Mum discovered her hubby was cheating just three weeks after giving birth… and he was on the phone to the other women while she was in LABOUR

HOW does it feel when you discover your marriage is a lie?

Ask former New York City actress and model Jen Waite, 32, who has written a powerful memoir, “A Beautiful, Terrible Thing” (out Tuesday July 11). She tells how she unmasked her “perfect” husband as a liar — and ultimately gained strength from the ordeal.

Holding my three-week-old baby, I open our laptop for the first time since her birth. I click on a sent e-mail from my husband Marco’s account with the subject line: “Appointment.”

It was delivered to a real estate agent, then forwarded to a woman called Viktorja. “My girlfriend and I have decided to go with another apartment, but thank you for your time,” it reads.

I almost laugh out loud. My first thought is: “Why is Marco still calling me his girlfriend after we’ve been married for two years?”

It turned out that the e-mail, which I found the night of Jan. 20, 2015, altered the course of my existence. It wrecked my idyllic world as a new mother with a beautiful daughter and seemingly devoted spouse.

I first met my husband in June 2010 when we both worked at a restaurant in Queens. I was 25, and he was 32. An immigrant from Argentina, he confided that he was in the States illegally but stayed because he had a seven-year-old son, Seb, from a previous relationship.

He had intense, dark eyes, and he looked at me in a way no one had ever done before.

“You know, I hadn’t allowed myself to be hopeful about ever being happy again until I met you,” he told me the night of our first kiss. I was giddy with the adoration.

He proposed in front of my family during Christmas 2012, and we had a City Hall wedding in Manhattan the following February. We then started the green card process to legitimise Marco’s status in the US.

In spring 2013, we went into business with another couple to open a gastropub in Queens. I ploughed $75,000 (£58,000) of my savings into the venture and my parents contributed $25,000 (£19,330). It had always been Marco’s dream to own a restaurant, and it had finally come true.

But cracks developed between Marco and our business partners. Within months, he pulled out of the arrangement and started a new job as a full-time restaurant manager in Manhattan.

By then, I was preoccupied with arrangements for our formal wedding ceremony set to be at my parents’ home in June 2014 — and 14 weeks pregnant.