One of the things I looked forward to when I left the world of paper chasing for the world of toddler chasing, was the chance to sit around with new mammy friends and natter. So I was one of the first to get a few of the women I'd done breathing exercises and pregnancy yoga with, around to mine for buns.

The first time was wonderful, because I was feeding twins I couldn't get past the front door. To talk to real live women about birth and all the gooey things that happen after it, to let my abdomen flop with all the other seals, was a gift. Then their abdomens started toning, and they started bringing tray bakes that defied description and logic, considering they had brought new lives on to the planet only weeks previously.

I put it down to the jealousy which is there, tattooed in the comparing hearts of anyone with double X chromosomes. I tend to come off badly in such comparisons. My buns taste like untreated lard and my bum and thighs, at the time, were made of similar stuff. I was not a yummy mummy. I was a mummy who found all their biscuits and buns yummy. Then I noticed that they weren't eating any of the Rachel Allen-style produce they were putting on my table. But they were digging into each other with the spoons I hadn't washed properly, being an ordinary sort of woman and an ordinary sort of mother.

For years these women had fought to get ahead in the world of work. A league table of who could do what best, once applied to work standards, now came down to the cakes you made and the figure you got back and how much froth you could get out of your home Gaggia to put on their cappuccinos. The league table kicked off with the 'best birther'. I was bottom of that -- three-day labour followed by emergency C-section wins no prizes unless you are a masochist.

Then it moved on to age and stage development in our little darlings. There was a race on to see which kid could crawl quickest. Mine were too fond of fiddling with their feet. Last again. I began to feel the women I had started off sharing a spectacular journey with were turning into holograms of homemakers rather than the real thing. I ended up sidling off, with my sticky wheeled pram, feeling inadequate.

I tried a few mother and toddler groups. The darlings on their feet were a different category to the toe tugging babies. I formulated mathematical certainty that the more his/her mother extolled their virtues, the more of a little horror they were.

When one little prince bit my boy's ear I went back to making instant coffee and eating biscuits out of a packet on my own. I worried that my boys wouldn't be in the loop, but discovered we were happier and bumped into mothers who weren't platinum standard, but wanted to do normal things such as moan about their waistbands and husbands. My friends from that time are all coffee morning drop outs. We're Class A failures in baking and housekeeping and bitching about other people.

Just because a woman's had a baby at the same time as you, it doesn't mean you're soul mates. Life is too short to drink coffee with people who put you down. Relaxation and company is preferable to bistro standard brunches and the bed of bitchy nails you have to walk over to get to them.

- Suzanne Power