I am currently six months pregnant with my second child, and it feels like a rather strange time to be so. Partly because these unexpectedly long spells of warm weather have rendered me umbilically tethered to a fan at all times, which has done terrible things to my electricity bills. Partly because every morning I seem to wake up to a new maternity scandal and must navigate between newsfeeds in which women trauma-dump their horrendous birth stories or hypnobirthing experts chanting that my ‘body was made to do this’. Partly because since I was last pregnant, only two years ago, we have now had three Prime Ministers. 

It’s a disgrace that Ed Miliband is Foreign Secretary

Andy Burnham is comically out of touch

John Healey’s nightmare first day as Chancellor

Another reason I feel discombobulated is that I am pregnant with my second son, and yet everywhere I turn, there seems to be a preference for baby girls over baby boys. My Instagram algorithm is full of #TractorsOrTiaras gender reveal parties in which parents are devastated by blue icing or turquoise confetti cannons. My Mumsnet feed contains dozens of anonymous posters confessing their ‘secret shame’ of gender preference – and yet it always seems to go one way.  

When I tell people I am having another........

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