Nope Heidi hasn’t started chattering at 11 months, and Dex is no more comprehensible now than he was at 1.5 years. I’m still “Mummis”, Craig still “Diddy”, and the closest we come to a sentence is some pretty dramatic babbling, pointing at the fridge and bottom lip-wobbling when he’s pleading for his after-dinner chocolate mousse.

No, the babe I speak of in the title for this post is He who helped me make them; chief electrician, spider-catcher and chef here at Casa Mills; the man I agreed to marry when drunk who still hasn’t put a ring on it… Craig.

You see, I was recently contacted by M&S about a little project they’re doing to coincide with their new M&S Baby section on marksandspencer.com. They want to create a Dad’s Survival Guide full of advice from oft-forgotten dads - those magnificent beasts who somehow manage to make parenting both harder and easier at the same time.

Yet, extracting pearls of wisdom from my man is tough. When not under pressure, this man will provide a running commentary to the most mundane of activities. He’ll talk over Orange is the New Black so you have to watch it again secretly the next day. He’ll decide to ask you your opinion on the Battle for Number 10 when you’re halfway through a blog post. He’ll over-complicate the online food shop and deliberate aloud for ten whole minutes about which sausages to buy the kids for tea. In short, he’s never short of something to moan, joke or jump on his soapbox about.

Yet when asked if he had any parenting advice to offer a fellow dad-to-be, he reacted as though I’d asked him about the intricacies of cytogenetics during the mitotic metaphase. The eyebrows furrowed and he grabbed a nappy and set to work on Heidi to escape the question. When pressed, staring down at the contents of my daughter’s nappy, he muttered “Wrap it up”.

Of course he’s joking, he’s a brilliant daddy. But it’s tough to come up with a nugget of winning advice. Sure, two children in, we know loads more now, than we did then. We know that the only baby socks that stay put are from Baby Gap, we know that we wasted a good twenty quid on a nappy bin before Child 1 came along, we know that an tablet loaded with Flixster is your best bet if your child gets car sick. Yet coming up with something truly… helpful? Not easy.

When he turned to me in bed later that evening, his attempt, on the face of it, was a bit saccharine:

“Never waiver in your love, admiration and respect of the mother of your children” Craig

Yet when he explained it, I began to understand it was one of the most compelling things he’d ever said.

He explained that, especially for dads who work, you can feel a little on the periphery of parenthood. On the weekends, when you get up first with the kids, you’re forever getting caught out by not removing the crust from the kids’ toast, or making up their drinks with slightly the wrong ratio of juice to water. At times, you have to accept that your partner knows the nuisances of parenting that you don’t. The slightest deviation from routine can end up in an epic tantrum.

You also have to acknowledge that the stay-at-home-mum is one of the least respected jobs in Britain. She’s berated and discriminated against by the government, she can’t pull a sicky and she’s not paid for her work. Craig freely admits that after particularly long and difficult weekends with the children, he is sometimes relieved to get up at 5am and go to work. It’s not that he doesn’t love us all, it’s just that the mess, tears and never-ending wiping of snotty noses and mucky bums, is unrelenting and hard.

He goes on to say that if ever you’re having a crap day at work and silently resenting that mum is at home, mentally revisiting a challenging weekend of parenting brings you back to earth with a thud. You therefore have to forgive your partner when she’s snappy or emotional when you come home. Similarly, if she’s in the middle of cooking dinner and a bottle of wine is half-depleted, there’s no point arguing she should have waited.

Finally, you have to see past the fact she has a stress rash on her cheek, her hair is a longer version of Boris Johnson’s and she’s wearing your favourite t-shirt and it appears to be covered in baby vomit. When the day’s toys are swept into the toy chest, you’ve both eaten, she is showered, and you’re preparing for bed, you’ll remember just how lovely she is.