My father-in-law, a doctor, called on day two with the same certainty he'd bring to any diagnosis. Guinness, he said, for the iron — get a case in, drink one a day. The maternity wards used to hand it out themselves, no questions asked.

Melatonin has become one of those unremarked-on fixtures of family life that nobody quite remembers agreeing to. I understand the pull of it completely — there is a particular exhaustion that sets in at half past nine, with a child still wide awake and a school morning already visible on the other side of a bad night, that makes any promise of calm look like common sense.

Perimenopause can begin as early as your late thirties, and yet we talk about it in whispers, usually only once we are already deep inside it and looking for someone who understands.