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used to people commenting on my body. It was like I was wearing the fact that I’d been fucking right there in front of everyone, never more so than when I bumped into the vicar from my primary school, bump in full bloom.

      It’s suddenly OK to reach out to touch strangers and do you know what? If you’re not Natalie Portman, it really isn’t. Especially when your hand is a bit low and in danger of brushing the massive vagina, which might be higher than you’d expect. Just stay safe and keep your hands to yourself. And your opinions, especially when they are:

      1. ‘You are so massive, I hope the bag is packed and by the front door?’

      2. ‘WOW, you’re really huge!’

      3. ‘You’re carrying all up front – you must be having a boy.’

      ‘I’m having a girl.’

      ‘Nope, no chance. It’s a boy for sure. Or a he-she.’

      4. ‘Do you worry that the baby will be so big you’ll need one of those C-sections, where they cut you straight down the middle?’

      5. ‘Did you hear about that woman who died in childbirth last week? Isn’t it crazy that it still happens so often in this day and age?’

      6. ‘Ah, my sister-in-law was a bit sick – have you tried ginger tea?’

       Yes, thank you very fucking much! I have tried everything and nothing works.

      So, suffice it to say, I was keen to get the baby out. Still a week from my due date I went back into hospital as my GP conceded I was massive and the PEP was a bit crazy. The gynaecologist I’d seen right from the beginning was waiting for me when without even letting her say hello or take me into a room, I begged for her to perform a C-section there and then.

      ‘I’ll paaaaaaaay!!’ I insisted, though of course I wouldn’t – as IF I had enough for a down payment on a C-section! I probably couldn’t even get one on finance! Damned passion-for-fashion career, why didn’t I go into medicine or law? Damn you, Anna Wintour!

      ‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous, Grace. You are a healthy young woman. Yes, you’re massive, but the head’s engaged and you’re fine. More than capable of having this baby naturally. Bloody C-section! HA!’

      I realised then I was never going to get one just by asking nicely.

      I scrambled around for my birth plan when we got home. I’d glibly told the poor midwife, my only plan was NOT to vomit when she’d pressed me for one. I’ve always had a phobia of vomiting and so this was the main thing to avoid, in my mind. I couldn’t be arsed because I knew I planned to get a C-section and clearly couldn’t tell HER that! So I kept it vague. She wrote down, Grace does not want to vomit and we left it at that. But now I needed to get planning.

      ‘Rich, I still think the most important bit is that I don’t vomit. So … how can we action that?’

      ‘Um, your body will just do it if it needs to. I don’t know –’

      ‘No, no, NO, I will not vomit, so what could cause that and I’ll just avoid it?’

      ‘Errrr … something with morphine in it, so pethidine? I guess?’

      ‘GREAT! Write down: no pethidine. Say I’m allergic. What else?’

      ‘Well, I think gas and air can make you feel a bit queasy sometimes?’

      ‘Right, no gas and air. Hey, we’re on a roll! Now, what about an epidural? Sick?’

      ‘Nope, it blocks the pain receptors that –’

      ‘FABULOUS! We’ll have one of those, and I’ll just listen to my hypnobirthing MP3. Now, how about those ice chip things? They shouldn’t make me sick, if from a safe water source?’

      ‘Yes, ice is fine … I think. Um, bubs, you might want to think about some of the stuff we talked about in NCT classes. Like the birthing pools and forceps and an episiotomy –’

      ‘What’s an episiotomy?’

      ‘It’s where they cut your va –’

      ‘NO! Next!’

      ‘Forceps?’

      ‘I just don’t think anything should be going in when we’re trying to get something out, you know? If it really is anything like having a poo, I don’t think insertion is The One. Unless it’s an enema. But it doesn’t seem like the time for one of those. If they offer an enema, I’ll take it though. So, no to forceps, yes to an enema. Hey, and maybe the sucking thing, they could do that sucky, vacuum thing. The Vogue-douche?’

      ‘Ventouse?’

      ‘Yep, I’ll have one of those, too. Write it down.’

      Happy that my plan involved numbing and sucking, I was actually quite cheerful for the first time in weeks.

      Nesting, A.K.A. watching Real Housewives of New York with a Twix

      Firstly, I was decidedly unbothered about dirt in our house. I mocked up an attempt to clean the floor once, labouring over the corners and groaning as I couldn’t see the mop beyond my massive bump, only because I thought it might guilt Rich into agreeing to sell his car and get a cleaner instead. But I was still quite anti clutter, and by that I mean The Baby Stuff. Our new home was basically a Wendy house, and we’d had to hock our sofas which wouldn’t have even got through the door, instead buying a small two-seater which should have been called a one-pregnant-person-seater as it turned out. I didn’t then fancy filling the remaining space with baby stuff.

      I put candles around the room, hung photographic prints of naked women by Helmut Newton and Mary McCartney, trying to squeeze the twee out of the cottage and keep the Brighton edge. I was looking more and more like a country mum, so I started wearing a lot of leopard print and black in an effort to claw back my London life, the last-ditch attempt to de-mum myself. I saw Jamie Laing from Made in Chelsea wearing one of my tops on the show and rather than feeling disgusted with myself, I was quietly reassured.

      My mum was doing my head in. She’d been this towering inferno of strength and kickass power, and now she was perpetually worried. She was either sending me articles about pre-eclampsia and skin-to-skin bonding in birth or she was tiptoeing around my black moods, with that expression that screams, ‘I’m not going to say it, but …’

      Where was the sassy, ‘fuck’em all’ woman I’d grown up with, who bemoaned the boring mums in our lives and instilled in me a sense that I could do anything? She was my role model for motherhood. Why was she being so wet about everything? And where had the sudden fascination with dribble bibs and breast pumps come from?

      She wanted me to shop for the baby, clean up for the baby, start thinking about names, schools, godparents and what would the baby call her?

      ‘Errr, Grandma?’

      ‘God no, I’m too young! Frances’s granddaughter calls her Mimi – what about that?’

      ‘Sure, whatever, Mum, it’s fine.’

      ‘Or TT, because I’m the Timothy grandmother?’

      ‘SURE, MUM, THAT’S FINE.’

      ‘Or maybe GG – could be like Glam Gran …’

      Rather than feeling comforted and looked after, I felt suffocated. She was in such a hurry to get me to the mum bit, while I was still hanging onto my life, losing grip fingernail by fingernail. On the flipside though, I knew she had nursed me through every ailment I’d ever had so I’d decided I definitely wanted her to be at the birth. I’d gone from thinking, not on your life

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