Pregnancy and the first year, without the soft focus

Book the pelvic health physiotherapist while you're still pregnant. Not after. Waiting lists are long, you won't have the energy to chase an appointment in week three, and the six-week check with your GP or midwife is roughly ten minutes long. It's a safety net, not an MOT. You get asked about bleeding, contraception and mood, and then you're discharged into the rest of your life with a body that has just done something enormous.

That's the shape of the whole first year. The official system checks that you're not in danger. Everything else is on you, and almost nobody sits you down and explains it.

Pregnancy isn't nine months of glowing

The second trimester gets sold as the good bit. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's the trimester where your pelvis starts clicking when you roll over in bed, and you find out there's a name for it, and that a physio can give you a support belt and a set of exercises that genuinely help.

Things that surprise women, in no particular order: heartburn that arrives at week 28 and never really leaves, carpal tunnel numbness in your hands overnight, rib pain, and the specific dread of lying still counting kicks because you haven't felt one since lunch. Call the triage line. Every single time. They would rather see you at midnight for nothing than have you lie there worrying until morning, and they say so.

On clothes, buy fewer maternity pieces than you think and buy them for the wrong season on purpose. You'll be in them for months after the birth. Two pairs of trousers with a decent waistband, a few tops that open at the front, one dress you can wear to something formal. Skip the specialist maternity coat if your normal one still meets in the middle.

Write your birth preferences down. One page, plain language, top three things that matter most. Then decide who speaks for you if things move quickly, and tell that person what you'd want. That conversation takes fifteen minutes and it's worth more than the whole rest of the folder.

The first fortnight is a medical event

Bleeding goes on for weeks. Afterpains, the cramping while you feed, can be sharper with a second baby than a first. You'll want a peri bottle by the toilet and you'll understand why on day one. Ask your midwife what's normal for you and what warrants a call, and write the answer down, because you won't remember it.

If you had a caesarean, you had abdominal surgery. Somebody cut through layers of muscle and stitched them back. You'll be sent home with a baby, a scar and very little in the way of a recovery plan. Ask specifically about lifting limits, driving, and when to start scar massage. Ask your GP or physio. Don't take it from a forum.

Stairs count. Walking to the shop counts. Doing three loads of washing because you feel guilty counts, and it's the thing most likely to set you back a week.

Feeding is hard both ways

Breastfeeding hurts more, more often, and for longer than the antenatal class implies. Get a lactation consultant or an infant feeding specialist in the first few days if the latch feels wrong, not in week three when you're already dreading every feed and your nipples are cracked.

Bottle feeding is also hard, and nobody warns you about the logistics. Sterilising at midnight. Making up a feed at three in the morning while a baby screams at you. Bottles in the dishwasher, bottles in the bag, bottles you left in the car.

Whatever route you end up on, the guilt around it's manufactured and you can put it down. A baby who's fed and held is doing well. So is the woman doing the feeding.

Around four months, your hair falls out

It comes out in handfuls in the shower and you'll think something is seriously wrong. It's a normal postpartum shed and it grows back, usually with a halo of short bits around your hairline that stand straight up for a year. Mention it at an appointment if you're also exhausted in a way that sleep doesn't touch, because thyroid changes after birth are a real thing and a blood test is easy.

Your joints stay loose for a while too. That's the argument for building back slowly rather than going straight back to the class you were doing at 30 weeks. Walking, breathing work, then load. A pelvic health physio will give you an actual order to do it in.

Your marriage takes the hit before anything else does

Sleep deprivation turns two reasonable adults into scorekeepers. He thinks he's doing a lot. You know exactly what you're doing because you're the one awake for it. Both of you're right, which is why arguing about it at 4am never resolves anything.

Fix it with a rota, not a conversation about effort. Split the night into shifts with a time on them. You take until two, he takes two until seven, and the person off shift sleeps somewhere else with earplugs in and doesn't get woken unless there's a genuine problem. Swap the shifts on weekends. Broken sleep destroys you far faster than short sleep does, and a rota buys each of you one solid block.

Then write the invisible list on the fridge. Nappies reordered, health visitor appointment, the 12-week jabs, more baby wipes, the thank-you note to his aunt. He isn't refusing to do it. He genuinely doesn't know it exists until it's written down, and once it is, most men just do it.

Don't bother with date night for a while. Twenty minutes on the sofa with the kitchen already clean is worth more than a restaurant you'll both be too tired to enjoy.

Know the difference between tired and unwell

Weepy, wobbly, overwhelmed in the first fortnight is common and usually passes. What doesn't pass, and needs a phone call, is flatness that lasts beyond a couple of weeks, dread that sits on your chest all day, rage that frightens you, or being unable to sleep even when the baby does.

Intrusive thoughts, the horrible flashing images of something happening to the baby, are much more common than women realize and they don't make you dangerous. They're treatable. Say them out loud to your GP or health visitor and watch how unshocked they are.

This isn't a spiritual failure and it's not ingratitude. You can love your child completely and still be ill. Get the help, take whatever's offered, and let people pray for you while you do.

The rules for visitors

Anyone who comes in the first month brings food, holds the baby while you shower, or leaves within the hour. Say it before they book the train. The ones who love you won't mind, and the ones who mind have told you something useful.

What actually earns its place

• A lamp you can dim with one hand for night feeds. Overhead lights wake everybody up.
• Meals frozen flat in bags, stacked upright. Casserole dishes take up the whole freezer.
• A water bottle you can open one-handed. You'll be thirstier than you've ever been.
• The car seat fitted and checked weeks before the due date, by someone who does it for a living.
• A note on your phone where you dump every question as it occurs to you, so appointments aren't wasted staring at the wall.

Somewhere around month seven, the baby will laugh at something entirely stupid. A sneeze, a door closing, your face. Write down the date, because the year genuinely does blur, and that's the bit you'll want back.