This is the diary of a day trip that turned into a journey from which I never returned.

Having a baby, becoming a parent, was something that I naively embarked on believing that my life would not change. How wrong I was. It has been like setting out for a day trip to France only to find out that in fact you’ve emigrated. You can’t speak the language, you haven’t packed the right stuff, and you didn’t even say goodbye properly to the people and things you loved. You stand on the other side of The Channel barely glimpsing the land you once lived in, straining to hear the voices calling from over the water. Until at last an inhabitant of the new land, places their hand on your shoulder and guides you away. They tell you gently but firmly that this is your new life now and you can never go back to the place you came from. You even get to meet some of the people who went off on day trips a while back and never returned, they smile at you knowingly as they welcome you to their country.

Steve and I had only been together a year, but as a thirty-something couple, with plenty of mileage between us love-life wise, we reckoned we knew this was the real thing. With my body clock doing a good impersonation of Big Ben we decided to start trying for a baby. I think we must have tried too hard because I was pregnant the following month. Our first baby, Oliver was only six months old when I fell pregnant again. When I found out that the tummy bug I’d been suffering from, was in fact a baby, I sat on the stairs and cried. Steve said that he didn’t want me to think of it as ruining his life but rather to consider it as ruining both of our lives.

So here’s the diary of how a thirty something woman, who had never even held a baby (true) before she got pregnant has coped with the challenge of childcare, the pressure of parenthood and the delights of daytime friends.

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