Smash hit

3. Breastfeeding can be very hard indeed, you feel like a useless failure if you can’t do it, you will almost certainly get mastitis (which is like the worst toothache you can imagine, only in your breast), old ladies will give you horrid stares if you try to do it in public, breastfed babies do get colic, you may have curious and uncomfortable anxieties about being a prize heifer, you will leak in public, your nipples will feel like they’ve been sandpapered and your breasts, like your stomach, will never really recover.

4. You will go insane with sleep deprivation. You really will. Even the hardiest of military men were reduced to wrecks after three days of no sleep in Japanese prisoner of war camps, and you were not trained for this. There will be days when the very act of putting clothes on your shattered body will feel like a major achievement.  

5. Once the initial euphoria has subsided, you and your partner will effectively become shift workers: when he’s awake you will be dropping off to sleep, and vice versa. You will become resentful of his ability to leave the house in the morning, bound for the comparatively stressless world of work. In the back of your mind will be the sneaking suspicion that he is spending longer and longer in the office because he would almost rather be anywhere than at home sterilising bottles and dealing with a frazzled you and a wailing babe. Sex will be implausible, not so much because of the physical changes wrought by giving birth, but because you will both be spectacularly exhausted, and no one feels like having much sex when they’re tired. And smelling slightly of sick.

That is one side of the story: the disruption and chaos. The other, often equally unexpected development is the degree to which you adore your baby. For many women, the love they feel for their child far and away surpasses anything they have ever experienced before. At first you don’t really notice it – sure, this small pink bundle is adorable and absorbing, but you are still getting used to each other. And then somewhere around week three, quite possibly when you are dozing off at 4am, with this little milky person asleep by your side and the soothing sounds of the BBC World Service drifting from the radio, it suddenly hits you, with the force of an oncoming train: you love this thing more than life itself.

This love is a new kind of love. It is, in the true sense of the word, unconditional. The media, society, other mothers with something to prove, like to hymn this great novel love as a tremendous nirvana, the deepest truth of the female heart. But paradoxically, it can be extremely frightening, not just for the mother, whose happiness now depends on this highly unstable bundle of new human flesh and blood, whose very sanity can feel as if it hinges on one tiny human continuing to breathe, but also for her partner. Adjusting from being the centre of a person’s universe to being a distant satellite is never easy, especially if the ego involved is male.

All this is why you can’t really tell your pregnant friend the truth. She doesn’t yet understand the peculiar feeling of being hopelessly trapped and unspeakably elated at the same time – nor will she, until she’s given birth. You have to let her experience it for herself, in her own way. Far better – and easier – to toe the party line. Which is: my child is an angel/genius/source of endless joy, I am deliriously happy being a mother, my partner and I have as much – if not possibly more – sex than before and no, of course we do not miss the lie-ins/foreign holidays/expensive consumer durables/actual freedom.

© Sarah Vine and Tania Kindersley 2009. Extracted from "Backwards in High Heels", to be published by Fourth Estate on February 18 at £14.99

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