“It sounds trite but I felt both positive and negative changes. On the positive side, having children really does bring you closer to your partner. Seeing him as a father makes him seem more substantial in a way, more manly and (occasionally) more sexy. Also, having sex with the aim of getting pregnant felt quite different and I thought more exciting.

Seeing your partner reflected in your children is quite a beautiful thing. I definitely feel much closer to my husband since having kids – it’s like the relationship is on a completely different level of strength because we’ve experienced so much together now.

On the negative, having your first (or second and third) baby is quite a uniquely stressful time and it’s pretty inevitable that you will take it out on each other. I was the first of my friends to have a baby and my mum doesn’t live in the UK. As a result, I was basing my expectations on various books, websites and Facebook (do not do this), meaning that I often felt inadequate and that I wasn’t quite doing things right. This made me a bit miserable, and when I’m miserable my husband usually takes the brunt.

I found that I was doing most of the baby stuff, and in retrospect I see that I sort of shut my husband out. It ended up that he was just less good at it because he’d had less practise. It made more sense for me to keep doing it. But then I felt hard done by because I was doing everything. I would advise sharing things as much as possible because there is no reason why a dad can’t do nappies and get babies to sleep – it’s all about practise. I think it’s quite common for women to sideline their husbands with baby-care, and then feel hard done by. The key is to share things from the beginning.

I think my one piece of advice to couples would be to ‘be kind to each other’. It’s very easy to be snappy and grumpy, and blame each other for things when you’re exhausted and stressed. Just try to take a deep breath before saying something hurtful. It’s very unlikely that either of you are actually trying to make things more difficult. Don’t forget to tell each other you love each other and give each other the odd squeeze.”