I’ve Just Gone Back To Work After Maternity Leave: These 12 Products Help Me Get Ready Every Morning

After I've splashed my face with water, this is the first step in my speedy morning skincare routine and one I never miss. Vitamin C is your brightener, your antioxidant, the thing that's going to keep dulling pollutants at bay throughout the day and boost your collagen production. SkinCeuticals is one of the best purveyors of vitamin C in the skincare market and yes, this one's pricy, but I haven't found anything else to rival it. It's watery in consistency and smells medicinal and zingy. Just three drops swept over my skin wakes me up and makes me feel like my skincare routine is doing something - instant gratification. If you buy into skin types, mine's a classic case of combination - sometimes dry cheeks, shiny T-zone and prone to hormonally charged breakouts. The salicylic acid in this oil-free vitamin C serum iteration is practically tailor-made to my needs. If your skin is on the drier side and loves an oil, make a play for SkinCeutical's CE Ferulic Serum, £165 - a favourite of Sienna Miller. What's not to love?

If I have more time I progress from my vitamin C serum onto hyaluronic acid serum and so on, but on my nursery run mornings I cut the product queue and move straight on to moisturiser. This moisturiser. It's rich without being greasy and makes my skin feel (and crucially look) bouncy and plump. A little goes along way and doesn't require strategic application. It's packed full of my favourite humectant - hyaluronic acid - which can hang onto up to one thousand times its weight in moisture. It holds this moisture fast to the surface of your skin, meaning that if you apply it via a serum or cream it usually stops your skin looking sad and parched come 2PM. It also delivers a great base for make-up, meaning no need for a primer - the more steps that I can ditch on these fraught mornings, the better.

I cannot praise this concealer highly enough - it's a little pot of magic. As the name suggests, it's balm-like in consistency and manages to deliver a dewy finish without compromising on coverage. During those newborn days of maternity leave when I only had one hand to spare, this was often the only make-up product I applied. Swept under my eyes, it conceals up-all-night dark circles in a single layer. I pat it around the side of my nostrils and often across my chin and between my eyebrows to blur away tell-tale redness too. Its impact is instant and its staying power impressive. I'm never without a pot.

Eyeliner? Part of a speedy make-up routine? Bear with. If I'm being extra quick about things, of course I'll ditch the eyewear, but ideally I want to leave the house with a little definition and I'd forgo mascara over eyeliner any day. Plus, this doesn't require precision application. The pencil is soft and ultra blendable, I can clumsily scrawl it across my lid in the general vicinity of my lash line, safe in the knowledge that I can reach for my brush (exact product credit incoming) and smudge it to chic-ness with ease. I end up with chocolate brown depth at the roots of my lashes and soft haze of brown towards the middle of my lid. A few seconds after you've blended, the formula settles and doesn't budge - it's a genius formula and one that has, quite rightly, garnered praise from celebrity and industry professionals alike since it launched. I find the shade Cocoa more forgiving than Black or Ash.

The Spectrum A13 Short Smudge Brush is perfect for smudging my Victoria Beckham Satin Kajal Liner up a storm. The bristles are densely packed, but super soft meaning you get a quick, diffused blend. I'm picky about my make-up brushes, especially when it comes to eye make-up. If the bristles are too long you lose precision, if they're too short and tightly packed together the finish will be uneven. Making good make-up brushes is a fine art and Spectrum have it down to a tee. This one gets washed and dried on repeat because I haven't found another to rival it. This Pantherine edition came as part of a larger set that looks to have been discontinued (though there are plenty more Pantherine sets that are still available to shop if you love the look), but you can pick up the individual brush in Spectrum's iconic pick and blue.

After I've smudged up my Victoria Beckham Satin Kajal Liner I add a slick of this brown liquid liner close to the root of my lashes. I'm not wearing mascara, remember, so this delivers a more intense hit of pigment that makes my lashes appear thicker. 'Liquid liner? When you're mid-morning rush?!' I hear you cry. I'm layering this on top of a similar shade of kajal liner, so it doesn't matter if I go off track or make a mistake - no one will be able to see! The purpose of this liner is not to deliver a statement cat eye, it's to subtly define my lash line. Mistakes are undetectable.

I sweep this on over my moisturiser (and a decent SPF50). If you like to go big in the glow department, this is a no-brainer. It's an all-over highlighter meets primer meets foundation. It's light on coverage so some days you'll be happy wearing it on its own, others you might want a little foundation over the top. It looks glistening in the bottle, but I promise, you're not going to look pearly-faced once it's on - the effect is more fresh from a facial than shiny mythical creature. I have received more compliments on my skin wearing this than I have done with any other base - and would you believe it, two of those came my way outside nursery!

If I'm in need of a little extra coverage over my Charlotte Tilbury Flawless Filter I reach for this. My little girl has been at nursery for a few weeks, so between us we're still microdosing every strain the common cold has to offer. As a result I have a perma-blush around my nostrils and usually a little redness between my brows and across my chin - classic T-zone territory. A little of Charlotte Tilbury's Beautiful Skin Foundation swept across said areas is all I need to neutralise those pinky tones and make me look the picture of health. You get a pretty dewy finish with this foundation too, so this doesn't undo any of the glow-giving work my moisturiser and Flawless Finish have done.

A good foundation brush is intrinsic to my streamlined nursery run make-up routine. Usually I'm all for finger painting, but my hands need to be make-up free at all times in case I'm called upon to abandon my cosmetics bag and pick-up my toddler without warning. Transferring a dollop of foundation onto her top would mean a change of clothes and set me back at least ten minutes, plus I'm always wary of irritating her sensitive skin with unfamiliar formulas. So I need a soft, hard-working make-up brush that mimics the deftness of finger pads when it comes to blending foundation. Enter Vieve's foundation brush. Leave it to Jamie Genevieve to deliver a tool that meets the mark. The bristles are short enough to move product across your skin easily and soft enough to blend it seamlessly.

Blush is a non-negotiable for me. It's my pick-me-up product, the magic wand that makes me look perky and awake even if I'm groggy and bleary-eyed. Hand me a blush stick over a flat white any day. I tap the Major shade in across the tops of my cheekbones and over the bridge of my nose. I dot a little across my eyelids too, to pull the whole look together - a tip Rosie Huntington-Whitely once gave me when I was interviewing her. Pure beauty gold. It was the petal pink shade of this one that had me at hello, and Victoria Beckham's iconic tortoiseshell-look packaging. This is one of the products that I carry with me on the go and it looks pretty luxe when I produce it with a flourish from my inevitably capacious bag.

Nothing has ever made my lips look fuller than making my cupid's bow look more shallow with a lip pencil and this is my liner of choice. Whirl is a deep, rosy shade that mimics my natural lip colour. I make sure the nib is freshly sharpened then sweep it along my natural lip line lightly before overlining my cupid's bow. Next I tap my lip line with my fingers to very slightly diffuse it - I don't want a crisp, 'done' finish. This makes my lips look even fuller. A swipe of my favourite lip balm later and I'm done.

A luscious balm packed with maracuja oil that nourishes my lips and delivers a youthful crush of colour and shine over the top of my favourite lip liner. The colour comes via a PH reactive formula, so you can sweep it across your lips without a mirror, no need to worry about accidentally straying outside of the lines. I go through these quickly because I'm constantly reapplying it. And it may be called a lip balm, but the shine it offers up rivals that of a lip gloss. This always makes me feel more 'done' on the nursery run.