I just met someone who will have a baby on 25th March, and the baby will be a little girl.  I wished her luck, moist eyed, because having babies was the best thing in the world, for me.  But I didn’t tell her what would happen on 26th March, or she might have hit me.  So here it is…

The waiting is over. Now there is a new little person with a crumpled face, shiny gums, and a strange resemblance to your grandfather. (This is particularly unnerving if your baby is a girl.) Breastfeeding or not, your clothes from the waist up are either starched or wet with milk. I say ‘waist’: actually, I mean the deflated, stretch-marked expanse between armpit and groin. You notice that you smell of cheese.

Let’s call this newborn person Lily. Friends and family come to worship at the Lily Shrine. Some bring presents, and ask to hold the baby. Old hands bring presents, and ask: “Does she sleep?” And – mostly – the answer will be ‘no’. Lily doesn’t know night from day. It’s nothing personal. Not Lily’s fault, or yours. Babies are made that way.

This is fine for a few days. You’re tired, but, if you are lucky – and it’s only luck, nothing more – you are elated enough to handle it. You may even find that, (when you have visitors and nobody turns a hair if you spend the day in a dressing-gown,) those hours you spend alone with Lily are a time of bonding, when Lily seems to know exactly who you are and what you mean to each other. Then hormones hit; three days after giving birth you will most likely have a period of sharp depression and weepiness.

Tell someone who cares – and if it doesn’t pass, tell an expert.

In the months that follow, you’ll learn the difference between the tiredness from staying up all night with friends, (when you can make an appointment with your bed and catch up on lost sleep,) and being Lily’s Mum. You’ll likely not be able to set aside that time to sleep, now. Lily’s Law says she’ll wake and need to be fed or changed, ten minutes after you’ve snuggled down. Soon you start to fantasise about sleep the way you used to fantasise about sex. Just when everyone expects you to be back to normal, you find that normal no longer exists.

What’s the most dangerous word in that last sentence? It is ‘expects.’

If you think about it, expectation is just imagination. Expectation is as realistic as a day-dream of how a person you don’t know yet (Lily) will behave, and how another person you don’t know yet (you as Lily’s mother) will respond. In the long run, 90% of what we imagine, good and bad, never happens. Expectation is fantasy.

It’s a good idea to leave expectation at the delivery-room door, because Lily – an unknown quantity – will be growing up in a world which doesn’t yet exist. Once you’ve anticipated safety risks, you can only accept the unexpected. You may think you have control over your environment, your job, and your money, but you don’t, not really, because it’s all decided in Westminster or Brussels, or in the Council meeting you didn’t bother to attend – and you can control Lily’s world even less than that, because it hasn’t happened yet, and you absolutely can’t control who Lily is. As a baby, what you get is the unedited version of Lily. There’s a time to lay down the ground-rules, but not just yet: for now, Lily is in charge.

There may be over a year before you can sleep without being woken, and if you spend that time fantasising that you should be slender, toned, dynamic at work and multi-orgasmic at home, you are headed for disappointment and resentment. What’s a year? Well, if tomorrow is just around the corner, a year is only 365 corners to turn, although at 3am, it’s eternity.

You can only turn one corner at a time, so – just for today – rest when you can, keep the bathroom and kitchen clean enough to be safe, and other rooms tidy enough so Lily can’t find things to choke on and you won’t trip over clutter and crush the cat. Don’t assume everyone else knows better, because they don’t. The younger they are, the less they know; the older they are, the more confused they are about the details. But ask for help; even the senile and the inexperienced can make a bacon butty for you and wash up afterward, and even if things aren’t done as you like, life will function.

Wash and feed yourself and Lily. If you have the choice between ironing sheets or doing your nails, do your nails, because Lily’ll wee on any number of ironed sheets. If you have a good baby-sitter leave Lily for a few hours and drag yourself out to socialise even though you fall asleep half way through the evening. If friends don’t understand right now, move on. When you’re on the same page again, maybe you can reconnect. For now, try to bond with anyone who is a bit fat and smells of cheese.

Tell yourself this, every single day:  You’re doing a marvellous job – you don’t have to be a ray of sunshine into the bargain. You only need to be good enough, not perfect. Remember, you’re the best Mum Lily has.

And know this: like every stage of Lily’s life, good or bad, this will pass. But you’ll always remember, and one day when you visit a friend who’s just had a baby, you’ll find yourself asking: “Does she sleep?”