Baby's first Christmas

If you're doing the entertaining, no one will bemoan the fact that the closest you'll come to presenting your own Christmas pud is popping into M&S to buy it. Ask everyone to muck in and bring part of the Christmas dinner with them - you don't have to be a domestic goddess, most of the family will be delighted with the opportunity to help out.

See if your parents or in-laws would like to babysit while you spend a bit of quality time alone with your partner. Don't feel too guilty about asking - they're probably itching to get their hands on your baby and will regard their new grandchild as the greatest gift of all. You may not be able to hell-raise, but a few glasses of port and a cosy, uninterrupted chat will probably be very welcome this year.

Because it's worth it
Of course, it's perfectly natural to long for an opportunity to sneak down to the pub on Boxing Day evening or to sit up drinking Baileys and watching It's a Wonderful Life until dangerously late at night - you may be a mum, but you're still only human after all. Just as giving up work for a while and ploughing all your spare pennies into goodies for your baby may be hard adjustments to make and accept, so are needing to get to bed earlier and feeling like the odd one out at this festive time.

But take heart: this first Christmas will probably be your most self-sacrificing, especially if you're breastfeeding or your baby is a poor sleeper. You may be filling your dustbin with more nappy sacks than Christmas wrap this year, but you'll be able to redress the balance with every year to come. Next year you may feel confident enough to get a babysitter during the party season. Chances are you'd have already suffered most of the major expenses that having a new baby entails - cot, highchair, car seat, pram/pushchair and a whole new wardrobe. You're more likely to have trimmed back to your pre-pregnancy size, too (or as close to it as is really reasonable!), and you may just be ready to regain a bit of the old you.

Yes, this Christmas may be a completely different experience from all previous years, but has life really ever been better?