boss in his (or her) right mind will not think twice about employing or promoting a woman of child-bearing age if they fear she might be planning to embark on serial motherhood?

Harsh? Yes. Against every equality and employment law in the book? Absolutely. But looking at a woman like Kaplinsky, can you really blame an employer if they nurture that prejudice? I know I can’t. It’s not only right but essential women get proper maternity leave and their careers are not compromised as a result. But I believe women also have a responsibility not to abuse that right; a duty, after the long struggle for equality in the workplace, not to sully the ground for other working mothers who will follow in their wake.

A fifth of parents admit they have dipped into their child’s savings account to make ends meet, a survey showed today. Around 22 per cent of parents said they had been forced to raid their child’s savings, with 44 per cent borrowing between £200 and £500, according to savings provider Engage Mutual Assurance. Four out of 10 parents said they were forced to use their child’s savings to pay bills, while 20 per cent faced unexpected car repairs.

Around 14 per cent used the money to pay for a family holiday, 12 per cent needed it to cover the cost of house repairs and 8 per cent put the money towards the cost of Christmas. Two-thirds of parents said they only borrowed money from their children when there was no alternative, and 13 per cent said they did not know where else they could get the money from quickly. Eight out of 10 parents who borrowed money said they saw it as a loan and would pay it back when they could.

But 30 per cent of parents admitted they felt guilty about borrowing money from their children and 27 per cent said they felt sad that their financial situation had become so dire. But look at it this way – you enable your kids to save, you provide them with the funds to do so – so what is the problem with taking back some of that which you gave them…?

The proposals are contained in a report demanded by Miss Harman into the needs of the so-called ‘sandwich generation’  -  working women who have to care for both young children and ageing relatives. They are expected to be included in a green paper published by Miss Harman next year. The proposals, revealed by Miss Harman at a conference yesterday, are likely to prove popular with working women. But they will be dismissed by business leaders as likely to cost billions to firms who are struggling to stay afloat during the recession.

The conference for the centre-left Institute for Public Policy Research yesterday heard that 3 per cent of women  -  more than 550,000 in total  -  and 2 per cent of men are forced to look after children and grandparents, most of them while holding down a job. Women in their 40s are most hard hit with one in 12 forced to perform ‘sandwich’ care.

So it really surprises me that 12 children in the US have lost tips of their fingers after becoming caught in the hinge of the frame where the stroller folds in half. I never had that problem and the stroller has not changed its design in all these years – I am just wondering how these accidents occurred because you cannot really fold the stroller with the child inside it…

But accidents do happen of course and so maclaren have agreed to supply covers for the hinges on the strollers to UK parents. If you own a maclaren then  make sure you get your free safety cover – like I said, I never had any problems but that’s not to say other people don’t.

The PM yesterday tried to control a growing Labour revolt over plans to axe the childcare vouchers used by hundreds of thousands of families. The Prime Minister insisted no one would lose out for the next five years and said that compensatory measures would be outlined next month. But read that phrase carefully – “the next five years…”.

Parents pay up to £243 a month of their salary in exchange for tax-free electronic vouchers that can be used to pay nurseries, nannies or child-minders. Brown however is arguing that one third of these vouchers are going to higher-tax paying individuals – in essence those who go out to work rather than sit on their backsides drawing benefits. What is wrong with this – why does this govt have a problem with people who earn higher than average salaries…? In all, 43 Labour MPs are warning that phasing out the tax relief will penalise families with young children and harm Labour’s chances of holding marginal seats at the next election.  As Labour traditionally depends on the welfare-vote to win those seats it will not be giving much in the way of a damn about working families…

A survey has shown that the average working mum (not your high-flying executive career girl…) has just £67 a week left over after shelling out for the weekly necessary expenses. Now some might say that £67 is not really spare change but when you have a family to feed, a car to run and bills to pay it is not a large amount. A visit to the hairdresser can set you back £70 these days!

The biggest burden are childcare fees. Of course you have to pay them, you have to have the best quality childcare there is without question and it has to cost something. But at the end of the week you really do wonder if it is worth it…

Now I can understand guys if it is your third or forth child and so on – but when it is your first you really should take advantage of that special time and be there with your baby if you can manage it. Your job can wait – you have the rest of your life to get back on the treadmill and earn money…you helped create that new life so start enjoying it!

Just remember: on your deathbed you will not be wishing you spent more time at the office…