It started as a blur and went downhill from there. After an exhausting day of induction, examination, contractions and inedible canteen grub, our son Oliver was born just short of an hour before midnight and just after time at the bar.

We spent a couple of hazy days in hospital before my wife Lindsay was cleared to come home. I did my best Sunday driver impersonation on the ponderous five-mile journey then got to carry my first-born child over the threshold. I laid him in his carry cot with great care and sat watching him in silent awe. Lindsay made a cup of tea and joined me on the sofa. Then I put the TV on. Family life had begun.

The rest of the day was subdivided into hour-long manual tasks – changing nappies, feeding, washing, putting on socks. I met each challenge with the dexterity of a man constructing flat-pack furniture blindfolded and wearing ski gloves. By 10pm we were all ready for bed, so we took him up to the nursery I’d lovingly painted in non-gender-specific magnolia.

He was asleep in moments and we congratulated ourselves on being the greatest parents ever. Then the neighbour started some DIY, Oliver screamed and we clenched our teeth, fists and any other parts of our bodies that weren’t too tired.

That night was the longest and scariest of my life. Even our hammer-wielding neighbour went to find a hotel around 3am. Oliver produced a soundtrack of unrelenting misery that was so loud and sustained I was sure it would go on for ever and life would never be normal again.

But slowly, though not so surely, things got better every day. Sure, there were plenty of setbacks – he didn’t feed well, he hated going out in the car – and there were days when we’d forget to dress or eat, but eventually we found a routine in which he thrived and we survived.

Within weeks we were coasting and I was sufficiently blasé to encourage Lindsay to have a lie-in. I’d cope with anything, I said. The first tremor hit Oliver’s southern region around 7am, accompanied by an acrid smell. I stuck him on the changing table, whipped off his nappy and gasped as he produced copious number ones and twos as well as whatever number applies to volumes of burped-up milk. It was more than I could handle – I screamed for Lindsay and she came flying down the stairs, expecting the worst. That was her last lie-in for a while.

Despite this dazzling incompetence, I was given the job of caring for Oliver for full days when Lindsay went back to part-time work. Things started promisingly, we slept a lot and watched Countdown. It was like being a student all over again.

Trouble set in when I started getting adventurous and taking him out for days – mainly trips to bookshops and ‘educational’ tours of castles. Rain clouds followed us everywhere, as dark and menacing as the frowns Oliver was starting to cultivate. Even though he couldn’t speak, he was already an expert at tuts and sighs. Eventually we reached a compromise - the cultural tour and the sulks were both put on hold.

By the end of our first year, we’d gathered the confidence to take him abroad – albeit just an overnight ferry ride to Ireland. As we rocked and heaved in our bunks, I recalled our first night together 12 months earlier – feeling sick, disorientated and lost. No change there, then.

Yet in the months that have followed, as we’ve watched Oliver take his first steps, form his first words, blow his first raspberry, the days of dizzying disorientation have faded into blissful memory. That helps to explain why our house is once more filled with scratch mitts and suspicious crocheted bundles. Oliver is about to become a big brother, and he’s very excited – if only we were all as ready.

This feature first appeared under the title The Daddy of All Years in the Daily Express Newspaper.