It was 2016 and I felt utterly dismayed at how motherhood was panning out compared with the pin-up version I’d dreamed of. Instead of being the calm, patient mum who could instinctively soothe her children’s woes while knocking up a two-course dinner for her husband, I felt broken by exhaustion and self-doubt. At night time, I’d banish my husband to the spare room because I didn’t want him to see me “fail” at trying to calm the baby. I was a mess, at my darkest moments even believing that perhaps my family would be better off without me.

Thankfully, some friends intervened and marched me to the GP, who diagnosed me with postnatal depression. I was offered medication to help pull me out of the hole I was in yet what transformed my situation was a dawning realisation: that if motherhood meant meeting this set of impossibly high standards, I couldn’t do it. For the first time, I embraced being “not good enough” and it completely transformed my state of mind.