Things you do as a new mum

Settle down for a long feeding session with all of your own drinks and snacks around you. But realise that you’ve forgotten the spoon for your yoghurt. And drink it anyway…

Find yourself looking at photos and watching videos of your little one...while he is right there on your knee in real life.

Get emotional and feel as if a limb has been hacked off on a rare night out without him, even though you will see him again in a mere matter of hours.

You will also bore (and possibly frighten) non-parent friends with talk of poo and boob pains, and by sudden bursting into tears in the queue for the loo.

Turn, bleary-eyed and shush the desperate, tinny cries of the monitor, forgetting temporarily that he’s no longer sleeping in the Moses basket beside you, but is a big boy now and has his own room.

Feel indescribable joy as you burp him over your shoulder, with his little mouth right next to your ear and he does a delightful sort of heavy breathing (and then a man-size burp).

Finally understand what people mean when they say they could just eat him up. Inhaling his little baby smell, squeezing him close and nuzzling his neck until he giggles. That’s about as close as you can get without actual cannibalism...

And that will just have to do.