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Becoming a dad can be more than a shock to the system and life before your child may feel like a distant memory.

Woman’s Hour is following three dads, whose partners gave birth a year ago, for our series Bump, Birth and Beyond.

Phil Lang, Andrew Low and Ben Cook spoke to reporter Abigail Hollick about what they have learnt in the year since their children were born.

1. Fatherhood can be relentless

“I think the thing that came as a bit of a shock is how relentless it all is”, says Ben Cook, whose son, Oscar, is now one.

“None of the component parts are particularly difficult but the sum of them is really, really difficult.”

For Phil Lang, dad to one-year-old Ruby, the biggest thing he’s realised is that he now has a 24/7 job.

“The fact that you’ve got work then you come home, you’re looking after the baby all night, you’re trying to fit things in. We’ve got a couple of dogs, trying to please them, trying to take them out at the right time. You lose that ‘me’ time that you previously had. Thank God we’ve got on-demand TV nowadays...I don’t know how they managed with babies before that.”

“Sleep deprivation is a real thing”, says Andrew Low, dad to one-year-old Rudy. “It was like my head felt like someone had struck a nail through it. It’s just really painful sometimes.

“The other thing is trying to get four people out of the door for something, to catch a train, or for school or whatever it is, because my wife still has to get herself ready, we’ve got my four-year-old that I’ve got to somehow convince that she can’t wear a summer dress in the winter and she has to wear boots and a hat, and then the baby who has like 10 million accessories that we have to get ready at the right temperatures, in the right bags, in the right way.

“That’s the real struggle and that’s an everyday thing, whether we’re going to the park, or going to school or anything like that.”

2. The bond with your child may take a while to come

“It is a weird situation because you’re just there as a caretaker in the beginning and to keep the baby alive, keep it warm, keep it fed”, says Andrew.

“I don’t think until about six months did I feel like ‘here’s the personality, here’s the giving back thing’.

“When they finally come out of their shell and you see a bit of their personality, you see who they are going to be, then you feel the bond.”

Ben says he struggles with the term ‘bond’. “It feels slightly nebulous a feeling and I’m not sure if that’s something you can measure.”

3. A child can be good stress relief

“Just that warmness in your heart that you get from walking through the door and seeing that smiling face, when she says ‘hiya dada’ when I walk through the door.

“Things that used to bother me, or worry me or I may have lost a bit of sleep over, have now gone to be honest”, says Phil.

Andrew thinks that having Rudy has had an impact on his mental health.

“I had a lot more mental health problems beforehand and now I think I go, ‘well, now I have this other person to think about so I can’t really wallow in my own self pity…people don’t like me, I’m depressed, or life isn’t going well’. For me, it’s shaken me up to be, ‘OK, you have this job to do, you have these people relying on you’.”

4. A child can strengthen your relationship

“I definitely think we’ve got closer, we’ve been able to laugh at crazy situations”, Andrew says about his relationship with his partner Jen.

“We don’t have the time at all to spend together and when we do at night it’s like, ‘OK I just want to sit here and stare at the wall for an hour before I fall asleep on the couch from exhaustion’.

“We’ve grown closer in the struggle together.”

5. Going back to work can be a relief AND make you feel guilty

“I think some mornings it was a bit of a relief to leave the house because you go back to work”, says Ben.

“You’re in an established routine, you know the people around you, you know how they are going to react. It’s unlikely that anyone’s going to scream at you (happens occasionally).

“There is a balance between guilt and relief and for me, it almost changed on a daily basis.”

“There’s the guilt of leaving the mother alone, and not doing things together”, admits Phil.

“I did find it difficult, I didn’t really want to go back to work after the two weeks. I think sometimes you also feel like you’re missing out on things. But also [my wife] wanted to form her own routine at home so to a point she wanted me there to help out, but she also wanted to create her own routine as well.”

6. You can feel helpless sometimes

“There were times when I was holding Ruby and she would get really upset”, says Phil.

“My wife would be having her time out, having a nice bath, and the baby would start crying and I knew I had tried everything, tried the nursery rhymes, the rocking, skin on skin time.

“I knew the only thing that would stop this baby crying was she needed feeding. And with Laura breastfeeding, there was nothing I could do. It killed me. It really hits you from a mental well-being point of view.

“I don’t think it’s anything that anyone prepares you for, but it does really hit you hard.”

“It’s the grind, it’s looking at your partner and thinking I wish I could do more for you...I used to treat you to dinner and even cook dinner”, says Andrew.

“Now it’s we’re just doing the same things every day and you just feel like I wish I could be more there for her basically.”

7. Men still get more praise for the basic things than women

“Sometimes the bar is really low for men. It’s like ‘oh he took the kids out by himself, he’s a saint’”, Andrew says.

“Especially from the older generation it’s like ‘oh your father never lifted a finger for you and I did everything, and now...you’ve remembered to change them once or twice a day, it’s like you’re the superhero.

“I think men my age, and certainly the men I’m friends with, men are just really expected to share half and half, and I think that’s important.”

8. Despite all the hurdles, there are brilliant moments

“It’s been the best year of my life”, says Phil. “Having that person in your life who beams every time you walk through the door, it’s just unbelievable.

“That daddy, daughter bond, it’s something you can’t replace, it’s something that’s completely different to anything I’ve ever had before.”

For help and advice on all aspects of pregnancy, birth and your child's early days check out the or the .

There’s more information about the series, Birth, Bump and Beyond on the Woman’s Hour website.