Fed up of telling people my children were the most important things in my life while failing to see enough of them, I turned our family's world upside down. Literally.

For ten years or more we'd talked of going to New Zealand, to see a long-lost branch of my family and to seek an overseas adventure.

But the time finally seemed right as my wife, Anna, and I approached 30. Our children, five and one, were at an age where school was not yet an obstacle. Anna felt ready to resume her career as a teacher after almost five years spent either working part-time or not at all. And me?

The phrase 'spending more time with their family' is often a euphemism for a cloud-shrouded departure or fall from grace.

For me it was exactly what it said.

After six very rewarding and enjoyable years as a journalist for The Northern Echo and its sister paper, The Darlington and Stockton Times, I was in a position of some responsibility as a news editor.

But it came at a price.

While a normal day spent close to the pounding heart of this newspaper brought with it much fulfilment, fun and friendship, each 'normal' day lasted at least ten flat-out hours.

Not very family-friendly, of course, though I fully accepted that it went with the territory of a busy news desk on a morning newspaper.

The couple of hours with my children in the morning were always a delight, but to come home and miss out on the kids' final waking moments never really stopped hurting.

For Anna, too, those long days with the children also seemed unnaturally unbalanced, although only now the shoe is on the other foot can I fully appreciate just how good she was at it.

I'm fully aware that there are many fathers out there who work harder and see even less of their children - then there are the millions of working and single mothers who accept their roles without complaint.

But the point is we'd talked at length about how we wanted to raise our children and live our lives and it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Fast forward to a wet winter morning and a modest pile of cases and rucksacks on the platform at Darlington station.

Goodbyes were agonising, especially for devoted grandparents. But having spent almost a year planning and preparing, then a mad few weeks boiling down our possessions, the point of no return lay a long way behind us.

In any case, it felt great to be such a small, compact unit.

Now fast forward again through several weeks of travelling through New Zealand's beautiful islands, leisurely holidaying ahead of a late January start date for Anna's new job - Kiwis start their new school year in step with the calendar and in the middle of their summer.

Work of any kind quickly became a hazy memory as the luxuriously cosy security of being a full-time family enveloped us.

It acted as the perfect buffer between the Old World and life, and the new.

The last few weeks have finally found us settling into our respective routines. Anna is, as expected, relishing a return to professional life without feeling aggrieved at the loss of her role as key parent.

The children are loving the sunshine and all that this refreshingly family-friendly nation has to offer. Our son starts school this month and is enjoying the anticipation of daily swims in its pool. He has also jettisoned shoes - just like a true Kiwi kid.

I've fitted in at playgroup without any of the anticipated nudges and winks, for although New Zealand is a fairly conservative place in many ways, house husbandry is no big deal, although I do fall short somewhat when it comes to discussing childbirth.

Of course - cue wry smiles from mothers - I am finding it extremely hard work and can only now fully appreciate that staying at home with the children is the harder option.

But hard does not mean bad. I have absolutely no regrets about our role reversal, although I have already experienced some of the anxiety shared by many stay-at-homes: does opting out make it harder to opt back in again and resume work outside the home?

Here again I know I'm lucky to be able to keep my hand in and juggle some writing with the little ones.

I sometimes wonder whether we would have swapped statuses without the added novelty of a trans-global adventure - sunny South Pacific versus soggy South Durham - it's not a hard choice on the face of it.

But wet winter will come our way sooner or later, and with it friends' English summer weddings we'll sorely miss - Southern Hemisphere swings and roundabouts, I suppose.

So to any man or woman thinking about taking the plunge and staying at home - do it! I say, whether you uproot or not.

Do it, above all because it's such a brilliant thing for your children.

We'll probably come home after a year or two, and if we have more children I'll go back to work outside the home for a few more years, re-energised and a good deal more appreciative of life on both sides of the ironing board.

But now the pattern has been set.

We plan to alternate between home and pay packet, perhaps for the rest of our working lives. Okay, so we will probably never have the wealth that a dual income brings, but I'll never be wistful about missing out on my children's formative years.

And that to me is priceless.