A FEW years ago Melanie C would probably have been the last celeb you'd expect to find cooing over baby clothes, or getting all excited about nappies.
But, as LIZ JARVIS finds out, motherhood has changed the ladette - for the better.
Here she talks baby weight, being a working mum and having a to-die-for husband to help out.
Laying on a rug and playing with her beautiful 17-month-old daughter Scarlet to celebrate the launch of Pampers Active Fit with Dry Max, it's hard to believe I am looking at a former Spice Girl.
Mum and daughter are even wearing matching striped tops, although admittedly Melanie's has silver sequins on the shoulders, indicating she may be a mum now, but she's still a rock chick at heart.
When they've finished playing she sits down to chat. 'I think motherhood has changed me a lot,' she says. 'I feel much more confident in myself and much more relaxed.
Even though I have this huge new responsibility I feel it's changed me for the better. I just feel like I'm a grown-up now, I've stopped caring about those other pressures that seemed so important.
'Before I had Scarlet I was very selfish, it was very much about me and my career, and now I have Scarlet and she's the most important thing in my life. So everything else now takes second place. I feel much more relaxed about that and it's helped me feel more confident as a person.'
What strikes you about Melanie, 36, is how pretty she is, with big brown eyes and olive skin. She's also incredibly slim - probably a size 10, if that - with a perfectly flat stomach.
'I'll be honest, I worked harder at keeping in shape before I had Scarlet,' she says. 'The baby weight came off gradually, so by the time she was seven months I was maybe half a stone over my pre-pregnancy weight, but then I started working on Blood Brothers. The theatre was so gruelling the rest of it just went away.
'So although I was working hard, I wasn't working specifically hard at losing weight or anything like that. I do like to work out when I have a chance but when you're a mum your time is quite limited so I try to do half an hour maybe twice a week, that might be my weekly exercise at the moment.
"But I've just found that I don't sit down, which I'm sure a lot of mums will identify with. I'm running around after her all the time, and even when she's gone to bed, there's the tidying up and getting things ready for the morning, and by the time that's done and you've had a bit of dinner you're just ready for bed aren't you?'
The thing she struggles with most since becoming a parent, she says, is working mum guilt. 'I go through phases, if I have a lot of work, I feel guilt about being away from my daughter. I've got my first trip away next week, I'm in Germany for five days for work, which I'm really nervous about.
But I'm in a very fortunate position, I've got a nanny, and Scarlet's father is at home as well, I know she's going to be absolutely fine and totally taken care of. I think it's more of a selfish thing, because I'm going to miss her so much.
'I went back to work when Scarlet was seven months old to appear in Blood Brothers for six months. It was brilliant because I was working mainly in the evenings so I could be with her all day, but I was leaving her in the evenings and I wasn't putting her to bed, I put her to bed one night a week for six months and that was such a big big thing for me.'
Luckily her partner of eight years, property developer Thomas Starr, is she says a very hands-on dad. 'Scarlet adores him,' Melanie says. 'He was really fantastic when I was working in the theatre. I was doing eight shows a week so it was pretty intense, and she was teething at the time, so she was quite upset through the night and he was up with her every single night, all credit to him.
'But they started bonding from day one really. I had to have an emergency caesarean so I was unable to do the first bath and the first nappy and all these things so he did the first of everything but I'm actually really pleased because it did give them that initial bonding.'
She's very open about her birth experience. 'Her head never engaged and I never went into labour,' she says. 'I had to be induced and it was all quite traumatic. I'd pushed, I was 10cm dilated, I just couldn't get her out and the consultant said to me you know it's probably going to be safer to do it this way.
'I'd love to have more children, definitely. But if I found myself in the same position where the baby's head had never engaged then I'd seriously consider having an elective Caesarean. It took me a long time to get over it physically so I think I'd have to reassess the situation if it happened again. Luckily everything else went great - I was still able to feed her.'
She's just started work on her new album, and the Spice Girls musical is under way. 'We've just been looking at some drafts of storylines,' she says. 'It's early stages but we're all involved with it. We wanted to be there for the writers to get a feel of the chemistry between the Spice Girls.' But there won't be any casting for someone to play Sporty, Ginger, Posh, Baby or Scary. 'It's not actually the story of the Spice Girls, it's a fictional story.'
She gasps with mock horror when I tell her that Emma said this week that none of the Spice Girls could sing when they went into the band.
'Cheeky mare!' she says, before adding loyally, 'Emma's always had a beautiful voice, she's got a natural voice. I think we were all untrained when we first started - there were voices there, and potential there, but they were untrained. With knowledge and experience your voice improves. Emma's always been able to sing.'
One thing she doesn't do at the moment, though, is play her own music to Scarlet. 'We don't really listen to a lot of pop music. At the moment it's all Peppa Pig and nursery rhymes. But she enjoys music in the car. I used to play more music when she was very little, when she was a newborn and we were just at home in the early days.
I did a little playlist leading up to her birth, you know that crazy nesting phase.' Did she go through a crazy nesting phase? She starts laughing again. 'Yes. My craziest nesting moment was when I realised I was cleaning out the boxes which I keep my cleaning products in.'
What about the matching tops she and Scarlet are wearing? She grins. 'I quite like it,' she says. 'I hope other mums do it too, I hope I'm not being weird, but I do, I want to match with her. She's my mini-me.'
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