Back in my pre-pregnant London life a big day out for me entailed sitting in the park watching bands, or squeezing in a trip to the markets and an exhibition and a film, finished off with a long lazy dinner and lots of wine-fuelled banter with dear friends.


Not these days (and yes, I know it’s only going to get worse after the baby materialises, but for now I’m just getting used to my new life). Last Saturday my boyfriend (H) and I did the grocery shopping, checked out a lovely open home with lavender in the backyard and a fancy kitchen with self-closing drawers, and then headed out to the Claremont Showgrounds to compare the nuances of forty-five prams and hang out with thousands of other pregnant people.

The first thing we did when we arrived was seek out food, as it was 3pm and we’d somehow managed to miss lunch. We both wrongly assumed the organisers would have made the link between voraciously hungry pregnant/breastfeeding women and the supply of suitable food to sate this need. What we found was one vendor set up in several places, selling ten dollar muffins and caffeine-laden drinks.

But I digress. There we are, coke cans-in-hand, standing in a manic, screaming-baby- and pregnant-woman-filled exhibition hall, which seems to go on as far as the eye can see. It is like a wedding expo, but far, far scarier and with far more opportunities for being guilted into buying things “for the safety of your child” – “if you really care about your child” – “if you want to make your life easier” etc.



I’m pleased to report that I don’t even come close to vomiting this time, and decide to throw myself into the spirit of pram shopping. H and I stop at the LoveNCare stand, and, given the absence of any salesperson, I ask him if he’ll get the Delta2 model down from its stand so I can feel how heavy it is. He picks it up and the back wheel drops off and lands on my foot. It’s bowling-ball heavy. H decides it’s time to move on and I am left to meander about comparing the virtues of prams with 3 wheels versus prams with 4, forward-facing and rear-facing and ones clever enough to do both.

When the salesperson finally arrives – bewildered as to why the Delta2 isn’t sitting flat on the ground (I feign confusion) – he completely throws me when he asks if I need something with a toddler seat. That’s rather too much forward planning for my liking. He shows me the Unicoupe – a reversible pram with an add-on toddler seat and apparently the only one of its kind in Australia.

Suddenly a little crowd gathers, including a woman with the exact same pram. Everyone wants to know what she thinks. “It’s the best!” she says, like someone in a Napisan commercial. “I’ve had six prams and this one is the best, and I’m never buying another.” Six prams? This is why I’d really like to make the right decision the first time.

“Is it heavy?” I ask her. I am fixated with weight, as I know how cranky I get when I have to lift heavy things.

“Try it for yourself!” she says enthusiastically. “You’ve got 20 kilos of child in there.” Her toddler eyeballs me suspiciously but her newborn sleeps on, oblivious. I take the reins and give it a tentative push, nearly tearing my stomach muscles. I prefer it without the babies in it.

“It’s not as dippy as what I’m looking for,” another mum says. “It’s dippy, but not dippy enough.” I nod, as though I understand and agree. Definitely not dippy enough.

When I finally catch up to H he looks like someone’s just suggested removing his teeth, one by one, slowly.

“Let’s try the Urban Mountain Buggy!” I suggest. “I’ve heard it’s good.”

He rolls his eyes. “They’re prams. We don’t need to test every single brand out. They’re all the same.”

“They are not all the same,” I say, surprised by my own petulance. “Imagine just going and buying a mobile phone without considering all your options. Or a car.”

And so I storm off into the abyss, feeling all hurt that H doesn’t want to road-test each and every pram brand to see who’s got the lightest, most reversible, add-on-able models on the market (haven’t I come a long way in the past couple of weeks?)

H catches up to me at the farm animals, where a small child is kicking straw into a goat’s face and harassing the chickens. The hall reverberates with the sound of grumpy babies, and the pram salespeople all look like they’ve lost the will. So we decide to call it a day. The pram shopping adventure continues, but I think I’ll tackle this one on my own next time.