God, I remember those feelings as if they were yesterday....I still shudder when I think of the first year with the first one in particular. I went back to full-time work when my first was 4 months old and I was still breastfeeding and leaking in meetings...
I also remember the endless paraphernalia we had to cart around if we went anywhere for the day, or worse still, overnight. Getting out of the house seemed impossible some days.
The sleep deprivation was horrendous and there never seemed to be a break from it all. Our families tried to help when they could, but they lived 50 miles away in opposite directions. I can remember the antsy competition about who had "enjoyed" more sleep than the other one - someone said on here recently that there ought to be a ban on divorces within the first 2 years of a child being born and by and large, I think that's true.
It also doesn't help if like me, it's taking ages to get back into shape again. I felt fat, frumpy and knackered ALL the time. I ate like a horse when breastfeeding and didn't address the weight gain until I'd stopped, which is what I was advised anyway.
Being kind to eachother is really sensible advice and I can remember talking to DH about the petty scraps we had all the time and acknowledging that we were facing a monumental shock to the system, which is what the baby months are. My Mum could see what was happening and bless her, suggested she babysat for a weekend when our first was a year old. We treated ourselves to a weekend in a country house hotel and it was just the tonic we needed. I admit we slept a lot and didn't make it down to breakfast at all, but we also had loads of sex and it was wonderful. We've tried to do this once a year ever since.
What also helped me was nights out with my friends. I've got three biggish groups of girlfriends and even though I was exhausted, I took every opportunity to meet up and have baby-free time. I'd really recommend this.
Running a bath for your H so that he gets a break and just small kindnesses to one another really help - you need to acknowledge that for a while, regular exciting sex is going to be off the menu and so you have to redouble your efforts to appreciate eachother in different ways.
Keep talking all the time as a couple and ensure that when the baby's asleep at night, you turn the telly or the PC off and just talk with no distractions. In the end, my DH and I decided to act as a team and recognise that things would get better eventually and that we would one day have an unbroken night's sleep again.....
It really does get easier - and I was lucky as I never suffered from PND. I do remember feeling very irritated when celebrities would gush about how fulfilling it all was and how much closer they felt to their partners since giving birth....in my experience the reality was very different and I didn't routinely enjoy the baby years at all. I think I only started to enjoy motherhood when my DCs reached 2. Keep a sense of humour and try to laugh together every day.