My sexy SECRET double life

Rebecca Reid didn't let being a single mum to a new baby stop her from hitting the dating scene

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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 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.

I never thought I'd need dating apps until my marriage ended when I was 30 and a 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 all sorts of 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.