We’ve been home for 10 days now and are gradually settling into life as a ménage à trois.

Scarlett slept through the first few nights, a solid 10 hours and we were happily congratulating ourselves on our excellent parenting whilst joking that things couldn’t go on much longer this way. The chuckling experienced parents in our entourage all said it wouldn’t last. And it didn’t, Scarlett started demanding twice-nightly feeds and long periods of wakefulness after the honeymoon period ended.

Now, though, she’s down to a feed at about 0530, sleeping from around midnight to 0900. Delphine has also started expressing milk, so I can do those middle-of-the-night feeds to give her a break. Otherwise during the day she had feeds about every three hours, six or seven a day in all.

My parents came to stay over last weekend and it was a joy to see them with the grand-daughter I’ve owed them for so long (my mother’s words – well, almost). We invited Delphine’s parents, brother, aunts and uncles over on Sunday for a long lunch and to give everyone a chance to meet up before the wedding in August.

Everyone, of course, was delighted to see and meet Scarlett; and, as we’ve been warned, many had opinions to offer, advice to give and admonisments to dish out about how well/badly we’re caring for her. She is, it turns out, about to die either of starvation or cold – it’s a bit of a toss-up which will get her first. Even though the daytime temperatures haven’t fallen below about 23 degrees since she was born and she eats seven times a day (at the all-you-can-eat mother’s milk bar), we are aware that we’ll be brought up on child endangerment charges any day now.

Well, opinions are like you know what; everyone has one and they’re full of…well again, you know what. “Yes, yes, thankyou, valued and valuable advice…” has become a pretty standard response. Thanks to Nick for offering that advice. And one years and years ago about nappy sacks – a genius bit of technology without which we couldn’t live.

I cooked for the families, of course, albeit nothing too exciting apart from a decent (even if I say so myself) terrine de foie gras à l’Armagnac et figues sèches. I only made it the day before so I didn’t have time to tasser, weight it down and compress it as you should so we ended up serving it with a spoon, but it still tasted good. Well, they managed to eat 1.5 kilos of the stuff anyway so I imagine they liked it. Served with Franck’s dried apricot chutney, so delicious all round. Roasted a couple of chickens and some rare beef (‘Raw beef’ as my father put it), did a couple of salads (tomato and basil, rice and sun-dried tomato with a few figs, mâche, that sort of thing). Fresh fruit salad with an orange pekoe tea syrup and everyone’s happy.

Coming home with Scarlett wasn’t really as traumatic as I’d expected – it’s quite cool having her around and she hasn’t cramped our style much at all, although I do have a sudden hankering to go out to the cinema more than before. Soon our French Government-sponsored babysitting service will kick in so we may take advantage of that.

Although before then I’ll almost certainly be back off to Ireland anyway – some time around the end of this month, probably, depending on when my boss comes home.

Even nappy changing doesn’t freak me out as much as I’d feared; again, as everyone said non-bleeding-stop, it’s different when it’s your own children. I have managed to avoid deluging everyone with e-mailed Proud Father pictures though (I’m talking to you, David, and you, Simon). I used to reply with pictures of Daisy back in the old days, which confused and even annoyed some people. Sure I’m proud of and pleased with my baby daughter, but that’s no excuse to spam your inbox.

m/f