I had a secret double life on Tinder as mum of a FOUR-month-old baby – pals judged me but swiping saved my sex life

WRITER Rebecca Reid, 33, from South West London was 30 and mum to a four-month-old baby when her marriage ended.

Rather than ‘shutting up shop’, she got back on the dating scene. But pals were not impressed with her saucy escapades...

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AS I push my pram, my baby sleeping, it takes me a moment to realise that someone is talking to me.

Another mum, on the way to the same baby class, is asking how I am - and I stammer as I push my phone into my bag, my cheeks bright red with embarrassment.

I’d almost been caught in the act listening to a very vivid voice message from a man telling me exactly what he was hoping to do with me the next night.

As the other woman confessed she was finding maternity leave a boring cycle of laundry and nappy changes, I lied and agreed: ‘Me too.’

The truth is, I’m having a ball.

As well as being a first-time mum, I’m single again and enjoying dabbling with online dating, which I've never done before.

I met my now former husband fresh out of university, when Tinder had only just hit the most tech-savvy singletons, and so the app revolution was never part of my dating experience.

And I never thought I’d need dating apps until my marriage ended when I was 30 and mother to a four-month-old baby.

That Christmas, I was still heartbroken and staying with my parents when my cooler younger sister mentioned an app called Feeld, meant to be great for low-commitment, open-minded dating.

A relationship was the last thing on my mind, but I was touch-starved, desperate for human contact, so I downloaded it.

All I’d previously ever heard about apps were horror stories - that the men were pigs and it was an endless hell of getting ghosted, breadcrumbed, benched and lots of other terms I didn’t understand.

So I entered this new world with a lot of trepidation.

But to my shock, it wasn’t awful. In fact, it was amazing.

Sure, I spoke to some unappealing men and received my fair share of unsolicited intimate pics. But for the most part, the men I chatted to were funny, interesting and, crucially, interested.

My mum friends wanted to talk about breast versus bottle, sleep regression and when to try for the next baby.

These men wanted to hear about my career, my favourite music and TV shows and my personality.

Even better, despite the fact my body was still stretched out from pregnancy and I’d very much not lost the baby weight, they seemed to find me passably attractive.

'Ego boost'

The ego boost was totally addictive.

Before long, I was in a whirlwind of sexy messages, having to put my phone on airplane mode every time I went to a baby class so it wouldn’t keep vibrating in the pram.

I had to make sure I didn’t open WhatsApp in the park in case someone had sent me an adult image and I kept headphones to hand so I could listen to saucy voice messages in privacy.

I’d sit on a bench while my daughter napped in her buggy, and it probably looked as if I was doing a supermarket order or asking about availability of nursery places, not sending a double entendre to an attractive man who wasn’t her father.

A lot of single parents use their shared custody to enable dating - using that needed but emotionally tricky time apart from their child to take their mind off all that with a bit of adult fun.

But I have my daughter full-time, an enormous privilege yet also a bit of a block on spending the night with a man.

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Luckily, when she turned one, my mum suggested I needed a regular break and offered to have my child for a sleepover one night a month.

Some women might have used that for a bubble bath and a really long sleep.

But I’m an extrovert and what I needed to recharge my batteries was company, excitement and, honestly, some great sex.

As I could also get a paid babysitter in once a week, this became my time to have adventures.

I went to Brighton for a night with a guy I’d just started seeing and we barely left the hotel room.

I was whisked out for expensive dinners by a lawyer who was time-poor but cash-rich and only wanted to meet for two or three hours before he went back to the office, which suited me fine.

I shared nude images with a stand-up comedian and exchanged long, graphic email fantasies with a guy stationed on an oil rig.

Suddenly I had a double life. Most of the time I was just someone’s mum, but once a week I could swap the T-shirt and jeans for a little black dress and cocktail bar.

Having these men on the apps willing to keep me company via messages was magic

At this point, I was back to work as a freelance writer, fitting in what I could around childcare.

And most of my evenings were spent trying to get food stains out of baby clothes.

But having these men on the apps ready and willing to keep me company via messages was magical.

Anyone who has ended up single after a long relationship will tell you that the evenings are the hardest part.

I desperately missed companionship and, while swapping flirty messages with semi-strangers wasn’t the same as sharing a home with someone I loved, it was a lot better than watching reality TV and eating ice cream out of the carton.

'Worst nightmare'

If the first surprise about joining the dating game was how much fun it could be, the second was how judgemental it made some friends.

I’d never really experienced it before. I got married in my twenties and had a baby by 30.

Nothing I’d done in that decade had been particularly unusual or worthy of comment.

Then I found myself constantly pushing back on comments from friends expressing judgement about how I was ‘balancing’ my life choices.

I’d start telling a fun story about a guy I was seeing offering to buy me underwear - and rather than asking whether or not I’d taken him up on his offer, friends' first questions would be about how my ex was dealing with me dating or what my child was doing while I was off with these men.

Don’t get me wrong, dating as a single mum does require both good sense and organisation.

It’s a matter of record that some predators will target mums in order to gain access to their child, which is my worst nightmare.

But when friends asked me about that statistic, it didn’t feel like they were trying to help - it felt like they were trying to tell me I should live like a nun.

I told them I’d followed all the advice from different charities - I would never introduce a partner to my child unless we were discussing marriage.

I ensured my dating profiles and social media gave no suggestion I was a mum, and I didn’t let men know where I lived until I’d known them for months.

But none of this ever seemed to matter at all.

'Judgy people'

Eventually, I realised that with most of the judgy people, it wasn’t really about the safety element because I’d taken care of all that.

Nor did my daughter know or care about what I was up to - she was asleep at home with a relative or qualified childminder while I was snogging a bloke outside a pub.

The judgement was really about this idea that single mums aren’t supposed to date. We’re supposed to shut up shop and forget about our sexuality, at least until our kids are out of the house.

In the midst of this dating whirlwind, I met a man who I accidentally fell in love with - despite my best intentions to stay single

But I think my dating would have been much harder on kids who were old enough to understand what was going on.

Many women decide not to date after they split with the father of their kids, and I totally understand that.

It’s painful to put yourself back out there and humiliating if it goes wrong.

The last thing anyone wants is to introduce another male role model into the home, who then disappears.

But I was barely into my thirties and the idea of never having sex again was a miserable one.

Maybe other women have greater self control than I do, but the thought of never sharing a bed with someone felt like a bit of a death sentence.

In the midst of my dating whirlwind, I met a man who I then accidentally fell in love with - despite my best intentions to stay single.

My most judgemental friends seemed to relax a bit once I settled down, as if meeting a man and going back to a more conventional way of life somehow meant that it had all been worth it.

My daughter will be three next month and, naturally, I’m delighted I’ve met a partner and might get to have more children and live a more typical kind of life.

But I don’t need this relationship as some sort of excuse for my time on the dating apps.

It was an absolute blast - the perfect antidote to the repetitive, lonely, boring side of raising my baby solo.

As long as you can be sensible about the way you approach the dating apps, every single mum should get a free pass to do a bit of swiping.

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