Why do I have to act as if I’m thrilled to be pregnant all the time?

My back aches. I’m bored of nights in and, yes, I’ve put on more weight than I should’ve, despite daily cycling and keeping up with the gym. Yet dare I suggest I’m not utterly thrilled to be up the duff, queue aghast looks and pointed comments about being lucky to have children at all. Honestly it makes me want to scream.

To be frank, I don’t know how to feel. At my 20 week scan today I ended up in floods at the patronising remarks and sudden lack of control over my body, which is quite clearly no longer my own. I didn’t find out the gender because knowing what it is, beyond a baby, would make it all too real. When people ask me if I’ve thought of names, I find myself drawing a blank despite agonising over the problem for hours, days and weeks. It’s not the baby that’s the issue, persay. It’s making it public. Sharing it for public consumption and judgement, which seems to come in spades where motherhood’s concerned, or at least I certainly feel it.

There’s been the guy at work who’s wondered aloud why, if I didn’t want any more children, I’d hung on to my baby stuff for so long (answer: it’s been in the loft since before I’d been able to make my mind up); and my blunt, childless (ok ok, childfree) colleague, who, when I articulated how frustrating it will be feeling poor for three years because of childcare cutting my salary in half, told me off because I’m luckier than most for owning my own home (ergo can’t cry poverty no matter how illiquid I become).

The problem is, there’s lots about having a baby I’m completely not sure about. Not the baby so much as all the shit that goes along with it, if it’s possible to extrapolate the two. But putting a brave face on it is proving too much. My buoyant facade is crumbling. I keep crying, and getting stroppy in public, particularly in hospitals, faced with people who want to quiz me, and prod me and weigh me. Perhaps, then it’s a girl after all- although I didn’t ask, and wasn’t told. Not that I have a preference but I sure know which of my offspring to date was the easiest.

The fact is, having children curtailed my ambition, freedom and finances. For the most part, I accepted and embraced this. But partly, I had the optimism of being new to it all. Now, I’m seasoned enough to be cynical and too old to subscribe to the constantly cheerful mumbo jumbo that’s expected of new parents, particularly mums.

I’m grumpy sometimes and I’m okay with that. I just don’t want to be judged for it. Trying to hold it in is like trying to hold in tics. It just makes it worse- resulting in a meltdown of epic proportions. I can’t help the way I am any more than this baby will be able to help themselves, but the resounding message parents get all the time is to be better versions of themselves for their kids, 24/7. I tried that last time and I had a nervous breakdown.

This time I’m just going to be myself, and if that means feeling ambivalent about my pregnancy, that’s my business. It’s not as if I won’t love my child. I just don’t like everyone else telling me how I can do it better, or having expectations about how I should be feeling. In the end, I did choose to have this baby and I did so knowing how much I’d struggled doing it all before. But acknowledging that, is for me, part of doing it better: not putting a brave face on it, or being a martyr to motherhood. But other people don’t always want to hear the truth because it’s uncomfortable, which is why this culture of eternal positivity has taken hold. And then they wonder how an epidemic of silent depression had taken hold at the same time.

If being upfront about how I really feel means I stave off the inevitable hormonal crash that’s in the post, and also why I’m dreading DDay, then so be it. Just don’t blame me when you ask how I’m feeling, and I give you an answer you don’t want to hear.