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By Bella Brennan
November 30, 2025 — 5.00am
It’s a rainy Saturday night and all six of our collective kids are tucked up in bed at home while we queue to get into the queer nightclub ARQ in Sydney. As our babies snooze, safe in the care of our partners and their grandparents, we move up the heaving queue.
My friend Lu buzzes with excitement as she pulls up the tickets on her phone. The bouncer gives us the nod and we’re in. Now it’s finally time to take to the dance floor to see one-fifth of the Spice Girls, Mel C, do a flash-in-the-pan DJ set. We muscle our way past the drag queen Spice Girls in the crowd and secure a spot.
I’ve never seen the Spice Girls live, but in 1999 I lined up with my two childhood friends in 40-degree heat for hours to meet Mel C for about 8.5 seconds. She graciously signed my poster, which now hangs in my office.
I was one of the first in my circle to have a baby, and I longed for her with every fibre of my being. When she was born, it was a dream come true. But I wasn’t prepared for the grief that came with losing my old life.Credit: VegterFoto / Stocksy United
More than 20 years later, I’m with my two adult besties, and the queue on this brisk autumn night has led me back to the one and only Melanie Chisholm. She’s wearing a black crop top and a miniskirt, and, at 51 years old, she looks phenomenal, all washboard abs and ripped biceps.
She DJs for about 60 minutes, if that. Is she the world’s best DJ? No. But it doesn’t matter. It’s more about what this moment represents to our 11-year-old selves. Now we’re 37, with marriages, children and careers. But as I dance under the strobe lights and tumbling confetti, something begins to click.
My friend Caisey, mid-sway to Who Do You Think You Are, turns to us as if she’s just cracked a cold case. When Caisey talks, you listen. She’s one of the funniest and most quick-witted people I know.
“We’re in our fifth trimester!” she yells, and we stop dancing for a second, stunned by the truth of it.
I have struggled for so long to put words around this stage of parenting I’m in, but right now, dancing in a club to our girlhood idol, Caisey has nailed it.
I was one of the first in my circle to have a baby, and I longed for her with every fibre of my being. When she was born, it was a dream come true. But I wasn’t prepared for the grief that came with losing my old life.
My friends would enjoy their weekends, while I was stuck on the couch, nap-trapped under my daughter. Would I ever join them again, or was I destined to sink deeper into the cracks of the lounge?
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It’s a strange kind of loneliness to have the baby you wanted, only to find yourself a few years ahead of your friends in the timeline of life’s milestones.
When I had my first daughter six years ago, I couldn’t imagine reclaiming my own interests and freedoms. I’d see those laid-back mums on Instagram, enjoying bottomless brunches at trendy restaurants while their baby napped beside them.
But here I am! Out past midnight on a Saturday night on a sticky dance floor with two of my best friends!
I am slowly emerging from the trenches and doing fun, exhilarating things that are just for me. Because while I might be a mother, I’m also a mother-flipping demon on the dance floor.
The Instagram algorithm tells me this is an unacceptable hobby for a parent, and I should be at home making flower crowns with my two daughters. But why can’t we have both?
The “flamingo theory” aligns with this moment. When a flamingo raises a chick, her vibrant pink plumage fades, only to return as the chick grows. That’s what tonight feels like: a relaunch.
When we’re pregnant, we’re very aware of the three trimesters it takes to make a human. We track our babies’ growth on our Flo app and marvel at what size fruit it is this week.
After birth comes the so-called “fourth trimester”, the beautiful but often identity-erasing first 12 weeks of motherhood. Becoming a mother even has its own term now: “matrescence”, which encompasses the physical, psychological and emotional changes of motherhood.
But there’s no term for when we are done having babies (like vasectomy-level of done), our kids are not so dependent on us, we wash away the baby spew in our hair and shimmy back into the world. Until now.
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On this sweaty dance floor, with Mel C as our witness, my friend has coined the perfect term.
The fifth trimester is when you start to say yes to things again: experiences, people, places. It’s when you realise all of your hobbies and passions can still co-exist with being a mother. And it’s when you have at least three good babysitters’ numbers on rotation.
The fifth trimester is when you start to feel hot again and reach for the sexy outfits over the activewear. It’s when you rediscover your style, your sex life and your identity away from “Mum” and lean full tilt into “Me”.
Mel C finishes her set, we snap a quick photo with the Spice Girl drag queens, pile into an Uber and head home to our sleeping babies.
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