‘It felt like a grenade had gone off’ expert Anna Williamson shares the ‘most testing time’ of her relationship after kids

"It felt like a grenade had gone off. I think having a baby is undoubtedly one of the most testing times for a relationship, and over the years we've had to adapt and remember to put our relationship first. "

"Sleep and children are the one thing all parents grapple with, struggle with, feel overwhelmed with, and are constantly trying to find that elixir and that holy grail of solution. I am a routine mum and I found with my first child, a lot of people are in the same boat and you don't have a clue what you’re doing, and I realised a few months into having a baby that routine does seems to work to get him to sleep better with a better quality of sleep and indeed for myself. 

I followed that with my second so from day one I’ve been into finding timings and routines. Now they are three-and-a-half and seven I’m a big fan and a firm believer that you can’t take shortcuts when it comes to their bedtime, for my children anyway. 

My children are naturally very lively kids that don't seem to need a great deal of sleep annoyingly so you have to help your children go to sleep. If the lights are on and the telly is blaring they’re not naturally going to feel sleepy without a routine so I switch off all screens by 6-6.30 pm, the lights go down low and I create a low-level, quieter ambiance. 

They always have a bath, I think a bath gives that signal that it’s bedtime and then it’s story time and they do enjoy stories. They can be lively and want to play, it’s not exactly science, kids aren’t robots they are human beings but I'd say 70-80% of the time that works with the kids. Prepare in advance, nice fresh jammies and you’ve got to make the bedtime feel inviting and the more you do the easier I think it is to help them get to sleep. So that’s what I do, I’m a routine mum.

I have a Child's Farm pillow spray, which I swear by, I love a bit of scent and I love essential oils myself so I do a little pillow spray and they’ve both got a Tonie box. My daughter has lots of Tonies, she will dabble with a few of them but for her, come what may, we could be in a 35-degree heatwave but she always wants the Christmas Song Penguin which is on every night and it sends her to sleep. My son loves a different range of stories on the Tonie box. I do find that is a great sleep aid, I don't think it replaces a normal book which they also love, but it helps their mind to unwind and I know as a kid I loved my Famous Five tapes before I went to bed and I think it’s a nice way to help your child feel calm and secure as they drop off. I tackle bedtime with the kids how I tackle it with me, if my bed is inviting I want to get into it. Our house is quite old so it’s down to putting a hot water bottle in their bed in the colder months it is just something a bit more cosy for them and if it’s cosy they will want to go."

"I’m not a fan of co-sleeping however we do and have, and we’ve never done it all the time. We didn’t do it in the first few months of them being babies they slept next to me in one of those cots [check out these best cot beds] so we try to avoid co-sleeping, it’s not something we enjoy, we can’t sleep when the kids are in the bed but equally, the kids do want mum and dad. 

Our daughter she’s never bothered coming into ours, she’s happy in her bed. But my son still likes to come and find mummy at some godly hour in the middle of the night, I’m so used to it now I’ll often find when I wake up in the morning that he is just curled up next to me and I don't even realise. And when he’s a teen he won't want to know me so I just take it."

"Both of us actually, had a little routine going. It was mainly me that would do the night feed but we had a routine in those early days months 0-4 where I’d go to bed at 8pm and sleep through until the 3am feed and Alex would stay up until 11pm and do that feed then he’d go to sleep and wake up at 6/7am. That way we realised the importance of sleep for us and that we were rapidly unravelling without it so we worked in shifts. We shared the feeding which helps when you’re bottle feeding. When you’re breastfeeding exclusively you can’t, it’s a huge challenge, but we did."

"Me. I think I’m, more consistent because I’m more hard on routines, I’m strict because I believe in the importance of a routine to bedtime for good sleep and good food. Alex can be a little more fair, but equally, he respects the importance of a routine too overall I think I’m the strictest, but he has his moments too. There are certain things that he has strong opinions over the kids and there are some things I’m more easygoing with. He’s strict about nutrition."

"My son Vincenzo is named after my father-in-law, being Italian, it's kind of a thing and my son was the first boy out of four girls that came into the family so he took my father-in-law’s name and his middle name is George after my grandfather. 

"For my daughter, I just loved the name Eleanora or Alessandra was another choice but then when I went in to have her and by pure coincidence my midwife was Italian and called Eleanora and I went “Oh my gosh it’s a sign, I’ve never heard of another one” so that was it. And Maria is her middle name which is a nod to Alex’s 'Nonna', his Italian grandma, and my mum who’s called Mary, so we’ve got a strong thread of family names for the children."

"I really wanted to call my daughter Dorothy or the Italian version Dorothea after my grandma, who was the love of my life and Dorothea did feature in our top five for a while but never quite made it. It was boys' names we struggled with so I was pretty happy with Vincenzo. If we had a second boy, we were both stuck, I did like the name Santino which is an Italian name that means 'little saint'."