The C Word

The pain shoots through me in waves, one directly after another. Nothing has prepared me for this, nothing could have. I haven’t been to any antenatal classes yet, haven’t covered any breathing exercises. I’ve been in denial, didn’t think this would ever happen. Now, like it or not, I’m going to have to improvise.

I inhale through my nose to the count of four, then exhale, slowly, through my mouth. One… two… three… four… Sweat breaks out on my neck and forehead, gathers between my shoulder blades. A high-pitched tinnitus-like ringing starts up in my ears. I spread my thighs a little wider apart, lean forward. Palms down, fingers straight and turned in towards each other, tips touching, I brace against my bare legs with some force. I can do this. I have to do this. A muffled grunt escapes me.

The door opens. Footsteps. Someone walks into the neighbouring cubicle, the lock clicks into place.

Shit. Or rather, not, as the case may be.

All of the pregnancy books warn about constipation, yes, but it was not one of the symptoms I decided I would suffer from back when this all began. Cravings for gherkins and white chocolate chips with a side of coleslaw at 2am? Show me where to sign up. Minor backache that prevents the lifting of heavy items? If I must. Constipation? I figured it could join morning sickness, swollen ankles and shortness of breath in the ‘only to other pregnant people’ category.

Worse, nature’s siren call is evidently oblivious to the fact that I’m at work. A digestive system that has been carefully honed over the years to kick into life only when comfortably near my own loo has failed me. Not that I’m as bad as one particular ex-boyfriend who, as a child, would only crap at home, and, for this reason had to be repatriated from his first overseas holiday by his concerned grandparents on day five of a two-week holiday in Greece. Although the fact that this random story has stuck after all these years… well, I must have been able to relate at least on some level. Indeed, it may well have been five days since my last… evacuation.

Has whoever’s in the next stall picked up on my heavy breathing? I’m practically panting. I could masturbate more quietly. Are they never going to flush and get out of here? Is this some kind of punishment for all the laxatives I took during the bulimia years?

Under normal circumstances, I would buy medicine to ease the problem, but medicine seems to be out of bounds if you’re pregnant. From hacking coughs to severe hay fever, this is not the time to get sick.

Who am I kidding? Under normal circumstances, I would smoke a cigarette to instantly fix the problem. Or, in a previous life, do a line of coke. Bad coke, that is, the kind that’s been cut with baby laxatives. It would be cheaper, and safer, of course, to buy the laxatives direct, cut out the middle man, but where would be the fun in that?

During pregnancy, however, it seems that, even more than usual, prevention is better than cure. I’m going to have to wave goodbye to the morning banana, even if it does ensure that I’ll have a girl. (Or was it a boy?) Everyone knows bananas cause constipation. (And banana milk? Who do I direct questions like this to?) It’s adieu to peanut butter on white at Franco’s and bonjourno to boring old brown. Good riddance to grilled cheddar cheese with everything, greetings to daily greens. Oh Goddess of All Things Good, if you happen to exist up there, just let me finish what I’ve started here today and get me out of this godforsaken cubicle. I’ll take the post-delivery cigarette and plate of ripe runny Brie and crackers off my birth plan – even though they are currently the only things on my birth plan – and vow to never crave either again on entering motherhood. Nor lust after baby laxatives, in any shape or form.

There’s the sound of flushing from the next-door cubicle, and I grab the opportunity to strain with impunity, safe in the knowledge that any groans of agony or splashes of success won’t be heard. ‘Push,’ I command myself, mentally. ‘Push, goddamn it.’

And, just like that, something happens… It’s crowning!

Constipation, it would appear, is like a hundred little preparations for birth. Except the wrong orifice.

The door to the Ladies swooshes closed and, mercifully, I’m alone. I give it my final few ounces of energy, silently reciting an old familiar mantra: ‘No pain, no gain… No pain, no gain… No pain, no gain…’

Nothing. There is no proceeding, no receding. We are stuck. This is starting to scare the bejesus out of me.

Unbidden, a memory surfaces, a momentary distraction from the discomfort, the almost long-lost memory of a small, male cousin sitting on the toilet at our house, newly toilet trained, clearly constipated. There was the holler, ‘Mummy!’, then my aunt traipsing upstairs, me banished from the bathroom. Afterwards, the hushed voices of our mothers, the horror on realising my aunt had had to, whisper it, pull it out.

Now I’m panicking. How long have I been in here? Hours? Days? Can I still invoice for this time? Should I call my aunt?

The door opens once more. Voices. Voices I recognise: Hannah and Victoria. And there are only two cubicles, so one of them is going to have to wait. Will whoever’s waiting start to wonder what’s going on in here? Be tempted to look under the door? Recognise me from my footwear? Why, oh why, did I ever wear boots as conspicuous as these: black, high heels, so shiny you could quite feasibly see your face in them if you bent down to check them out under a cubicle door. Worse, you could see my face, all twisted and stressed and humiliated, a slave to my own bodily functions. Subjugated by my baby already, before it’s even born.

I try again, give it all I’ve got, and am rewarded with a solitary sheep dropping. It hits the water in the pan with the force of a bullet. The embarrassment of being heard is a small price to pay for the security that certainly no one is now going to look underneath the door. You might do that to ascertain if someone’s died in here, or if the door’s somehow locked itself shut, but only a crazy person would investigate further after hearing shots like that being fired in the vicinity.

Another ‘ping’ follows, then, accompanied by a searing pain that I don’t even want to consider the reasons behind, I’m rewarded with a barrage of small artillery fire. Euphoria washes over me, almost better than ecstasy. The toilet bowl, I dreamily imagine, must be filled with at least a bunch of grapes’ worth.

The other toilet flushes and the girls switch over. I can hear hands being washed, paper towels being pulled out of the dispenser, the door swinging open and closed as one of them strides off back towards her desk.

I yank a handful of paper from the roll on top of the sanitary waste bin and press it gingerly to my still-smarting point of exit. Pulling it away, I cannot help but look. After all I’ve been through, this is no time to be coy.

It’s a good thing that I’m sitting down, because my legs start to wobble when I see the scarlet splodge soaking through the paper.

It’s what I’ve been dreading; what I’ve been looking out for every time I pee: I’m having a miscarriage.

No, again, wrong orifice.

My head starts to throb; I can feel my blood pressure soaring, although the problem here is clearly less high blood pressure than common or garden pregnancy piles. Easing myself into a standing position, shaking my stiff, cold legs to get some feeling back into them, I think about how ironic it is that now, on the verge, loosely speaking, of motherhood, embarking on the journey that woman was biologically programmed to travel, I feel asexual in a way that I have never done before. Robbed of my femininity. Because suddenly, without any shadow of a doubt, I know that this is only the first of countless indignities. Over the coming months I will be weighed; blood will be taken from me; there will be urine sample after urine sample after urine sample. I will rapidly outgrow anything in my wardrobe that doesn’t have an elastic waistband. Which is everything in my wardrobe. There will be heartburn and headaches. Spots and sciatica. Christ, there will even be dizziness, swollen ankles and shortness of breath, no matter how much I want there not to be. And somewhere along the line, there will be hospital food…

I flush and step out of my cubicle, surprised to see Hannah still there at the mirror, squeezing a spot.

‘Hey sexy lady! Love the boots.’ she says. ‘They new?’

And turning on the tap to wash my hands, I nod, say ‘thanks’. I don’t mention that they’re from Clarks. Or that I bought them because they have non-slip rubber soles and boast a patented in-built secret comfort system, called ‘Active Air’. Or that there’s an elasticated panel at the top of each to allow for calf swelling.

A woman, after all, should be allowed to have her secrets.

Magical Thinking

It is the day after my birthday, and the day of my appointment at Kings College Hospital. Referred there by the less high-tech Royal Sussex County Hospital, I’m booked in for a nuchal translucency scan, the results of which will tell us whether our baby is at high or low risk of having Down’s Syndrome. If high risk, we’ll have to decide whether or not to have the amniocentesis test, with its enormous needle and inherent risk of miscarriage. If low, it will just be a nice opportunity to take home an early baby photo for the album.

Opening the bedroom shutters, I’m greeted by a sky of brilliant, uninterrupted blue and a sun so dazzling it makes me squint, which I take to be a good omen. A second later, though, I see a single magpie hopping jauntily along the wall, its black feathers slick like wet paint, its breast solid, eyes beady. My heart sinks. Spotting two magpies is cause for celebration, ‘for joy’, as the old rhyme goes, whereas a sighting of only one, of course, means sorrow. I scan the terrace, desperate to see another, but the bastard is working alone. I shudder, and repeat aloud the mantra ‘Good morning, Mr Magpie’ seven times, as I was once instructed to do by an old Scottish farmer who shared my superstitious bent. Then, completing the protective spell, I spit in my hat. I’m not actually wearing a hat, but I make a spitting noise into my hand, which will have to suffice.

My journey from Brighton to Denmark Hill goes smoothly. Too smoothly. I get there almost an hour early for my appointment. Happily, there’s a park just across the road from the hospital, which looks like the perfect place to kill some time. I walk through the gates and wander along the path, stopping to watch a grey squirrel dance along a patch of scrubby grass towards a piece of abandoned bread. It’s hopping in that care-free way that squirrels have, making me smile, when, suddenly, out of a nearby bush, a dirty huge rat appears and grabs the bread from right under the squirrel’s nose. I take a step backwards, watching as the squirrel darts in one direction and the rat lopes off in the other. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a rat in London. At least, anywhere other than in Banksy’s work.

I’m still standing there, staring at the spot where the rat disappeared under a hedge, when a mother and her small daughter join me. The woman points out some flowers to the girl, and then the squirrel hops back into view, captivating the kid with its cute squirrelly ears and tail. Until it’s joined in our line of vision, that is, by not one but two dirty huge rats, both intent on hoovering up any discarded food on the grass. ‘Look, Mummy, rats!’ says the girl, excited. The squirrel is out of there like a shot.

The woman notices the shocked expression on my face. ‘I know,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘People leave out food… it attracts them.

Convinced the rats are a harbinger of bad news, I hurry onwards towards the sterile environment of the hospital, impatient, all of a sudden, to be there and to be tested. And, more to the point, to be told that our baby is perfect.

In the large waiting room of the Jubilee suite, a TV is affixed to the wall. Bargain Hunt is blaring out of it. The place is packed, and, noticing how many couples there are, I wish Shaun were here with me. Why did I tell him not to come? That it would be a lot of waiting around for nothing? Like I know anything about it. The truth is, having spent the last 16 years actively trying to avoid getting pregnant, I still view my current state as somewhat of an embarrassment. As a result, any related medical appointments don’t feel like the kind of thing I should be subjecting loved ones to. I bury my face in my newspaper, trying to block out the glare of David Dickinson’s fake tan and his exclamations of delight on inspecting a mid-century brass dinner gong.

When my name is called, it’s by an ultrasound technician wearing a white coat stretched over a reassuringly broad chest. He wears a delicate gold hoop through one ear. Shaking my hand, he introduces himself as Hernandez, then leads me down the corridor to a large, airy treatment room where I meet his colleague, Anna, who has a matching white coat and the thickest auburn hair I’ve ever seen.

‘How are you with blood?’ Hernandez asks, showing me to a seat. ‘Oh, fine,’ I lie, feeling like I’m on some kind of Japanese medical-themed endurance show. If I can’t deal with having a few blood samples taken at this stage, what hope is there for me when I get through to the later stages of the competition? Even the NHS guide to pregnancy the midwife hands out doesn’t beat around the bush. In the section about packing a bag to have ready for the hospital, the advice reads: 'Bring towels. Preferably in dark colours.’

After my blood has been taken, I lie down on the bed. Hernandez starts to move the scanning machine across my stomach while Anna studies a huge monitor. At first, the image is cloudy, but the lines quickly become sharper and take form. My eyes flicker across the screen, trying to work out what’s what. Is something wrong? The baby’s arms and legs are jerking around spastically. It looks like one of those small wooden toys that have a button on their base that you press to make them dance. Is it having a fit? It would be funny if it weren’t so alien; the kind of thing you’d see on YouTube.

‘Is that normal,’ I ask, horrified.

‘Absolutely,’ Hernandez reassures me. The baby quietens down almost immediately, and lies still as Anna takes various measurements on the screen and writes them down; stomach, spine, brain. But she can’t get the measurement she needs of the back of the neck – the main purpose of today’s scan – because of the position the baby has settled in. Maybe it’s because I’m holding my breath, willing the results to be what they’re meant to be.

Hernandez tells me not to worry. He continues moving the scanner over my stomach, the picture of patience.

Twenty minutes later, however, he politely tells me he’s passing the scanner over to his colleague. I’m not surprised. His arm must be killing him.

Anna prods me with the scanner head, pressing down more firmly against the swell of my abdomen, but still the baby won’t play ball. I notice Hernandez discreetly checking his emails on Googlemail at the computer in the corner.

‘Is this normal?’ I ask, for the second time, wondering how I can be sure there’s not something wrong, that they’re not just stalling for time. The other couples ahead of me were in and out of their appointments in no time. Why is mine taking so long?

‘It’s perfectly normal,’ says Hernandez, again, while Anna continues to stare intently at the screen. ‘It’s just that the behaviour of the baby is not so good.’ He laughs.

Great. It’s not even born yet and already my baby’s being difficult.

Anna tells me to pull up my trousers and to go and walk up and down the corridor for 10 minutes. The motion might make the baby move, she explains. After that I am to come directly back to this room.

I feel self-conscious, walking on command. As if the teenage couple I pass at the coffee machine can tell I have an uncooperative baby on board. I march through the still-packed waiting room and push through the swing doors beyond, where the corridor stretches into the distance. I walk past the lifts, a few wards, a beautiful Indian woman of about 40 with a baby cradled in each arm. I walk past a notice board, a bank of plastic chairs and a growth-restricted new mother talking on the pay phone. She’s blonde, so tiny. Like the girl in Poltergeist, except there’s a baby in a plastic incubator-style bed on wheels beside her, not a hysterical old woman with bird’s nest hair and a high-pitched voice. I overhear the words ‘seven pounds’ and ‘very painful’, and quicken my step. By the time I get back to the waiting room, my walk is practically Python-esque, my legs hardly feeling like they’re attached to my body. I look at the clock, and see, to my amazement, that it’s only been four minutes since I left Hernandez and Anna.

In an attempt to push all thoughts of single magpies, rats and painful childbirths out of mind, I pull my paper out of my bag again and read while I walk. My eyes come to rest on an article in the health section with the heading ‘The Science Behind Superstition’. My walking slows down as I quickly get sucked in, wondering what the odds were of me reading this today, at the exact same time that I’m pacing up and down a hospital corridor, hoping for the baby scan all-clear.

A biologist from Harvard University is explaining some research he’s just published, saying that in these uncertain times, we humans choose what we want to believe. If my horoscope says the planets are in the perfect alignment and then I win the lottery, for instance, I’m probably going to be more inclined to believe what’s written about my star sign in the future. Which I think is quite obvious. But he then goes on to explain that it’s not just people who display behaviours that imply a causal relationship that isn’t there, it’s animals, too. If you stand among a bunch of pigeons, he says, and clap your hands, they’ll fly away. But pigeons are clever enough to tell the difference between a gunshot, which could kill them, and a hand clap, which couldn’t, yet they react superstitiously anyway, going on the ‘better safe than sorry’ principle.

I’ve stopped walking altogether by this point, overcome by a sense of vindication. Every ladder I’ve ever avoided walking under, every time I’ve knocked on wood, all my various good luck charms and little rituals… it’s all just about being better safe than sorry. Then I notice the clock, and realise I’m two minutes late for Hernandez and Anna, and goosestep back to their room. A smiling couple walk out. I’m ushered back in.

Back on the bed, Anna bashes the scanner wand against my stomach, making ripples appear from my belly button, like on the surface of a puddle. Staring at the monitor, I watch the baby bounce up and down. It doesn’t seem to be making any effort to change position.

This lack of cooperation is beginning to get embarrassing. It’s like I’m experiencing some weird fast-forward to the way I’ll feel when my child won’t help the other children in the nursery pick up the toys at the end of the day, or, a few years later still, refuses to eat school dinners, or, aged 18, says that it’s, like, totally not fair that we all have to share one car… ‘What happens if you can’t get the measurement?’ I ask quietly, hating the thought that I’ll have to come back and go through all this again another day.

‘Don’t worry,’ Anna says, her voice steely, ‘we’ll get it.’

A few minutes later she tells me to cough. I do as she says. The baby bobs about a little, but nothing more. I cough again, but it’s not very convincing. If I hadn’t stopped smoking a month ago, it would have been a different story. I could simply have hacked the baby into position for the bloody measurement to be taken. Where’s that kind of information in the baby books when you need it?

‘Get off the bed and jump up and down,’ Anna says.

Hernandez is now playing a game of solitaire on the PC and has the good grace not to look while I do a few star jumps.

I lie back down and Anna starts where she left off. If she doesn’t say anything before I count to 10, I bargain, the baby’s going to get into position and the measurement’s going to be taken and everything’s going to be fine. If, on the other hand…

‘You can get dressed now,’ she says, before I’ve even counted to three. She pulls a sheet of photos off the machine and hands it to me. Three perfect profiles of our baby. I can even see fingers, an elbow, forehead…

‘Did you get the measurement?’ I ask, pulling my eyes away from the photos when I realise there was no grand announcement of success; no hollering or whooping in celebration.

‘Yes, I’ve got everything I need,’ she replies. ‘Come over here to the desk and I’ll go through it all with you.’

Behind my back, my fingers are crossed.

I sit down and we go through a printout together, Anna pointing out various figures with the lid of her pen. ‘The heart action is fine; length from crown to rump is fine. The skull appears normal; brain appears normal; abdomen, bladder, hands and feet, all normal. The nasal bone is present and the nuchal fold translucency measurement puts you into the low risk category.’ She shows me the background risk and the adjusted risk columns. Nothing is set in stone, I’m reminded, but as far as today’s testing goes, we’ve passed with flying colours.

I thank Anna, thank Hernandez, am still thanking them both as I back out of the door, a dumb smile on my face. I want to call Shaun but there are signs everywhere saying mobile phones shouldn’t be used inside, and even if I don’t believe that making a call or sending a text would actually have any detrimental effect on hospital machinery and the rule is just there to enforce patients to shell out on expensive hospital telephone cards, I take the better-safe-than-sorry approach and wait.

It’s only when I stop off at the Ladies on my way out that I realise I didn’t do a very good job of wiping the scanning gel off my tummy. In fact, I did a terrible job. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, taking in the huge, very noticeable damp patch extending across the crotch of my white linen trousers.

Fuck it. I step out of the doors back into the late July lunchtime, an hour-and-a half after I walked in. The sun will dry my trousers and knickers in no time, I think, surprised at how quickly things that once would’ve mattered a lot matter very little when you’ve just found out your baby’s got a spine and a heartbeat and looks just like its daddy when its sleeping.

I clap my hands loudly, causing a flock of pigeons to take flight a few steps in front of me, then slide the baby photos into my handbag and set off back towards the tube station.

High and Dry

When the invitation to my sister-in-law-to-be’s hen party arrives, I tick the box for the ‘evening only’ part of the event, that is, the eating and drinking. Let the other girls bear weapons at the paintballing range all afternoon: paintballing is exactly the kind of activity that makes me glad I don’t own a pair of trainers.

Nash, being sporting in more ways than one, doesn’t give me a hard time over it. In fact, it turns out I can play a useful role by arriving early at the serviced penthouse apartment we’re renting for the night, just around the corner from Spitalfields Market: I can stock up on champagne and nibbles ready for when she and the rest of the battle-weary hens arrive. I’m more than happy to oblige. Crucially, there’s no risk of bruising – at least not until later in the night, when the fridge has been emptied – plus I quite like the idea of having a whole penthouse and a fridgeful of booze to myself, if only for a couple of hours. Maybe I should host a small, intimate pre-party party.

Ironically, as it turns out, by the time the big day arrives, I’m pregnant. But only six weeks pregnant, so it will have to remain my dirty little secret. Even if I was further gone, we couldn’t steal Jonny and Nash’s wedding thunder, so telling the family will have to wait until after they’ve tied the knot. I dutifully lay on the bubbles for the others, as promised, adding a few bottles of iced tea for myself, but my heart isn’t really in it. It’s one thing feeling like a party pooper for not being game for a bit of on-the-ground combat against a bunch of off-duty investment banker stags at the Canary Wharf paintballing centre, quite another not being able to join in the heavy drinking that will follow. A text arrives from Emma, chief bridesmaid, saying they’ve taken enough of a pounding and are on their way to the flat. I sit down in the impersonal open-plan living area to wait, staring wistfully out of the acres of glass. Shoppers head for shops, groups of friends sit and laugh outside pubs, pints in hand, the usual queues at the cashpoint. I feel old and sad and like I have the worst case of PMT imaginable.

The others arrive and as soon as their war wounds have been compared and tracksuit bottoms swapped for skinny jeans, the focus turns to refreshments. ‘No, not for me, thanks,’ I say, for the third time, as another well-meaning friend of Nash’s slides a glass across the breakfast bar to me. ‘I’m on antibiotics.

‘No!’

‘Yes. I’ve had this crappy bronchitis for ages and haven’t been able to shake it off…’ I cough loudly to hammer home the point.

‘Not even one glass?’

‘Unfortunately, no. They’re the strong kind… I’ll probably end up in hospital if I risk it.

Dinner is at a crab shack on the King’s Road. I perk up immeasurably as soon as our 15-strong group piles in the door. This is not the kind of place where rocket and Parmesan feature on the menu. Rather, everyone is given a large bib to wear and eating with one’s fingers is actively encouraged. With steaming platters of seafood and Desperate Dan-sized racks of ribs this good and plentiful, I don’t even mind that I can’t join in on the cocktail front. Is there anything better to wash coleslaw and garlic bread down with than Coca Cola anyway?

It’s when we get back to the apartment that I begin to feel queasy. More alcohol supplies have been bought and the music cranked up. One girl mentions in passing that she’s got some MDMA, somebody else skins up a spliff. I lean out of the window and hold a cigarette between my fingers, not once raising it to my lips. I thought it would be comforting, but it turns out to be more like torture. Taking a direct hit on the arse with a paintballing capsule would have been far less painful.

Really, though, I don’t have any idea what torture is until midnight, when the stripper arrives. A roughly hewn kind of cute, and as cocky as his website promises, he rises above the catcalls and giggles, having clearly developed a thick skin after many years in the business. He asks for a stiff drink and a room in which he can get changed. I twiddle my thumbs in apprehension as the others giggle tipsily. All I want is to be cosy at home with Shaun and the cats and our big ocean liner of a bed.

The guy knows how to keep an audience waiting until the excitement is at fever pitch, but, finally, someone gets the signal and puts on the CD he brought along. The room is filled with the first few bars of You Can Leave Your Hat On. ‘Louder,’ comes Mr Full Monty's voice from the master bedroom. ‘I can hardly hear it!’

And then he appears, to a huge round of applause, strutting his stuff on the mezzanine level of the apartment, resplendent in a grubby uniform that must have once been white, vaguely reminiscent of the one worn by Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman. The air is filled with shrieks and whistles, which get higher-pitched and louder as the guy ripples and bulges his way down the stairs and takes centre stage. Or, to be more accurate, takes the spot where the coffee table has been moved out of the way to make room for him.

It’s instantly apparent that what he lacks in rhythm he makes up for in confidence, but even so, when the baby oil comes out and the trousers come off, the rictus grin on my face is beginning to ache. Emma passes round pink feather boas, which shed faster than a white Persian cat on a little black dress, and Nash does her best to hide between Michelle and Alexis. Not that it does her any good, of course, her being the bride-to-be. Soon, the stripper has her wedged between his Ben Hur-esque thighs and reluctantly massaging oil into his pecs while everyone else crowds around to take photos.

The show goes on as one song segues into another, the wooden floor by now liberally scattered with pink feathers and smears of baby oil. When, eventually, the bloke reaches his grand finale, he actually pauses, and, with a note of humility creeping into his voice, asks: ‘Do you want to see everything or is that enough for you?’

For £200, he’s not going to get out of this gig with his modesty intact. His jock strap comes off and there’s a crescendo of charitable cheering and less-charitable sniggering. My clapping is genuine: I’m just glad it’s all over. I’m even beginning to convince myself that holding another cigarette out of the window and watching it burn down to the filter is a good idea.

But it’s not quite over yet. It turns out that this guy's also been booked to serve drinks and mingle. With his jeans back on, but chest still bare and gleaming, he takes his barman duties seriously. I repeat my I’m-on-antibiotics line several more times, finally conceding that he can at least bring me another peach iced tea from the fridge. He works hard for his money, making sure he flirts and chats with everyone, before finally picking up his cash and taking his leave.

There’s a palpable sense of relief when he’s gone and everyone is free to talk and laugh about him with impunity. More drinks are poured and the volume on the stereo rises. Tired and unable to say how well I’ll be able to resist any further temptation on the alcohol or disco biscuit front, I say goodnight to Nash and slope off to one of the bedrooms, wondering what time the first train leaves for Brighton in the morning. I try not to think about our old flat, an easy five-minute walk from here.

The rest of the hens enjoy a karaoke session till 4am. Two hours later I creep through the sleeping bodies and empty glasses and head to London Bridge station. Clubs are emptying and I join a steady flow of trashed party people, thinking, with a kind of incredulity, ‘I’m pregnant’, over and over again. I buy The Guardian and wait an hour and ten minutes until the Brighton train pulls up to the platform. Brushing a few pink feathers off my jeans, I curl up into a corner of the carriage and, before I can even remember whether or not I took my folic acid last night, am sound asleep.

‘It’s not that I usually find alcohol so difficult to say no to,’ I tell Shaun, at a de-briefing session in bed, as soon as I get home. ‘In fact, I’ve always thought of booze as being a pleasant accompaniment to cigarettes, rather than the other way round. But I can now say that the exception is when it’s a social event where the express purpose it to get pissed.’

Shaun kisses me, his virtuous pregnant wife, on the nose. ‘At least you made the most of the meal,’ he reminds me.

A few weeks later, in Sardinia for Jonny and Nash’s wedding, friends are too busy commenting on how they never realised how big my tits were to notice that I’m not drinking and put two and two together. ‘Oh, it’s just that you don’t usually see me in a bikini,’ I say, breezily. I accept a glass of wine with every meal we sit down to, then slide it over to Shaun to drain when he’s emptied his own. Luckily, sunglasses during the day and the cover of darkness at night hide the fact that my husband is generally well on the way to being pissed by halfway through the 'secondi' course.

On the day of the wedding, the sky is a pristine blue and the bougainvillea seems an even more dazzling shade of fuchsia than the day before. I allow myself a couple of glasses of champagne, but am glad I can’t drink any more. I'm damp-eyed and emotional enough as it is without the added aid of alcohol. I manage to hold the video camera steady as I film the blessing ceremony, and hug and kiss family and friends in celebration afterwards without once being worried about stinking of booze or fags.

When the wedding party moves to the linen-dressed tables in the orchard and the vast Italian buffet, I switch back to drinking iced tea. After a round of speeches that has everyone on their feet applauding, Jim, a friend of Nash’s from years ago, starts handing out toxic-looking shooters made from banana liqueur and ginger beer that he swears taste like Doctor Pepper. I pass mine over to Shaun after he has knocked back his own. I do the same with the next one. And the next.

The wedding party proceeds to the private beach at the front of the villa for a 3am swim. Shaun passes out on our bed, the sheets in a tangle around his legs. This is not such a bad thing when it transpires that the bride’s new wedding band has slipped off in the ocean. If Shaun had lost his I think I would have demanded a divorce, the way my hormones are flying around right now.

A few days later, when the happy couple are about to leave for a love-nest in the Sardinian mountains, the rest of us to the airport, we all muck in cleaning up the communal areas of the villa, adding the inflatable lobsters that we brought to the huge, outside toy box for other future renters to enjoy. We pack candles and give bouquets of flowers to the owners of the property, and empty the fridge and pantry. There’s just one puzzle that remains.

‘How can we have so much alcohol left,’ wonders my father, a life-long expert in calculating how many bottles are required per head for any social function.

‘I know, it’s ridiculous,’ says my Scottish mother, looking pained at the thought of all that waste.

‘Anyone who has room in their cases, please take as much as you can carry,’ says the father of the bride, waving his arm expansively across the table that’s practically buckling under the weight of all that glass.

My God, I think. So this is the impact on bar stock when I’m not drinking. The scales fall from my eyes.

Before I can get too introspective, Shaun takes one of the leftover bottles of champagne from the fridge and brings it outside to the terrace, where my parents are enjoying their last few hours of sunshine before we leave for Cagliari. Jonny and Nash come wandering over to join us, and I call my sister and her boyfriend.

‘I’m packing,’ Jemma yells. ‘What do you want?’

‘We have something to tell you,’ calls Shaun, while I eye up the bottle he’s hiding behind his back, noticing the drops of condensation sliding down its neck.

I can practically taste it already.

Letting the Cat out of the Bag

It's 1985, and something is in the air. Walk into the kitchen and, chances are, Mum’s already in there having a whipered telephone conversation. She twists the cord around her finger, as if in a trance. Eyes red, she snaps at Jonathan and I for no reason. Two years and nine months younger than me, Jonathan is not so keenly aware of the sense of there being something big going down. Nor is he burning with the injustice of being left out of that something big. Finally, I can stand it no longer.

“Why have you been crying?”

“I haven’t,” my mother lies.

“Well, something’s going on, what is it?” I am more annoyed at being considered too unimportant to talk to about whatever is going on than worried about any possible trauma my mother may be going through.

“Someone might be coming,” she says, eventually. “But I’m not sure yet.”

This at least gives me something to go on. My grandparents, Dad’s parents, were here only a few weeks ago, bearing gifts of shiny AM/FM radios and baklava and ma’amoul enough for months, so I can safely rule them out.

Uncle Teeth, Dad’s younger brother, is a more likely possibility. Keith flies often enough to have friends in every airline, ready to upgrade him or bump him onto an earlier connection. He arrives weighed down with nougat and bagfuls of brown sugar crystals, designed for stirring into coffee but that we will be encouraged to crunch raw. It seems strange, him being a dentist. It’s almost as if he wants us to get cavities.

It could be an au pair or another student lodger, to replace Morag, who wore chunky-knit sweaters and got homesick for Inverkeithing after three days. But would that really warrant such a crease in the usual smooth running of our family fabric?

My godmother, Evelyn, laden with Oriflame make-up samples, Avon’s lesser-known, pink-packaged competitor, en route to a sales seminar?

After a night of strange dreams, the wonderful thought occurs to me that we could be talking about something a lot more important than a visit from relatives or friends or some student who wants a cheap room, home cooking and doesn’t mind living out in the sticks, miles from the nearest bus route. I get up and search for Mum, find her in the kitchen nibbling at a piece of dry toast. She is talking quietly into the phone. When she sees me. she says goodbye to whoever is on the other end and slides the receiver back into its cradle.

I know I might be spoiling a surprise, but I have to ask. I’m already fantasising about the merchandise I’ll buy; the posters, badges for my schoolbag, pink satin scarf to pin on my bedroom wall…

“Is it Shakin’ Stevens?”

Mum regards me blankly. This despite the fact that I’d been humming Green Door when I walked into the kitchen, a kind of subtle advance warning that I’d worked out the surprise.

“You know,” I say, more slowly, “when you said that someone might be coming, did you mean Shakin’ Stevens?”

Much as I’m sure my mother would have loved to accompany me to another Shakin’ Stevens concert at The Capitol, following the thrill of the previous two, she shakes her head, refuses to meet my eye. “No, it’s nothing like that. It’s nothing at all. If you’re not busy, will you please set the table for tea?”

It is 9am.

On Saturday morning we find out the truth. Jonny and I have squashed onto Mum and Dad’s bed, a long-outgrown habit. I half expect Dad to pull a hobby horse out from under the covers, as he did on my fifth birthday, or Mum to start reading a Mr Man book, as she used to do, but I’m 11 now, Jonny, eight, and there’s a weird tension hanging over proceedings. Maybe they’re about to announce we’re moving house. Or they’re getting a divorce. Or worse.

“We’re having a baby.”

I hear the words as they issue from my mother’s lips, but the meaning swims just out of reach. Having a baby? Us?

“We wanted to wait until we were 100% sure to tell you. And now we’re sure.”

Jonny leaps out of bed and runs through to Mum and Dad’s bathroom, where he throws up, loudly. Mum follows him. Dad and I listen to her making soothing noises.

“Jonathan must be in shock,” Dad says.

“Yes,” I agree, which allows us to avoid touching on the, come to think of it, quite embarrassing, subject of the pregnancy itself. How old are my parents, anyway? Aren’t they practically 40? As the news sinks in, I am less in shock, more in a hurry to tell people. Am I allowed to tell people? God, please let me be allowed to tell people. With gossip as good as this, I am assured a big part in our class Dynasty re-enactment during lunch period. Our costumes – bottle green kilts, tights, shirts, sweaters, ties – might be lacking a certain je ne sais quoi but the Colby attitude is all there.

Fast-forward 24 years, to our new bedroom in Brighton, the faint smell of wallpaper paste in the air, our old phone in my hand. It’s cordless, but if there were a cord, I’d be twisting it around one finger.

“Guess what? I’m pregnant. I’m not meant to be telling anyone yet, it’s too early, but I had to call, I’m going insane…”

Karen lights a cigarette, inhales deeply. “Oh my God, hon. Are you still smoking?”

Before I answer, Goober darts out from under the bed, into the hallway, where he retches, loudly.

I would not have dreamed of being so candid if I had known he was there. I was going to work out a way to break the news gently to the cats. Show some sensitivity…

“I have to go, Goober’s sick, I’ll call you later.” I hang up, run into the hallway.

There’s not much you can do for a cat who’s barfing. Sure, you can take preventative measures – buy anti-hairball-formula food, brush out mats and tangles on a regular basis – but by the time your beloved feline is hunched up in the corner with his back to the world, hacking and spluttering, blinking at the sheer indignity of it, you’re powerless to intervene. He won’t even let you get close enough to hold the hair out of his eyes.

“Goober’s being sick.” I yell. Elvis doesn’t come running, continues, in fact, making breakfast. “He heard me telling Karen we’re pregnant…"

Sailing out of the kitchen window, my voice reaches our downstairs neighbours who are sitting on their terrace, smoking. In one fell swoop it’s not just Goober who knows but the always-arguing Jack and Sonia, too, but this I won’t find out until another day.

“Do you think Zozo knows?” I call, unsure if Elvis can hear me over the sound of butter sizzling. “Where is he? If he’s under our bed he would’ve heard, too, no?”

I try to get a trip on my rising hysteria. I am beginning to sound as anxious as I do when one of the cats is locked in a cupboard; when I become convinced that one of them has snuck out two front doors, both locked, to reach the road. Hovering over Goober, I watch as he retches again. A puddle of frothy liquid spews out of him and onto the new, chocolate-tinted, maple wood floorboards.

At five o’clock, and six puddles of watery froth later, I call the vet’s surgery. We can be squeezed in at six. Zozo, eyes half closed in suspicion, watches me getting the cat box out of the cupboard.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, “it’s not for you. Your brother has to go to the vet. He’s not feeling well.”

They’re half brothers, of course, Goober being five years older than Zozo, from a different part of the country, and a different breed of Persian, but the love these two feel for each other when they’re playing hide and seek or sharing a patch of the duvet, little flat forehead to flat forehead, couldn’t be stronger were they from the same litter.

Zozo blinks. Yawns. I've exlained the situation to him, have promised that my love for him will not diminish when the “new kitten” comes along. I think he’s okay with it. Goober, on the other hand, is deaf to my reassurances. I can only guess it’s something to do with the special bond between a mother and her firstborn son.

I find him under the sofa, sulking, and scoop him up quickly. He’s in his box before he has time to think “the bitch better not get so absent-minded in pregnancy that she forgets to feed me”, and we’re on our way to the surgery, Goober’s incessant yowling drowning out the radio.

With every set of red traffic lights, I become more worried that something is seriously wrong. If we need to enlist the services of a cat psychologist, the expense will be staggering. Then, thank God, I remember we have cat insurance. Come to think of it, I wonder if the same thing is available for babies. If my parents could have looked into the future and seen how much I would end up shelling out in therapy, surely they’d have taken out some kind of policy at birth, given the chance.

“Katalax should do the trick,” the vet says, taking off the thick gloves all vets have to don, however quick their reflexes, when dealing with Goober. “It’s probably just a hairball. Smear a little of this on each front paw and he’ll lick it off. It will help get things moving.”

I sing to Goober all the way home. When we pass a sullen-looking teenage girl in a tracksuit struggling to get a double buggy off the bus, I realise I could never have been a single mum. There would have been nobody to change the cat litter during pregnancy. Toxoplasmosis would have been more or less a certainty.

Five days later I’m back in the same surgery, talking to the same vet. Only this time it’s Zozo on the table. “No, it’s pronounced Zoo-zoo,” I stress, making a mental note to bear this in mind when naming our child; to not subject him or her to a lifetime of correcting people.

“It’s just this bald patch on his tail…” I stroke the two-inch long section in question, Zozo’s tailbone showing through it, scary and rat-like. “He’s never had it before, I have no idea what’s causing it… except…” I look the vet straight in the eye: “I’m pregnant, you see, and I think maybe that’s had some kind of effect.”

“Hhhmmm,” the vet murmurs, inspecting my little lamb’s tail, glove-less this time and in no danger whatsoever. “It’s not a parasite… not an infection… Doesn’t seem to be anything here at all.”

So I was right. It’s psychosomatic.

“The skin seems somewhat dry, however,” the vet notes, rubbing his thumb in small circles against Zozo’s fur. “Maybe he has a touch of dandruff; it’s possible in cats.” He pulls a pump canister out of a cupboard. “Try this spray, once a day, in his food,” he tells me. “It contains fish oils, should help keep him in top condition. That patch on the tail will have cleared up in a month or two.”

We leave five minutes later, £73 poorer, taking into account both the consultation and the fish-oil spray.

Back home, Goober is sound asleep on the sheepskin rug. Nearby is a small puddle of watery vomit, the centrepiece of which is a successfully expelled hairball. It’s grey and slimy, a satisfying three or four inches long, as fat as a chipolata. I clean up the mess, relieved that he’s managed to let it go, sure this is a sign that he’s found a new sense of peace over the fact that we are soon to be a family of five.

One week later, it has become apparent that neither cat will touch food that’s been contaminated with the fish-oil spray. But then it turns out that it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Dandruff, it seems, is not the problem.

Sitting at my desk, I realise I need a magazine from one of the shelves behind me. I roll my chair across the Persian carpet to get it, narrowly missing the Persian cat. And that’s when it all comes flooding back: Zozo, a few weeks ago, dozing by my feet, anticipating the happy moment when I’d get up to feed him. Me pushing my seat back a couple of feet without realising he was there; the hiss, the flick of his tail, the chunk of fur left on the carpet where he’d been lying…

This whole episode has taught me a couple of things. One: I have had more practice at mothering than many would give me credit for. And if I can’t always get it right? It’s not for want of trying. Secondly: it’s true what they say about pregnancy making you forgetful, no matter how much I scoffed at the notion. How could I have thought Zozo had some strange, pining disease when less than a month ago I picked up his missing piece of fur from the carpet?

As to whether a newborn baby can really smell sweeter than a kitten… On that one, I remain to be convinced.

Smoking When Pregnant

I squat over my Hard Rock Café mug. Pee. Dip. The result appears on the test stick in all of 0.6 seconds. I hold my breath, count elephants until the full 120 seconds are up. The blue plus sign is still there, positively glowing out of the window. My first thought is: “We did it.” Second thought: “What have we done?” Third: “I need a cigarette. Now.”

Standing on the terrace in the sunshine, a delicate Vogue super-slim clamped between my trembling fingers, I question whether I would have wanted us to buy this place were it not for the alfresco smoking I envisaged ahead. Okay, the new ceilings are as high as our old flat was long, the period details gorgeous, the key to the communal, seven-acre gardens a godsend, but after years of living on the fourth floor in Shoreditch, descending to pavement level or ascending to the roof every time I wanted a smoke, it was this beautiful, plant-dotted terrace in Brighton’s Kemp Town that had been the answer to my dreams.

I stub out my cigarette into a champagne bottle, one of three stuffed to overflowing with soggy butts, and go back inside, where I eat a handful of dried figs to cancel out the nicotine.

Work doesn’t come easy. Staring at the blank screen, I think about the injustice of it all. The bad planning. I’ve spent my whole smoking life saying I’ll give up at 35 or when I get pregnant, whichever comes first. And then this happens. Now. Before my birthday. When I still have six-and-a-half weeks of smoking pleasure to go.

Elvis gets home late. The sun has long since disappeared. I insist on a walk in the gardens anyway, steer him to a secluded spot. If he doesn’t act more excited than he did yesterday, when the Weber barbecue was delivered, I’ll cry.

“I’m going to have to ask you to change the cat litter for a while.”

“What?”

“I can’t change the cat litter any more.”

Nothing.

“I thought everyone knows that coming into contact with cat crap is dangerous for pregnant women. It can cause toxoplasmosis.” Whatever toxoplasmosis is.

Elvis passes the Weber test. He jumps up and down, hugs me, kisses me. I cry anyway.

“Come on, Pussycat,” he smiles, stroking my hair. “This is a big adventure. You said you wanted to start a family.”

“Yes, I know I said I wanted to start a family, but more than that I want to smoke.”

As we start towards home, a neighbour comes into view, out walking his dog. Afraid that Elvis is going to say something, make an announcement, I tell him we must keep quiet until the 12-week mark. I don’t know how I know this, or if it’s true, but I do know it’s too soon for announcements.

“I wanted to tell the guy in the shop where I buy my cigarettes. I almost did, too. Imagine it: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be seeing you for nine months. I’m pregnant.’”

“You'd have said eight months and 15 days.”

By day two of knowing we’ve got a bun in the oven it’s become apparent that it’s not going to be a piece of cake to stop smoking “from the very second you find out you’re pregnant”, contrary to the repeated assurances I’d received from Elvis’s mum. I thought, having had three kids of her own, and a plenty-a-day habit, she was talking from a position of authority, but it seems she was just talking from a position of grandmother-in-waiting. While I’m smoking less, taking fewer drags and trying not to inhale, the craving’s as strong as ever. Stronger.

Online, an hour passes, two, and I don't find a single voice contradicting the cigarette packet warning that “smoking when pregnant harms your baby”. All the talk is of low birth weight, breathing lapses, cot death. A poor Apgar score, long-term mental and physical deficits, hyperactivity.

In Waterstones, I consult a stack of books, in vain. Not even Vicki Iovine, in her encouragingly titled The Best Friends’ Guide to Pregnancy, has a good word to say about sneaking the odd cheeky fag when the fear of impending motherhood becomes too much. Some best friend. What about the huge levels of stress faced by a pregnant woman on stopping? Isn’t that worse for the baby? Apparently not. How I long for the days when doctors prescribed cigarettes to combat everything from psoriasis to high blood pressure, when whatever was ailing you could be cured by a few nice puffs.

I meet my new GP for the first time. He tells me he won’t need to do a pregnancy test, having complete faith in the brand of home test I used. I’ve already passed the first hurdle of being a good mother by not going for the £1 test Asda had on offer. He checks my blood pressure, tells me it’s “good and low”, and then, almost as an afterthought:

“You have stopped smoking and drinking, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I say, not wanting to spoil the good first impression as I wait for him to write me a referral to see Vanessa.

It’s only three days later, at the community mother and baby centre, that I confess.

“Are you here to see the midwife?” asks the receptionist.

“No, I’m here to see Vanessa,” I reply, still unable to believe that a midwife and I could have any possible business together. Midwife, it would seem, is not a word I have ever spoken aloud. It strikes me as a term that belongs in the 15th century, not the 21st, back when women rode side saddle and babies were born with boiling water on hand and straw underfoot.

On hearing that I’m smoking one, maybe two, cigaretes a day – though they are super-slims and therefore very skinny – Vanessa, the midwife, says she’ll refer me to Jo, the NHS smoking sessation counsellor. No slap on the wrist, no being cast out of the office, struck off the register; just a gentle reminder that it’s important to quit while expecting and that the success rate is much higher when smokers are offered help to stop.

Back home, I step onto the terrace and light up, sucking the smoke deep into my lungs. I am going to stop smoking. A sweet, white calm comes over me. Stopping is easy when you're holding a lit cigarette.

Less than 24 hours later, Jo calls. I’m scared. Isn’t the NHS overstretched? The speed is a clear sign that every second counts. We make an appointment. An hour after I get a call asking if I can cover for an editor who’s off sick, her magazine on deadline. I leave a message on Jo’s voicemail asking to reschedule. My phone beeps with a text from Jo offering a 2pm slot on Thursday. It’s only when I put it in my diary that I see it clashes with our dating scan at the hospital. I leave a voicemail telling Jo I’ll be free between 1pm and 3pm, Wednesday, or after 6pm, Thursday. She emails with an alternative. I let her know I can’t make it, hit “reply”. She rings again but I miss her call because I’m out on the terrace not inhaling a cigarette, wondering how I can enjoy the noxious cocktail of tobacco, tar and carbon monoxide now that I’m with child; whether it’s possible to harm one’s unborn baby through sheer guilt alone. I’m connected to Jo’s voicemail, hang up. This is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s all part of the programme. Smokers are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dialling, texting and emailing in order that their fingers are kept too busy to take a cigarete out of the pack, light it and raise it to their poor, chapped, pregnant lips.

Deciding it will be easier to stop without help than to arrange a meeting with Jo, I hunt out my copy of the Allen Carr classic, Easy Way. It’s dog-eared, bought before the smoking ban came into force. When the ban came in, you recall, it was summer; there was always a perfectly good pavement to smoke on. And my 35th birthday was still some way off. Why rush things?

Something flutters out of the book, a list of my top reasons for wanting to quit. I half remember reading it to Elvis, trying to convince him I was serious about giving up. I was probably stoned at the time. I glance at the first point:

“I want to watch a film and get lost in the plot rather than lost plotting when I can reasonably next get up and go for a fag.”

Going for fags during films is no longer a problem. Pregnant, I fall asleep before anything is even a quarter of the way through.

“I want to stop worrying about having to stop at some point in the future, to face the worst and have it over with.”

Face the worst? This was obviously written before I’d given any thought to childbirth. The pain of quitting pales in comparison.

“I don’t want to have to work out how many cigarettes I need to stock up on every time I have a holiday or weekend away.”

With Vogues not being available just anywhere, planning has always been key. But in the unlikely event of any holiday or weekend-away plans with a baby, I’ll be so busy working out how many nappies, bottles and babysitters I need to pack, I won’t even have time to remember what tobacco tastes like…

And suddenly, as the smoke from my cigarette curls upwards, getting in my eyes and making me squint in that old, familiar way, the insidious architect of untold wrinkles in the future, I stop thinking of my long-nurtured addiction as a much-loved friend.

I see it for the enemy that it is.

The final point on my list: “I don’t want to stink of stale smoke.”

Why not baby vomit instead?

I stub out my cigarette.

My last cigarette.

Blame it on the hormones, blame in on the baby books, blame it on Kerry Katona. Charlotte Church was right. Pregnant, stopping isn’t as hard as it used to be.

Nor is staying stopped.

And even if, as the thought crosses my mind every morning, noon and night, I were to have put off stopping, postponed the difficult day for another month or two, well, I would only have reached the 35 mark and stopped anyway.

At least, this way, that’s what I can keep telling myself.