One afternoon, as I was airing my belly on somebody’s sofa, a woman I have known all my life turned to me and said: “Babies bring you money and friends.” As a pregnant, freelance writer, renting a flat in London at the time, with a partner living on a student income, this was music to my ears. What she didn’t say – and what I’d probably now add to that little homily – is that you’ll also lose some of both along the way.

According to a study of 2,000 parents, carried out by the charity Action for Children a few years ago, 68% of parents felt ‘cut off’ from friends, colleagues and family after the birth of a child. Why? I could write the reasons along my arms in felt tip, across my walls in jam and down my sheets in blood.

If you’re a birth parent, then having a baby doesn’t mean a baby leaving your body; it just means a baby moving from the inside to the outside of your body. You will still have to carry that baby around for months, if not years. You will have to feed it. You will have to rock it to sleep. You will walk up and down the darkness of your bedroom for hours as it screams in your face. You will have to wipe it clean, at either end, several times a day, for years. They will vomit on you. They will erupt in rashes or twitches or fountains of snot. They will writhe in your arms and howl when you put them down. All of which makes your old routine, well, tricky. Doing paid work, especially if it happens outside of your home, will become tricky. Leaving the house will be tricky. Living according to a schedule will be tricky, which makes being on time tricky, which makes making plans tricky. All of which means that keeping in touch with your friends and colleagues will become, you guessed it, tricky.