Episode 1 - The Great Nappy Fallacy

Two pregnant women sit in a room with a TV. One of the women is a first time mum, the other already has kids. How can you tell who’s who?

Easy. Put a Huggies commercial on in front of them.

Guaranteed, the first time mum will smile beatifically like a modern-day Madonna. She will rub her belly in a contented and expectant fashion. Towards the end of the ad as the music swells, tears will glisten in her eyes and she will quietly cry in a heart-warming manner, overwhelmed by the knowledge that she too will soon be part of this amazing world.

The old-school mum will simply snort.

Motherhood is NOT like a Huggies commercial. I’ve never seen a Huggies ad where the mum tries desperately to scrub poo from under her finger nails or goes to the toilet with a toddler crammed into the cubicle with her, spinning the paper off the roll. A Huggies ad can’t tell you how to act when the doctor tells you, “Your baby doesn’t weigh enough/weighs too much/has chronic nappy rash/has a weird shaped head/needs to go to hospital.” And there’s never been a Huggies ad yet with a scene showing mummy and daddy just beginning to renew their relations when the baby starts to cry.

Huggies make great nappies, I have to give them credit for that. And I suppose that when you look at other advertising campaigns, they’re not stretching the truth much more than anyone else (buying an ab-cruncher will make you skinny, deodorant makes you irresistible to the opposite sex, etc).

But I’d love to direct a Huggies commercial that showed the dark side of mothering: A dishevelled mummy who hasn’t showered in three days walks into a door because she’s so sleep deprived, another mum bursting into tears as she leaks milk through her last clean shirt, and the last mum rushes around hanging washing, doing dishes, sweeping floors as an unhelpful, visiting relative sits on the couch and says, “Oh, I’ll just have one more cuppa before I go.”

Having said all that, sometimes, when they smile at you, it’s a bit like a Huggies ad.

As long as they don’t throw up on you after...