Plus, there was the fact that I still feel awkward in my new role as a mum. My days are taken up balancing work assignments and infant care; I felt like I didn’t have the same things to discuss — around-the-world travel, exciting office projects — as I had back when I was unattached.

Finally, there’s the fact that I don’t want to just “date.” I want to find a partner who would also be excited about playing the role of Lucy’s father. So many times in Lucy’s first year, I found myself looking around and wishing there was someone else going through this with me. And the weirdest thing was, it was never when she wouldn’t sleep or had a fussy episode that lasted for hours. I wanted someone to witness when she was being particularly adorable: when she’d laugh the minute I started reading her favourite book, or the week when, just beginning to crawl, she’d arch her body up into a perfect miniature downward dog.

I knew I was unlikely to find that person by swiping right on Tinder profiles. But I was unsure where to begin. And in order to do things right, I needed to have a few “training wheels” dates under my belt.

Which was why my first one was with Matt, my friend-with-benefits of the past six years. He lives in London, and we only see each other three times a year; the last time I had seen him had been when I was midway through my pregnancy, the curve of my belly just beginning to be evident underneath a tight tank top.

When he came back to town when Lucy was four months old, I was ready. I had five friends on call to babysit. The day before we planned to meet, I got a bikini wax while Lucy slept in her stroller next to the aesthetician’s table.

That night, I left Lucy with one of my five friends and headed over to Matt’s hotel, clutching my iPhone and swiping through pictures of her for comfort on the way there. I felt like a teenager sneaking out of the house. As soon as he opened the door to his hotel room, I hungrily kissed him, feeling like I had to prove I could still be just as sexy as I had been before having Lucy.

But my heart wasn’t in it. Hotel sex used to be one of my favourite things ever; now, I wished we could just be cuddled on my couch, with Lucy a room away. In fact, it was during sex when I felt most envious of all my new mum friends who had husbands. They were able to have sex as parents, making sure to be extra-quiet so their babies didn’t wake up while their parents were mid-orgasm — they were in it together. I felt like I was playing a part, and was relieved to get home to Lucy.

That was when I realised that I needed to change my entire dating M.O. The fact is, right now, Lucy’s the centre of my universe, and the men I date need to realise that. Which was why, a few weeks after my date with Matt, when I picked up on the flirty vibes being sent to me by Jake, the barista at my local coffee place, I invited him for a beer — and told him I was bringing Lucy. This was made easier by the fact that he's also a writer, and our “date” was ostensibly to talk about our careers. But he paid for my drink and told me I looked nice, and it was a relief not to feel like I needed to hide Lucy or make it seem like she had anything less than a starring role in my life. After all, Jake had seen me come into his coffee shop ever since the first few "WTF" days of new motherhood. He’d seen me in stained tank tops and unwashed hair, and had flirted with me anyway.

It was clear after our beer that we wouldn’t be anything more than friends, but it was still gratifying.