We met at work. She was 18, I was 28.

It wasn’t love at first sight, she thought I was a bit of a tosser; I thought she was hot (perhaps we were both right!)

We were in training together and I knew then that I had to try to win her over before training ended and she was out of my reach. A couple of awkward lunches together lead to a few after-work drinks on our last day of training.

With the benefit of a bit of Dutch courage I invited her back to the one bedroom flat that I shared with my best friend; I had the bedroom, he had the couch.

I’m sure she must have been impressed when she first saw how we lived.

Empty beer bottles and pizza boxes, and a much-used bong and PlayStation were the only personal touches in the place. I wooed her to the sounds of Snoop Dogg and Schoolly D. In spite of my classy moves she stayed the night with me.

Things moved pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before we were spending more and more time together. Working together during the day and then seeing each other most nights.

Drinking factored heavily in our early years. We both had reasonable jobs and no debt so would drink most nights and go to nice restaurants to eat. We bought each other expensive gifts and enjoyed our life.

After a few months she moved out of home and we got our first place together. It was a difficult transition for her I guess. I’d travelled around the world for the three years before we met and had done a few things in my life. She had just finished high school and done her first year at university and here she was living with someone.

We went out with our friends often, but we were always together. We changed jobs, we moved house, and we kept drinking and partying. We did everything together.

We got married when she was 21 much to the disappointment of her family. When we told them of our plans her father said “we’ll see” and her stepmother suggested a hot bath and a bottle of gin might be in order even though there was no pregnancy.

The changing jobs and moving house continued on until we decided a move to the country for a tree change would be a good idea. The thought of a low pressure, slower paced lifestyle appealed to us. I had the grand plan of making furniture while she travelled to the city every day to go to work. In reality I built a couple of pieces of furniture but smoked pot and played Xbox.

It didn’t take long for us to realise that we both pined for the city life. So it was that our tree change experiment ended after only a short stint. It was back to the city for us, where there was life, and drinking and food.

We’d been back in the city for about a year when we decided that maybe we should try to have a baby together. We tried for a while but didn’t get pregnant so decided to stop trying. I think we both missed going out and drinking. A little further down the track and we thought we’d give it another try only to decide again after a couple of months to stop trying. I think it was about this time that we decided we wouldn’t have any kids and that was OK. It was at precisely this moment that we found out that she was pregnant. We were both happy but scared at the same time. This was the biggest thing we had done in our lives and the pressure to get it right was immense.

Both she and I came from variously dysfunctional backgrounds and broken homes so we knew that we had to do a good job for our child to right the wrongs of our past and not repeat the errors of our parents.

I started a new job at the same time as we got pregnant and I was being paid considerably more money so everything seemed to be looking up for us.

The pregnancy went pretty well and after a 30-hour labour followed by an emergency caesarian section we had a beautiful daughter.

I can still picture her when she was removed through the incision in my wife’s belly; a screaming giant of a kid with a shock of jet-black hair. When I realised I had a daughter I was genuinely surprised. I didn’t know what we were having and had no preference either way. I was just as proud as any dad can be at that moment.

My wife though had a different experience. After the difficulties of the birth she didn’t experience any bonding with our daughter and it took some time before she felt like a mother. As we found out much later, post-natal depression was an unwanted houseguest during that time.

As I’m sure most new parents can attest, we spent the first few weeks in absolute panic about what we had done and how we would cope. Constant exhaustion and stress put a lot of pressure on us but we managed and we kept going and learning all the time. It was about two weeks after our daughter was born that my wife and I were sitting up in bed wide awake at 2 in morning and we both looked at each other and she said “I think I only want one kid” and I said, “yeah, me too!”

But we survived the early days and became more comfortable with being parents, although I learned much later that whilst I was at work my wife struggled at home alone with our daughter and was often in tears and on the edge of sanity thanks to lack of sleep, physical and emotional exhaustion and no doubt the PND.

It was fine for me, I was out of the house at work every weekday; She was at home with a small child every day suffering without really knowing what was happening to her.

Pretty soon we were looking to move house again. As you have probably realised by now, the moving house has been a constant theme throughout our time together and we moved at least once every 12 months. It wasn’t that we had to move for financial reasons or anything like that; we just always found a reason to move; more space; a yard; more light; no yard etc. etc.

The next few years consisted of working and child rearing and very little in the way of life outside of family. There were the almost inevitable house moves, attempts at starting up small businesses, my wife returning to work part time and starting to regain her life and confidence. It wasn’t until our daughter started kindergarten and then school that my wife was able to start to get more time for herself to start to get her life back.

We had a few issues with our daughter settling into school initially, which required more moves, not just of house this time but of schools too. It was only when we got our daughter settled into her third school that she started to enjoy herself and make friends. This was a huge relief as the first two schools meant tears almost every morning because our daughter didn’t want to go to school.

So things all seemed to be going well for us as a family. We were earning good money and we were all happy and were living a pretty good life with the promise of more to come. We had plans for our future as a family.

To be continued