The birth of my son was easily the most surreal experience of my life.

If I had drawn that moment as a sketch it would look something like this:

Parents, with collective gasp: The alien has landed!

Newborn babe: Waaah! Waaah! take me to your leader.

Parents: hello! Hi there sweet thing. Welcome, uh, to our world. We have much to teach you and you us! Now, uh, what shall we do with you and your uncomprehensible yet irritating language?

I had spent all of the second stage of labour completely spaced out, focusing only on my breathing, on breathing down through my body with each contraction, so concentrated on the task of Getting The Baby Out that when I fished out the baby from the birth pool and cradled him my dominant feeling was one of utter complete astonishment.

Wow! I was thinking. I have a baby! I am a parent! This whole thing is unbelievable!

Six months on, and I still quite often feel the exact same way. I find myself exclaiming: I am somebody's mother! A person who is supposed to know shit about shit! And it still strikes me as surreal. Also, as somewhat irresponsible on the part of the Universe to just hand me a whole real live baby like that without a manual or any kind of competency test.

I had read the books, and seen the films, and done a lot of thinking but still I wasn't ready. No amount of musing or cat ownership or folding of tiny clothes or not eating any of the interesting cheeses could have prepared me for the actual experience of having my baby. This is probably a good thing, because had I known what the months 0-3 would be like I would have picketed and resisted the whole baby-making thing.

In those first months fuelled by brutal sleep deprevation and my son's ghastly habit of wanting to spend the night hours partying I veered a lot between sadness and rage. It seemed unbelievable then that a human being that small could completely wreck a score of adults. It seemed unbelievable how averse he was to sleep. It seemed an impossible dream that I would get a good night's rest in the next ten years.

Time passes quickly when you have a child! Treasure these moments! people would chirp at me which mostly just made me want to club them about the head savagely while shouting: You treasure having two hours of sleep per night smug bastards!

Months 0-3 did not pass in any sense of the word quickly, except during the sweet blissful moments of sleep that always were terminated too soon by the plaintive voice of my newborn. The rest of those days and weeks were measured out in hours and minutes during which I withstood both his and mine angst and frustration.

And then suddenly, something clicked. We began to understand each other. To communicate. My baby began to smile at me and I magnanimously forgave him for everything he had inflicted upon me. It was as though around the fourth month my son suddenly woke up. Decided to stop rending his garments and smearing his face in ash regarding the horror of being on earth and began to notice the world for the first time.

Oh! I remember thinking, it's like he's becoming a little person and not just a despodent banshee! He looked upon the world and found it interesting. Also, chewable. And I could see him developing right before my own bleary eyes, acquiring new skills all the time (including sleeping through the night Oh Glory Magnificent Halleluiah) and each day he was different, more himself.

I can see a whole person becoming! I would think. How surreal! How unbelievable! Comme c'est etrange, comme c'est bizzarre et quelle coincidence!

Amazed disbelief is still a prevalent emotion. That's my son picking up objects with his fingers and passing them from one hand to the other when only yesterday he was just an ineffective swiper! That's my son grinning at me because he recognises and loves me! That's my son noticing everything in the whole wide world and trying to eat it. That's. My. Son. aka the person who has changed my life irrevocably and will continue to do so as long as we both shall live. My son. Who is entrusted to me. My son, who stretches out his little arms to me, who looks at me for comfort and understanding. My son, who breaks my heart and mends it. My son, who is like me and like his father and not like us at all. My son, who came from me but is uniquely his own.

But most often of all I find myself thinking Hi little human whom I created and grew in and evicted from and sustained with my very own body! How WEIRD is that? Biology is CRAAAAAZAAAAY shit!