Last Thursday was a bad day.

After demolishing a plate of fish n chips I’d literally been hankering after all week, I had a whiff of some milk that was on-the-turn and was horrendously ill. I definitely have a heightened sense of smell with this pregnancy and it certainly hasn’t made the onslaught of morning sickness any easier to deal with. Emerging from what I’ll delicately refer to as my ‘office’ a good fifteen minutes later, I was exhausted. Laying on the sofa with my eyes closed, I tried to focus on the sound of Dexter playing to stop the room spinning. I could hear the Cloudbabies theme tune fading in and out so he’d obviously dragged his little TV out of his toy box.

Dexter with the offending toy

When I heard the tell-tale “Aaaa” and felt cool plastic on my cheek, I knew the drill. “Find and show mummy” is something we’ve actively encouraged from the start. Children so often pick up things you’d rather they wouldn’t - this week alone I’ve had a ten pound note (he got an ice-cream for this one), dirty knickers from the washing basket and daddy’s inhaler thrust into my lap - it’s a handy toy-vetting device.

As Cloudbabies TV is clearly on the approved list, I opened my eyes for the briefest of moments and put on the most enthusiastic voice I could manage to inform my little guy that this was okay and he was a very clever boy to have found it. Thinking it had done the trick, I sank my head back into the sofa cushion and closed my eyes again.

Less than a second later, two tiny hands brought the butt of the toy crashing down on my nose. Dexter was clearly unimpressed to find mummy sleeping on the job and had resorted to extreme violence to show his displeasure. As I was seeing stars, I could hear Dexter laughing from what seemed very far away but was in fact centimetres from where I lay.

I suspect the usual response to such a shock is to run to the mirror and check for blood, swear a bit, throw the toy across the room, or really lay the ‘Owww’s’ on thick to let your child know it was a mean thing to do. Nope, I burst into tears. I haven’t responded to pain in that way for twenty years!

Battling another wave of nausea, I ran upstairs (barely managing to slam the stairgate) and sat on the floor of the bathroom sobbing. When the sickness had passed, I popped on the underfloor heating, grabbed my maternity pillow and a box of kleenex, and staged a very undignified sit in. It was definitely bad parenting on my part. I could hear Dexter at the foot of the stairs shaking the stairgate and attacking the free paper that the paperboy had shoved through the letterbox moments earlier. I just couldn’t bring myself to get up, and I couldn’t stop crying. I was so exhausted and pathetic, I stayed that way for a whole ten minutes until Craig came home from work and found me.

If you needed a better example of pregnancy hormones, you’d be pressed to find one. It’s clearer than ever that I’m not great at being pregnant. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I absolutely hate it. I’ve tried to be positive about it until now, I’m very aware that there are thousands of women who would sell all their earthly possessions to be in my position but I’m not enjoing a single second of it. Every morning I check my pregnancy app on my iPhone and watch the days count down.

If I had the choice to be drip-fed and put into a coma until D-Day, I’d do it. I know it sounds extreme but it’s a very odd feeling to hand your body over to a vulnerable and growing baby. Watching an old episode of One Born Every Minute on 4oD the other day, a very honest midwife on the show admitted to feeling the same way. She said she felt as though she were carrying a parasite when she was pregnant. I know this isn’t the sort of language you’d expect from an excited mum-to-be but I understand completely. Although I feel very blessed to be pregnant, I also feel like a container ship: I’m not pretty but I serve a purpose, I’m not worth much on my own, but my cargo is infinitely more valuable. I’ve had two bouts of illness recently which took ages to recover from as my body is preoccupied with growing this baby, and my immune system appears to have gone on holiday until it’s over.

I know I shouldn’t moan and some people will read this and cringe. I know I’m not scoring any mummy points whatsoever. I know it’ll all be worth it when we become a family of 4 (or indeed, 5 or 6… this could still be multiples). But all this doesn’t stop me feeling very sorry for myself.

Does anyone else struggle with being pregnant? Please tell me it’s not just me and the midwife from One Born.