She believes just 24 hours away from the children recharges her marriage

The bedside clock is winking 4am when my 11-year-old daughter barges into our bedroom, wrenching me from a deep sleep.

She hasn't knocked - it wouldn't occur to her - nor is she even slightly concerned about disturbing me and my husband.

‘I've had a bad dream,' she announces. ‘And my nose is blocked.'

I am so tired that I can only grunt as Belle climbs over me and into our bed, wraps her small body around mine and wedges herself between me and my husband, Luke. He is snoring, oblivious to the disturbance. Nights for us are often like this - not at all romantic.

Mum says children blight her marriage: From left top row, Belle and Jude, from left bottom row, Kate and Luke

Before we went to bed, my 14-year-old son Jude lay between us on the sofa, while we watched TV. I can't remember the last time I snuggled up to my husband, hid my face in his chest during a scary film, or even held his hand. The problem is our children are our constant companions.

In some ways it's lovely, and a huge compliment, that our children choose to spend time with us, but it means we very rarely have any time to ourselves.

We are a close-knit family and we do spend a lot of time together. This is partly because Luke and I have our own childhood issues - my husband's parents died in a car crash when he was eight, while I went to boarding school from the age of 11. We want to stay close to our children.

We love them hugely, and my life would be incomplete without our children, but since we've had them, they have taken over our lives, sometimes to the detriment of our relationship.

There are times when I feel like running away and leaving everybody, or just fast-forwarding a few years until they are independent or have left home. But the minute I picture Luke and I sitting alone together, I feel sad and bereft. What will we do with that spare time?

When we were children, there were much stricter boundaries. Children did not stay up with the adults, or socialise with them, or sleep in their parents' beds. We, on the other hand, seem to have no boundaries at all.

Our children spill over into all aspects of our lives. It is only rarely that I shout: ‘I need some adult time!' and am promptly ignored.

Mother Kate Morris says that her two children have taken over life, to the detriment of her relationship

Our philosophy is that we want them to feel secure and loved, so that they will grow into confident adults, but that's been at the expense of any dividing line between their world and ours. Part of the problem is that we don't have an extended family who are able to relieve us from childcare. My mother and stepfather live abroad, and my father and his wife live miles from our London home.

We've had only a handful of nights away from our children during the past 14 years and the constant caring for them and ignoring each other's needs sometimes corrodes our relationship.

All our resources, both financial and emotional, go towards making sure our children are happy and healthy, and up to scratch with their homework, piano exams and drama lessons. Believe me, I know we are not unique. There are millions of other couples going through the same thing.

This isn't how I imagined life with my husband to be. He is a photographer and I am a writer and we met in the Yemen 19 years ago, while working for different publications.

We crossed the desert, aptly named the Empty Quarter, in a truck, protected by a sullen man brandishing a Kalashnikov. I was struck by my husband's intrepid nature; he looked dashing and he made me laugh. We were a couple soon afterwards.

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We began working together on exciting assignments and went on amazing trips - the Swedish archipelago and Antarctica are two that I remember well.

Now our times away are mostly tame beach holidays in Britain or France with the children, where my snapshot images of my husband are now of him coaching the children on the tennis court, or photographing them on a simulated surfing machine in Cornwall. Life can seem quite dull in comparison.

The few precious nights we've had away in the past few years have given us rare chances to rekindle our marriage, even though we haven't been further than Rye in East Sussex.

I've always found that just 24 hours away from our children can recharge our relationship for up to three or four months. It's that simple.

We focus on each other and remember who we were when we met. We sit and chat, and laugh and try not to talk about the kids. We hike and bike and have a long lie-in, without interruption, luscious lunches and long walks on the beach.

We've had only a handful of nights away from our children during the past 14 years and the constant caring for them and ignoring each other's needs sometimes corrodes our relationship

When our children were babies, our days off were even more precious and rare. I felt as though we were partners of a very small boarding nursery school. We communicated wearily about nappy-changing and bottle-feeding; our conversations were brief instructions or demands, and not the stimulating or amusing debates we had been used to.

Our early evenings were spent simultaneously bathing one child and reading to the other.

My husband spent interminable nights rocking babies to sleep. When we had two children, we spent entire weekends working around their timetables of naps and feeding times.

Time together felt like an expensive luxury so we often went out independently with our own friends.

We found it hardest of all the first year that our son was born, partly because I had suffered a haemorrhage after giving birth, which left me exhausted.

I am not someone who has piles of energy anyway, but with the added pressure of having a baby, I could hardly function at all. I found it difficult to get up in the night to tend to our baby son, handing the bulk of the night feeds over to Luke, leaving him tired and resentful.

At times we barely talked to each other. The strain was too much, and we separated for three months when our son was a year old. Luke just left one day, saying he needed some time apart, perhaps for ever. It was a sad and lonely few months.

Kate with her children: From left, Jude, Kate and Belle. Kate and her husband once separated over the strain

Thankfully, we missed each other, got back together and three years later our daughter was born. Unbelievably, I had another post-partum haemorrhage and lost a vast amount of blood. I felt very weak the first few months that she was a baby, but this time we just about managed to hold it together.

When both our children happened to coincide on school trips, we had two blissful days and nights together. The mornings were so peaceful, and we chatted over a cup of tea and sat down to breakfast. That's right, sat down, to breakfast. At a table. And enjoyed a conversation. How different to our normal routine.

While our son, at 14, can look after himself, my daughter, who has just left primary school, still needs chivvying and cajoling into getting dressed.

‘Put on your shoes! Brush your hair! Have you got your PE kit? Remember your guitar.'

She is often still staring in the mirror and rearranging her hair minutes before she is meant to be at school. My husband gets exasperated and shouts; sometimes we end up all shouting at once.

From left, Jude, Kate, Luke and Belle. Kate says the pressure of parenthood leads to no time with Luke

Although it's easier now that the children are older, it still feels as though they need constant care and attention. Any time that I am not working or exercising is often spent organising their lives, focusing on their health, worrying about their well-being, leaving virtually no time at all for my husband.

Anniversaries are often forgotten, and last year Luke sent me a card which said ‘Happy Valentine's To My Boyfriend'. He'd been in such a rush, he'd picked up the first one he saw.

Luckily, it made us laugh - no wonder the newsagent, who knows us well, had given him such a strange look! But it sums up our lack of attention to each other.

Ideally, we would have three child-free days a month to remember that we are not just parents to our children, but a man and a woman in a loving relationship

Weekends can be soul-destroying. They are all about the children, and as they have grown older their demands have not abated. This is our fault, for letting their lives overtake ours.

They both belong to football leagues, which means both Saturday and Sunday mornings are spent driving them to training and matches. There are no longer lie-ins or friends over for lunch. We are always in a rush.

The most recent time we had off, when both kids were on school trips, was heavenly. As soon as they were gone, we morphed from being grumpy, stressed and irritable to reasonable, loving and relaxed.

On the first night we went out to dinner, which sounds so simple, but is not something we usually do. And we could take our time.

In fact, we had so much time that we strolled through the park to the restaurant. It was a summer's evening and we held hands. I felt shy, as though I was on a first date. We ordered cocktails with silly names and giggled. We felt frivolous and free and young.

We chatted and laughed. It was like being together when we first met, nearly 20 years ago. My husband wasn't just my co-partner in the small school, a father to my children, but a man whom I love, my best friend.