Your work-related anecdotes are dated and suddenly repetitive

Once you become a parent, you might find that your topics of conversation alter a little. For example, if you take parental leave, work is no longer a rich option; your work-related anecdotes are dated and suddenly repetitive. They are best avoided.

Friends discuss restaurants they've tried recently, or the latest film they've seen. Again, your potential input is limited; you can nod in an interested and authoritative manner as they reel off their recommendations, but you are inwardly hoping that they don't ask you to do likewise. The feeding room at Shoreham MandS won't quite cut it here.

Current affairs, at least in the early days of parenthood, is another area where you might struggle to hold your own. When your contemporaries ask what you think about the latest developments, best to assume they don't mean Mia's new-found ability to point, giggle, or crawl.

No need to despair, though. As a parent, you will have several new topics of conversation to add to your armory. Poo, for one.

A 'friend' was waxing lyrical the other day about breastfed baby poo and how it was so sweet smelling and a breeze to clean up. Scarcely a week goes by without some scatological conversation.

Sleep - the lack of it, the number of times you're woken from it, where you've caught yourself catching up on it - you'll never be short of things to contribute on this topic. Consider this safe ground and your 'go to' subject.

Children's TV is another. What you can't recount about the plotlines and cliffhangers in an episode of In the Night Garden or Peppa Pig isn't worth knowing. Who couldn't spend a good half an hour discussing the rights and wrongs of Daddy Pig arriving early to collect Peppa from school and marching straight into the classroom without waiting for the bell?

[box type="info"] Mummy K writes anonymously about motherhood and more: www.timewaitsfornomum.com