The trolls have been out in force today, bashing Victoria Beckham for posting a picture of her kissing Harper, her five-year-old on the lips.

What a sad day it is when a beautiful picture of a mother shouting to the world about how much she loves her little girl on her birthday invites such abuse.

One comment I read said: “This is so inappropriate and so lesbian.”

I’m sure the Beckhams are hardened to this kind of cr@p; they’ve been here too many times before.

But having seen this and many other terrifying comments I’m sat here feeling angry on their behalf.

I’m not really a massive follower of celebrity culture, but I’ve always found the Beckhams and the way they’re so open about how much they love and enjoy their kids really refreshing.

Even the biggest PR cynic in me can’t be convinced that their family is an act constructed all in the name of Brand Beckham. David and Victoria adore their brood. And every time they’re seen together, it’s obvious that the feeling is mutual. In this age of terror, sadness and uncertainty surely images of parents celebrating their babies’ birthdays with messages of love should be seen as welcome relief from the constant barrage of negative and scaremongering media overload?

Last year, when American child psychologist Dr Charlotte Reznick suggested that parents could be inadvertently confusing their children when kissing them on the lips as the lips are an erogenous zone I felt similarly speechless.

There’s no sexual inference whatsoever and to me, the idea that parental affection could be sexually confusing is – and this is obviously just my opinion – an insult to parents who are doing their best and trying to love their kids hard. What’s next? Implying that breastfeeding is sexual?

Some children are huggers or kissers. Others prefer less physical contact. Each family has different levels of intimacy, emotional and otherwise. And there’s no way on earth they should be made to feel like they have to justify that to anyone.

Let’s just imagine, for a second, that it was discovered that the Beckhams had abused Harper. Can you imagine the backlash? Instead they’re being accused of loving their children too much. Let’s just think about that for a second.

There is NO SUCH THING.

So I say keep kissing your kids, VB. And keep interrupting the news media with your show of love and kindness. The world is better for it.

Three, it turns out, is not the magic number.

On the eve of Xav’s third birthday Mr T and I were pretty smug. We’d got through the not-so-terrible-twos pretty much unscathed and were practically high-fiving ourselves for signing out of the phase that everyone warns you to dread with not much more than a handful of ‘terrible’ epsiodes.

Enter: The Threenager.

Almost overnight, our sweet, sensitive and gentle soul went all Jekyll and Hyde on us.

Remember the time in Friends when Joey lends Emma Original Hugsy, wants him back and then buys a new Hugsy so he can have the old one back? They’re the same, but they’re not the same.

This is kind of like that. Original Xav is still there, but with a new, slightly edgier alter ego whose sole raison d’etre, it would appear, is to outwit me. Each day, they both put in multiple appearances. They look the same, but they’re not the same. And you never know when either one is on duty.

Now, sharing is most definitely not caring. Sharing is a green light to go bat-s%*t crazy.

Incessant negotiations on every. little. thing. are the order of the day.

And what’s with the irony of taking an age to do anything I ask but then in the next breath demanding that we go to the playground NOW on repeat because going in 10 minutes is COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE, MOTHER?!?

Here’s the best one. The mother of all Threenager traits that sends me running for The Priory in my mismatching pyjamas. The changing of his mind, only for it to be changed back again within approximately seven seconds. “Mummy….I want to go swimming.” (X 7,635 over four days.) So I plan for us to go swimming on one of my days off. The demands for swimming increase ten-fold when the day arrives. We’re half-way there. He starts crying. “Mummy….I DON’T WANT TO GO SWIMMING!” We turn around. I’m seething and warning him that he’s made his bed. No swimming for you, my friend.

Out of nowhere, he’s become me at 14 (CRINGE).

Where the hell did you come from and why am I so unprepared to deal with your shrewd, canny attitude and (quite frankly) brilliant wit?

I can only assume that the entire year he spent being two was also spent patiently carrying out a long game of lulling us into a false sense of security for extra impact. Well played, little one. I have to admit that’s utter genius. *claps hands with gracious-in-defeat look on face*

Threenager Xav seems to sense when I am about to combust, and retreats to give way to Original Xav who makes it all better with one little look, hug or “Mummy, would you like to read ‘That’s not my dinosaur’ with me?” And once I’ve finished throwing my toys out of the pram because I’m not accustomed to this headstrong challenger or hands-on-hips defiance, normal service will resume.

Yes, he’s infinitely more complex and unpredictable. But he’s forced me to up my game and I’m slowly getting better at being a serious player. He’s also developing amazing opinions, finding his voice, showing strength of character and growing in confidence. And his compassion! Man, he blows me away. I’m in awe of him.

Even when it’s 8.30am and I’m wondering if the shop down the road is licensed to sell booze at that time of day.

This is a little bolt-on to the first vlog in this new series of Mum Life Hacks I posted a few weeks ago.

I’ve been on a bit of a quest to replace the toxic chemical-laden products we use at home for cleaning (the house and ourselves) and stumbled across a truly ingenius range that’s 100% plant based. I’m a complete convert. Find out why in this short vlog!

Here’s my floor….

When you meet someone and it starts to get all serious, the relentless quizzing begins: “Are you going to put a ring on her finger, then?” Two nanoseconds after the engagement announcement everyone wants to know when the wedding is. On the wedding day the question shifts to when the first child is going to make an appearance.

And then, when your vagina is still being referred to as ‘the wound’ and you’re spending hours a day alternating between biting on a leather belt and screaming into a pillow thanks to bleeding nipples, some moron will still consider it appropriate to utter a sentence with very real potential to get them seriously injured: “Do you think you’ll have more?”

These questions, of course, will inevitably be asked in various orders according to the path your relationship takes. The above sequence is just my own version of events.

It’s a normal, predictable sequence always honing in on the next thing. People flippantly pose these mundane questions (it seems to me) innocently but without much regard at all for their deeper meaning.

The Mr and I are both from big families and while we were never going to recreate the Waltons, we’d not intended for Xav to be an only child. But that was then.

Our now looks quite different.

If you can imagine a life-sized game of Splat the Rat where each rat represents a life-changing curveball, that’s an idea of how life has felt for the past three years. As we’ve splatted one rat, it’s seemed at times that three others have popped up in its place.

I’ve written before about the impact that Xav’s needs and Tim’s illness have had on our family; but my emotional guff is not the point of this post.

Bottom line: we expected we’d try to have more than one baby. And now, for medical reasons it’s not possible for us to even entertain the idea for another year or two. So this might be it for us. It might not. No idea how it’s all gonna go.

In the words of Joey from friends, this may all become a ‘moo point’. Plenty of folks have – and/or prefer – a much bigger-than-the-conventional-few-year age gap. I guess for us it’s just about how you deal with the fallout of things becoming so wildly different than you imagined they would be.

Whatever happens, we’ve made our peace with it. Maybe we’ll be lucky and it’ll happen for us. Maybe it won’t. If it doesn’t, and Xav is our family, then – as my dear old cockney Gran would’ve said – cor blimey. How privileged am I?

Sure, our decision-making control has been taken away: not the dream. But I’m fighting hard to regain some of that control by purposefully choosing to use this as an opportunity to change the way I look at my precious boy and appreciate him, marvel at what an incredible tiny human he is and soak him up even more.

Plenty of people I love have had to deal with unexpected reasons as to why their procreation plans have changed over time; some are unspeakably painful. Some hope for a rainbow. Some live with a clock that ticks deep inside their soul alongside the fear it will never be silenced. Some just simply can’t envisage a future with babies in it, while others worry they won’t ever feel like they’re ‘done’ – even when they’ve built their own football team. Some have known all along that one will make their family perfect and complete.

There are an inconceivable number of different reasons why we do/don’t have babies and each of them is for us to own.

It’s pretty safe to say this reproductive uncertainty is a regular old occurrence, so how on earth can it be that so many of us still nonchalantly dish out this potentially painful or awkward – but always deeply personal – question: “Think you’ll go for another?”

I’ve resolved that this blog will be about truth, first and foremost, and about saying the things that might go unsaid.

The truth of this issue – as well as the obvious fact it’s shrouded in complication – is the answer might force the respondent to fight back tears or the urge to puke/scream as they frantically search for the words to sugar coat their pain. It might make them feel irritated that they – yet again – feel that they have to justify decisions they’ve made when that’s entirely their prerogative.

It might just as easily bring a Cheshire-cat grin to their face and their eyes might do that lovely smiley thing as they excitedly share their plans to mount (ahem) the horse again. Even when we know someone reasonably well, we might have no inkling what their private deal is.

We should be talking about this stuff though (albeit with a little more tact). It’s a sanity-saving part of being in The Motherhood. We need our gang – no more so than when the shizzle hits the proverbial fan.

But surely we’ve evolved enough as the mother species to stop putting each other on the spot this way and find better ways of engaging in this sensitive conversation?

For my own self-protection, I’ve come up with a stock reply that divulges minimal insider info; one that I can happily spout when casually asked by the mum I’ve only just met who’s wondering out loud where all my other children are. Sure, maybe it’s none of her business, but she’s purely trying to find common ground in obvious places as we all are; blissfully unaware of how threatening her innocuous words might be.

Maybe just bear in mind that sometimes life is complicated for all of us, love, and get to know me a bit better before taking a peak inside my knicker drawer.

A couple of weekends ago I went on a friend’s hen do up in London. You know the drill – lovely plans with a brilliant gaggle of girls and tonnes of fun.

It was a really great day. (And not just because my wonderful Dad picked up the toddler at 9am and I had the expanse of an entire child-free day and night to enjoy, which was obviously a highlight.)

A little too great, perhaps.

It was billed as a civilised lunch. I had every intention of having a few drinks and catching the train home early evening.

On the day though, I sort of just forgot about all that and got caught up in the tacky excitement of drinking obscene amounts of fizz through willy straws. Not so civilised…

I got absorbed in great conversations with girls I don’t see that often. I loved every minute of being sat by the Thames with a few of my favourite people and not having to be on bogey removal duty or breaking up fights over the red crayon.

That day, I needed some assistance in finding the off-switch. And by the time I realised that, I was a few hours past the point of no return and vomming into a plant while waiting for an Uber. Classy, Urs.

I’m reliably informed by countless other mums that we’ve all done it.

But the horrific two-day hangover and the inevitable accompanying fear and loathing were the least of my problems.

I felt embarrassed and as though I needed to apologise to everyone who’d been there. I felt that to get myself in such a state (although it had been completely accidental, obvs) was completely reckless and stupid. The guilt was crushing.

I know I deserve to have fun and that letting go occasionally is a good thing for everyone in my family. I know I’ll look back on that day and I’ll probably forget the point at which the wheels came flying off and remember how great it felt to laugh so much and to celebrate with my gorgeous friends.

The toddler didn’t suffer because of my idiocy. He spent over 24 hours adoring and being adored by his awesome Grandad, going on train rides, dragging him to soft play and conning him into buying Twirlywoos books and popcorn. He was quite literally living the toddler dream.

My logical brain realises that it did no-one any harm when I spent a day as a mum on the loose. That said, I’m still annoyed at myself. In fact it did me more good than I realise, I think. The ripple effects of me having fun are far-reaching and the benefits of me feeling refreshed are massive to everyone in my family. It SO shouldn’t be something we feel guilty about.

I just need to work on locating that off-switch.

P.s. To the girls in the photo with me at the top of this post…I am truly sorry but this was absolutely crucial to demonstrate its point. 😉