Nearly a year on, I can’t really remember what the early days with the girls were like. I can recall moments and moods and bits of Christmas 2007 but everything external seemed to pass me by.

I wept uncontrollably when the baby blues struck and cried when anyone was nice to me. I looked down at the creatures in the cot and wondered where they had come from and why we had been given them. The sleep deprivation took hold and I became a raging monster, angry at the babies, at dh, at everyone. We had a lovely Christmas Day with my family which I ruined by sobbing on my Mum’s shoulder when they left in the evening. My 28th birthday came and went and apart from opening a few presents, it didn’t feel special at all. My days revolved around feeding, expressing, changing nappies, crying (them and me), dressing, undressing, checking, fretting and worrying about every little thing.

The first day that I was left alone after dh went back to work was utterly unbearable. I sobbed uncontrollably as he shut the door and drove away. I could barely take care of myself. How on earth was I going to manage the needs of two demanding babies?

Most of January 2008 passed by in a fog. Our days were completely controlled by these two little creatures that looked so cute and innocent but drained the life out of us. I left dh on his own with the girls for the first time to go sales shopping. I had intended to spend the whole day away from home but I cracked after lunch and got the train home. I had wanted – itched to get away from the girls so why were they the only thing I could think about as I shopped?

In my former life, I was a bit (a lot) of a go-getting control freak but the babies had reduced me to a quivering wreck. Dh was fantastically supportive and my friends and family were lovely but I needed to believe in myself again. I was too scared to even contemplate leaving the house on my own with the girls. I felt trapped and frightened. My Facebook status updates became increasingly bizarre and desperate. I honestly thought I was going mad. I lied to my GP at my post-natal check and told her I was fine, terrified that she’d find out I was a nutcase and take the babies away, whilst simultaneously hoping that Mary Poppins would magically appear on my doorstep. I didn’t DO failure. I COULDN’T fail at being a parent. I simply couldn’t.

It occurred to me that I needed an outlet for my feelings. I have always loved writing. When I was a child, I filled a red exercise book with snippets of historical information that interested me and hand-drawn pictures of famous figures from history. I used to love creative writing at school. As a teenager, I retreated to my bedroom and wrote my innermost thoughts in a diary. I noticed that Babycentre had set up a social networking site, which had a journal facility. On 20th January, I wrote my first entry: A bit about me. I spent endless afternoons holding a baby in one arm as she slept whilst tapping away at the keyboard with the other. I found it enormously therapeutic to write about how I felt. I decided to keep an online journal until I went back to work, to keep my brain ticking over.

At the beginning of February, I decided to try and regain control of my life. I implemented a strict feeding schedule, which became part of my famously rigid routine. I joined the local Twins club and attended my first session when the girls were 8 weeks old. I felt such a sense of achievement that I ran round the block afterwards, whooping with joy and doing wheelies with the buggy – the girls remained resolutely asleep throughout! I recall a mild weather week in the middle of February. I took the girls for a long walk on my own. The sun shone brightly and I felt like a heavy load had started to lift from my shoulders. I started to feel like ME again and some of the darkness disappeared.

The girls grew and developed and suddenly it was Spring and they weren’t floppy-headed, helpless little newborns any more. They were becoming people. My return to work date loomed large on the horizon. As much as I loved the girls, I knew that I wanted to go back to work. Although I felt much better now, I still had ‘bad’ days, where I would shout and rant and rave for no reason. Some nights, when dh was on the late shift, I would put the girls to bed and sob uncontrollably. I didn’t like feeling so sad and I didn’t like myself for feeling like a failure. Going back to work seemed a good solution all-round.

The girls started attending an excellent nursery, two days a week initially and three days from July. I got back into my job and reminded myself that I was actually good at something. The girls were thriving at nursery and I felt better about myself. Despite my earlier decision to stop writing my journal when I returned to work, I found I started writing more. There was suddenly more to say: the ups and downs of being a working mum, changes to my job, the girls’ development, parenthood, babies, nursery and the usual rants and raves. The journal took on a life on its own and people I didn’t know started telling me that they had read and enjoyed it. Then, people from my ‘real’ life confessed that they were reading it and gave me bouts of temporary writers block.

Somehow in 11 or so months I have amassed over 150 blog entries and written nearly 70,000 words. I’ve praised the girls to the skies and I’ve wished that I could sell them on Ebay. I don’t know what they’ll make of it when they get older but I hope that when they get over the embarrassment of my graphic descriptions of their poo, they’ll see that it’s actually an extended, rambling, strange, funny, sad and at times brutally honest love letter to them. Although I loved writing, I didn’t have anything worth writing about before. Now I have two things. 