The other day I realised too late that I was walking around a shopping mall with poo on my shirt. It wasn’t even my shirt, but one that our old housemate left behind, and I’ve been wearing it because it’s one of the few things that actually buttons up on me and it makes it easy to feed Rafferty when I’m out and about.

Poo. On my shirt. In public. And not just a little bit. I realised it was there because I smelt it. Thank God for parents’ rooms – I managed to sponge it down to a green stain before I made a hasty retreat to the car.

When I finally made it home from that particular outing, having stupidly accepted the challenge of lugging three kilos of dog food, plus baby, plus the dishwasher sized nappy bag that I now tote around at all times up over one hundred stairs to get home, wonder of wonders it was time to change the baby again.

After weeks of diligence on my part with flannels and bits of paper towel, little Raff finally had his chance.  While I was fumbling with a new nappy he gleefully unleashed a torrent of pee that went flying all over the change table and onto my suede shoes.

My shirt and shoes had to come off, but now that I finally had a clean baby, I also had a hungry baby who was not in the mood to wait. I gave him a good long guzzle, and then propped him up on my shoulder, with a burp cloth neatly in place just in case.

Never mind the cloth. The upchuck from this particular feeding cascaded in a waterfall right down the back of my pants. It was the trifecta on ruining an entire day’s ensemble.

Later that day, Raff decided that his two o’clock nap would instead be a screaming session of epic proportions. After about an hour of winding that stupid mobile that never plays music for long enough, I figured out that WAAAAAH! WAAAAAH! WAAAAAH! is the cry for ‘I don’t actually need to go to sleep right now, thank you very much’, so I picked him up and carried him out to the living room for a cuddle.

There, in my arms, my three month old son gazed up at me with his beautiful blue eyes, gurgled contentedly and opened his gummy mouth in a huge, happy smile, his expression filled with nothing but love.

And I thought to myself, as I have already thought more than ninety times this year – This is the best day of my life.

Happy Mother’s Day.