Okay. So I’m not going to go into the whole birth thing. Suffice to say it hurts. A lot. But you get an actual baby (hey Sonny!) at the end of it, so it’s all good.

• A baby sling will become your most favourite new accessory. Sure it’s grey and it has a bit of sick splatter on it, but your hands are free. Both of them. At the same time. And the baby will sleep in it. Just don’t even think about sitting down. Or standing still. Else sleeping baby will start head butting your chest. And then crying when he realises you are not a giant milk popsicle. (More on baby slings later!)

  

• The sway. So baby loves to be swayed, but even when baby is happy curled up with daddy you will still be swaying. You can’t stop the sway. How do you stop the sway?!
• Breast milk is no better for your iPhone than formula. Both play havoc with the screen. And the volume.
• Forget white noise apps. And lullabies. And cute mobiles. A hairdryer on full blast 3ft from the crib (turned away from the crib, obvs) can get your screaming baby to sleep for a whole half an hour during the day.
• There is no way to make a breast pump less noisy. Attempting to muffle said noise will simply make you spill milk down the outfit that it took you 3 hours to get dressed into. And that will make you cry.
• Old women in shops who stick their head into the pram the second the baby squawks and say “someone’s hungry” will fill you with irrational rage. The urge to scream “he’s not sodding hungry, I fed him half an hour ago, he’s just tired”  at them will not be easily repressed.
• Babies are noisy. Forget the screaming/crying. No one ever told me that newborns basically sound like a mutant guinea pig/hedgehog/dinosaur. The snorts and the squeaks are *way* louder than a person the size of a medium handbag should be able to emit!

There are obviously loads more things I’ve discovered over the past few weeks (the fact that 5 hours uninterrupted sleep is honestly the stuff that dreams are made of, that it is possible to do basically everything with one hand – while swaying – and all consuming love) but while jigging the baby around in the middle of the night these were the main ones that came to mind. Now, I’m off to blow high-pitched raspberries at Sonny to try and make him smile again…

PS So I *did* write this when Sonny was six weeks old. But, um, it’s taken me another two weeks to actually post it. I’m obviously blaming the baby.