as a new mother, this is how I reconnected to my ‘old’ life

My boobs hurt and my eyes stung. I cursed every moment in the previous 35 years of my life in which I’d dared utter the words “I’m tired” out loud. Until now, I’d had no idea what the word tired even meant. As I caught my outline reflected in my computer screen – a frizzy, messy bun on top of my head – I could have sworn I used to be hot.

Until a month before, I had worked full time as a radio host. Ash London Live was my first baby, and I’d left the show to birth my second. A human baby this time.

I looked across the room at my two-week-old son sleeping soundly in his bassinet, my abdomen still tender from the three-inch incision that brought him into the world a month early. The room was quiet. I stared at my microphone and wondered if I would ever use it again.

As the weeks went on, I could only chuckle when remnants of my “old life” appeared: an Instagram memory on the red carpet of some awards show in LA; the designer sneakers I purchased on a work trip to London that I could finally admit were truly hideous; and the emails from Qantas telling me I was about to lose my platinum frequent flyer status.

I’d spent the last 10 years working in an industry and living a life that felt completely normal at the time but which now, with hindsight, seemed quite absurd. Now I was a walking milk factory, existing solely for the purposes of keeping a small human alive. A small human who didn’t even know who Taylor Swift was. Rude.

The transition from full-time work to full-time motherhood is different for everyone, and to be honest, it was one I revelled in. I loved the quietness of this new life. I almost found the monotony comforting. But the difference between my “old life” and my “new life” was still jarring at times, often forcing me into moments of quiet reminiscence.

For instance, once, on a work trip to Los Angeles, my producer and I sat by a famous rapper’s pool while we waited for him to come out for his interview. We waited for two hours, his assistant coming out every 15 minutes to say he was “wrapping up in the studio”. What she didn’t realise was that we could see him through the upstairs window, lounging about in a velour robe smoking god knows what. Unperturbed at the inconvenience, we took advantage of the situation and had a poolside Instagram photo shoot while we waited.

Early in my career I watched a then-unknown Sam Smith sing to a room of 20 people in our office kitchen, all of whom went from scrolling on their phones to staring in shock and awe the second Sam sang. I was at Harry Styles’ first ever solo show in London. In my early days as a music journalist, I interviewed a 21-year-old “rising star” called Ed Sheeran because nobody else in the office wanted to do it (a year later they would have committed murder for the opportunity).