Introducing the Suburban Mama

I wasn't always a suburban mama.
In fact, if you rewind only a year ago, I was very much a young, free and singular boozer about town; living in a city, working hard, playing hard, spending money on frivolous and quite frankly ridiculous activities, purely for my own enjoyment.
My husband (yes, I said SINGULAR earlier, not single!) and I had just returned from a lavish and utterly self indulgent trip round the world, and had settled in Exeter. We owned a fabulous three storey terrace, a wonderful solid abundance of red bricks and period features. Sure, it was the 'wrong side of the river', and admittedly, the neighbour to the left of us liked to play horrible euro-pop at three in the morning and liked to bellow obsenities at the tv when Liverpool were playing, but it was all ours and we loved it. We didn't invite people round, we held soirees. We didn't have a bedroom, it was a boudoir. We were living the life we wanted, I was teaching, my husband working as an ecologist.
Everything was splendid.
Then, a really funny thing happened.
I remember it well, peering into the damp bathroom mirror at 6:30 in the morning, studying the face that peered back at me. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful thought. I wanted something else in my life. My perfect, perfect life...but somehow, it wasn't perfect for me anymore.
Oh my god, I whispered out loud, as I picked up the toothbrush. I wanted a baby!
A month later, and I was in the same room, holding a pregnancy test in my hand, and laughing at the faint pink line. (and telling my husband to please turn off the radio, which was playing Foreigner's 'I want to Know What Love Is' - a very crap choice of theme tune to finding out one of the most important things in your life...)
Nine months later, and I was holding a wriggly, eagle-eyed little boy in my arms, and whispering 'oh my god' again.
Our lives changed forever and the suburban mama began to be born, emerging from the red-bricks like Venus from the waves.

Life was different, but fantastic. I was on a heady 'baby-high', a potent mixture of endorphins and pure love coursing through my much-abused body. I felt cleaner than I ever had before (probably due to the absence of white wine and sambuca) and I felt purposeful. Instead of living for going out, I was living for staying in, for seeing D's first gummy smile, for his first tentative roll across the (red wine stained) carpet, his first bite of pureed food (the rest of the bowl went on the floor).
Life was truly awesome.
I quit my job in teaching. I don't have any issue with nurseries at all, but for us, when we had the option there, it just seemed like the right choice, to enjoy those valuable first few years with D. Yes, it would involve belt-tightening of the most frightening degree, but we were prepared for it. New clothes went out the window. Haircuts were a thing of the past (an interesting look with a fringe, which is now currently down to my nostrils). Takeaways became a treat, rather than a weekly occurance.
Then, in March, a bombshell descended into our lives.
(no, not another baby, jesus, that would have been a bombshell of truly terrifying proportions).
No, the bombshell was of a rather more financial variety. My husband went into work happy, then came back with a face which looked as though it had aged by about ten years. The dreaded word. Redundancy.
Well, not quite redundancy. But threatened redundancy. Out of twenty odd people in his office, my husband had been informed that only four would be keeping their jobs. And he had been the last one to join the team.
It didn't bode well.