Ask almost any parent about their first night out together as a couple after having a baby and they’ll all tell you the same thing: they were knackered, spent the whole time talking about the baby (after insisting they wouldn’t), and pretty much looked at pictures of their little one all night.
It’s hard not to – you get all excited about being on your own for a bit, but you’re so used to having this tiny person around you that they just become everything in your world.
You’re sure you used to talk about other things, but every discussion comes back to funny little toes or adorable gurgling noises.
However determined you are to talk about something else, it just keeps coming back. You might try discussing the news, then one of you goes, “Ah yeah, I read about that while feeding Junior” and then you talk about Junior for 45 minutes.
So you try again, and start chatting about football. Then you wonder whether Junior will play football, if you can get them mini Nike boots, and what it’ll be like when they win the World Cup.
Or you just stare vacantly, exhausted, depleted of even your super-secret-backup-reserve energy – a long deep sigh emanating from somewhere inside your body where sighs don’t normally emanate from, and you look at each other and say, “We’d better just check everything’s okay.”
Good luck then, to Gemma Atkinson and Gorka Marquez, who reached the point of their first night out post-baby. Their daughter Mia is 11 weeks old, and they announced on Instagram they were dropping her off with her grandparents to go out together – freely acknowledging that whatever exciting plans they made were unlikely to actually manifest.
“I can’t wait to make plans that we’re both too tired for,” wrote Atkinson, accompanying incredibly enthusiastic 1970s celebratory disco footage.
Marquez added that he could see both of them on the phone, “calling Nana every five minutes”.
Hopefully they didn’t. Hopefully they found themselves full of extra energy, revitalised by not having to keep an eye on baby Mia, able to have a fun-filled, thrilling night out – one laden with spontaneity, excitement and giddiness.
But, you know, if they just talked about her a bunch and went home, that’s good too.