Thursday was “take your toddler to work day”. Not literally, of course – nobody else had their toddler there, and it wasn’t one of those ridiculous national things like “national doughnut day” or “national look after your feet properly day” – but for me it was unavoidable. A necessary evil, though evil isn’t quite the right word, as there was actually something quite joyous about having a tiny pair of feet trotting about in the studio.

We were shooting new campaign material for the Colab dry shampoo brand, which is undergoing an amazing transformation over the course of the next few months. If you’ve followed me for a while then you’ll know that I’m one of the founders of the brand and have seen it grow from the very start, so it’s an exciting but nerve-wracking time at the moment, seeing all of the behind-the-scenes changes going on.

Colab Active Dry Shampoo: The New Gym Bag Essential…

Which was why I couldn’t very well miss the shoot day, despite being approximately eighty-five years pregnant, weighing about seventy-thousand kilos and having an energetic toddler in tow. My role in the latest shoot was more on the creative directing side than the modelling one, though I did do a few beauty shots just to keep my hand in. Ha!

Anyway, I’ve digressed: I wanted to talk about taking your toddler to work and why – overall – it’s not that great an idea. Unless you have the sort of job that doesn’t involve using any part of your body or brain. I’m trying to think of a witty example but don’t want to offend anyone, so, moving on: here are the things that will happen if you try to take your toddler to work.

1. You will have to get the toddler up really early and you’ll probably travel when they would usually be having their breakfast, so by the time you get to work they will be ratty and hungry. They also might have puked up in the car and you might have forgotten to bring a spare vest and/or jumper.
2. The toddler will get yoghurt all over the nice furniture and everyone will say “oh don’t worry, it’ll wipe clean!” but inside they will hate you and make a mental note never to invite you to tea.
3. At times, you will have to actually concentrate on work, which means that your toddler will a) do a massive smelly poo and need their nappy changing, b) work out how to open the mini-fridge and take out everyone’s lunches and then arrange them on the kitchen floor and c) extract someone’s car keys from their bag and post them into a bin/shredder/toilet/unknown receptacle, never to be found again.
4. Someone will undoubtedly feed your toddler something sugary so that when you finally look up from your important work session, they are whirling about the floor like a lunatic, screaming excitedly about “balls” and “forks” before running headfirst into the side of a glass desk and knocking themselves out.

Oh, taking your toddler to work, the joys. I jest, mostly, because Angelica was so sweet – the highlight of my morning was the moment that her Daddy (Mr AMR was the photographer on the job) rescued her heart-shaped helium balloon from the very high ceiling by sticking gaffer tape to the end of a light stand. Her face as he magically brought down her prized possession! I’ve never seen such intense hero-worship.

You’ll be able to see some clips from the Colab shoot later this week – I’ll post the video up here on the website once it has gone live. If you fancy reading more about my “Mum Life” then there are plenty more posts (and pregnancy diaries, if that’s your thing) on my baby blog, The Uphill.