Advice for new mothers

1. Decide how many packets of chocolate biscuits you think you will need in the first month of your baby's life. Add on a zero to the end. Be prepared.

2. Breastfeeding can be difficult and all-consuming. Especially if you have a baby who is difficult and all-consuming. Whenever you think, 'but it CAN'T be food - you just ate!', it's food.

3. Rule number 1: Never wake a sleeping baby. Rule number 2: See Rule number 1.

4. People are keen to look after you and ask how you are when you are pregnant. No one will give a toss about you afterwards. Even if you did have major surgery. You are now only a machine to sustain your baby, and the sooner you get used to this, rather than insisting you are still a person in your own right with needs and feelings, the better.

5. Babies don't understand sarcasm. Case in point:

Deborah (on picking up a lip-smacking, about to cry Gretel, who is trying to ram her hand in her mouth... for her third feed in an hour): Poor baby, you must be STARVING

Gretel: (says nothing, stares straight ahead and feeds as though there will never be food again)

6. You will be able to do some things more often and easily than you thought, like updating your facebook page, browsing the net and reading books. In contrast, some things you took for granted before, like being able to shower AND dry your hair in the same day, will become Herculean tasks.

7. Have a bath every night. Even if it's only for ten minutes, you get to lock the door, feel human and like an adult. Plus it helps with the milk.

8. It's ok to feel regret, sadness and anger that you no longer have access to the life you had before. I was pretty keen on mine, as it turns out.

9. You may not have an immediate and overwhelming love-in with the baby. Truth be told, it is like being given a tiny, needy alien at first. With every day that passes, they become more human and comprehensible, but at first, there is no point of communication, other than the purely physical. Which, if you're used to reason, logic, emotion and WORDS, is tough. Depends on your style of course, but personally speaking, communicating primarily through one's breasts seems a strange idea to get used to.

10. Tell visitors in advance when to come and when to leave by. If they stay too long, tell them you have to sleep (this will work better if the baby is asleep).

11. Make sure your partner takes off as much time as possible. Two weeks paternity leave is laughable. You need more. Single mothers are clearly superhumans to be respected and feared.

12. Hang out with other people with new babies. They will talk to you about the boring baby minutiae that has become your life. It's not that you WANT to be dull... it's that you literally have nothing else to talk about because you haven't done, seen or experienced anything else.

13. Don't use cliches unless you really mean them. I'd feel better if other people said 'god, sometimes I really regret having a baby'...it doesn't make you a bad person and it doesn't mean you feel like that all the time. But I suspect there are a lot of people out there feeling that, but saying 'oh you forget everything and it's all worth it as soon as you see her/his precious little face'. It's hard. Why can't we just say it's hard?

14. Accept that you will have conversations about poo.

15. Just let it be what it is. You will constantly wonder if this is normal. Seems to me whatever it is almost always is.