IF (OR LETTER FROM THE FRONT)

As I mentioned earlier, none of my friends had children when I became pregnant with Olly. Recently, a few of my male friends have been asking me to tell them what it’s like having kids. Following a recent exchange with one particularly nervous chap, I have written out some of my thoughts on becoming a parent.

There is one thing that is certain. NOTHING I tell you will have any meaning until AFTER you have had children. Whatever I say you'll think, ‘good point’ or ‘rubbish’ or ‘that'll never happen to me!’ However it will not make any real sense until your children are actually here and ruining your life. (Hmmm maybe ruining is a tad strong, ‘changing beyond all recognition with no hope of ever returning to the way it was’ is perhaps more appropriate.)

For those of you contemplating bringing up children with a partner, remember be very, very sure that you totally love each other. Not now, but forever, in the real sickness and health, richer poorer terms. Nothing will test your relationship like having kids. You're about to climb a mountain; so you’ll need all the necessary equipment and must completely trust the person on the other end of the rope. The journey is arduous and can be heartbreaking and dispiriting. But when you reach a mountain top (by the way you can reach a mountain top several times a day...sometimes they're weeks apart) it is the most amazing thing ever, ever in the world.

To the men out there: you’ll see the body you love change (not yours!) Never crack on you're alarmed by her puffer-fish inflation at any cost. All depending on the birth you may witness any sort of dire blood n' guts stuff. (Personally I didn't want to be there when my children were born, but Steve was all for that modern ‘the mother should be present at the birth’ stuff.)

You cannot bank sleep. You can lie in bed every day, all day until the birth; it will not help a jot. You will be exhausted like you have never known and an all-nighter with your pals will be a doddle compared to being disturbed during the wrong part of your REM for the fourth time that night.

You will never get your life back to the way it was before kids. They will colonise every part of your life, toys in every room, crayon on your clothes, Bob the Builder on your CD player, biscuits in your bed and something sticky on the car seat. The noise will drive you crazy: crying in your ears, hammering into your hangovers, yelling when you’re on the phone, zooming like jet planes in front of the telly and jumping all over you if you try to read the paper.

On the few nights you get to go out in the year, the whole day will seem like a military exercise, with any reference to the evening’s activity being discussed in whispered code with partner and sitter. And without the help of an Enigma machine the children discover your plans and sabotage bedtime with tears and tantrums. When you finally escape to freedom more often than not you’ll make at least one call home and think of them in urgent, pulsing despatches of guilt until you return to the front line and their hot sleep embrace at the end of the evening.

So why have children?

Because if you love your partner truly, madly, deeply then it will be a wonderful, entrancing, romantic, hilarious, bonding experience.

It gives you an entirely new road to travel down.

You can be the parent you always wished you'd had (as well as the parent that you vowed you'd never become).

You get to mix properly with all your mates with kids who have previously seemed a bit distant and impenetrable. (Or who had disappeared altogether!)

You can buy fantastic toys and play with them.

You can make them really, really laugh.

You can change the day, the mood, the moment, with a diversionary tactic and feel like you have totally triumphed. Your three year old tantrums, you make a space ship with a box; the two year old is crying so you find her favourite book and snuggle on the sofa to read it with her.

You can be the strong and safe place that makes them feel okay.

You can show them the stars and the moon, the sea, leaves falling in autumn, flowers coming up in spring. You can spot birds in the garden, squirrels in the park, say hello to cats in the street or find bugs under stones. You can splash in the rain and roll in the snow. You can look out for trains, diggers, red cars and motorbikes. You can fill a bath with an entire bottle of bubble bath to make the bubbliest bubble bath ever and make bubble hats and beards.

You can cuddle something so small and tiny and vulnerable that it defies reality and know that you made them, you are responsible for them, you can make them safe and happy and warm and cosy and well fed and interested in the world and make them know what love is.

You can be proud of them when they are clever. You can forgive them when they are awful.

You can cry when they take their first step, draw their first picture, take part in their first school play.

You can be their parent and, despite losing your life, all that you hold dear and any hope of ever getting it back, you wouldn't change a thing.

Juliet Jones lives in domestic chaos with husband Steve, son Oliver (aged 3) and daughter Billie (aged 2) in Hertfordshire.