My pregnancy goes along pretty well, apart from the sudden unannounced bouts of 'morning sickness' after the first four months. I have no idea why it's given that name when I'm constantly getting a hit of it around tea time. It's like a deadly assassin, waiting round the corner, watching for that perfect moment when you let your guard down. Time to lay the table? Check. Smell of cooking dinner? Check. Everybody ready and sat at the table? Okay, now! The weird thing is, once I've run to the bathroom and my stomach has been truly vacated, I feel wonderful. This child is already proving to be a real challenge.

We find out that the baby's going to be a boy on our second programmed ultrasound. Jack takes the picture of the cashew nut, as he calls the baby, proudly to his workplace and shows it to anyone who is willing to humour his enthusiasm. He can't stop grinning these days, he's extra attentive towards me and takes over all of the housework, not allowing me to lift a finger. It's a new side of him that I could definately get used to. However, I'm so sick of being pregnant, that by the time I start having contractions, I could honestly consider any strange or radical suggestions for inducing the labour. In addition to this huge beach ball in my belly - which insists on using my bladder as a bouncy castle, I'm fed up with watching Jack enjoy his glass of wine at dinner, (and at plenty of other times, but mainly at that hour,) something I feel I'm missing out on. Not to mention that I've had to give up sushi and smoking, leaving me in a permanently bad mood.

I stave off the cravings for cigarettes by stuffing myself with dried banana chips and try to steer clear of any topics with Jack which are bound to stir up trouble. His family being the main cause of arguments. Every time I attempt to get him to contact his parents about becoming grandparents, he snaps at me and won't give me the whole story. After many heated debates, he eventually gives in and phones them to tell them the news. I put it down to my skills of persuasion. Jack, however, gives the credit to his fear of my foul temper.

Baby's arrival takes some time. Luckily the warning signs started while we were soaking in the bath together on a Sunday afternoon. He had been on nights the week before and so already had a few extra days off to help me through this. As he rushes me into the maternity ward, he grabs the arm of the first nurse he sees and demands for me to be seen.

The delivery room is very well organised. After three hours of regular spasms it's fairly clear to the midwife that this baby isn't going anywhere for a while. The nurse in charge tells Jack that it's going to take time and that he should go home and get some rest. This proves to be an impossibility for Jack - as he tells me later. The minute he gets through the front door, my mother and Gran are hounding him on the phone. He finally gets some sleep in the early hours of Monday morning.

Meanwhile, I'm in the maternity ward along with four other expectant mothers. It's soothingly warm up here, something I'm glad of as the snow is once again falling outside the large square windows at the end of the ward. I can make out the fluffs passing by, lit up with the orange glow of the carpark lights.

Each grip in my abdomen comes and goes regularly, leaving me with time to assess my surroundings. It's the usual NHS set up. My bed is clean precise and has curtains on a plastic rail pulled back against the wall. A small cabinet with a faded laminate top is stocked with a pyrex water jug, glass and tissues. Nothing flashy, but all in clean, working order.

I'm sitting up on the bed in my dressing gown, not feeling the need to actually get in it. It's the last bed on the left of three, next to the window. Opposite me there's a body and bump wrapped up under the sheets where a young girl with an abundance of thick dark brown hair is sleeping heavily. A drip line is running from her arm to the opaque bag on the pole beside her headboard. The next bed is empty. The last place on the right hand side of the softly lit ward has an even younger girl sat up, just as I am, talking on her phone. She can't be more than eighteen, with short cropped hair of many colours and a devil tattoo sneakily showing itself from her nightshirt's neckline. She notices my gaze and returns a fellow 'mother in labour' nervous smile.

The room opens up at the top end to join the main artery of the maternity block's corridor. A desk and phone with notice boards behind it are adjacent to the entrance doors.

The beds near me are partly obscured because the curtains are half way round the next one, blocking my line of sight. I can make out the slippers of one mother and the lumps of undercover feet in the bed of the other.

At 2.30 am things start to happen. I'd been under the impression that the contractions were as bad as they could get.

How much worse could they be?

It gets so bad that eventually I have no choice but to ring for assistance. If hell has torture like this then I pity any demons down there. After checking me, I'm brought back to the delivery room once more. I'm wheeled past the previously hidden faces of the other mothers, who turn out to be just as young as the other girls. Even at twenty-three years old, I feel like I could be their mother rather than my child's.

Fear of the unknown is now beginning to take its hold on me. I have never been so scared in all my life, with absolutely no idea of what's going to happen to my poor body. And the facts that I do know are very frightening right now. It's impossible that a real human being has been growing inside of me, there's no way it's getting out. Nightmares during my pregnancy come back to haunt me. A blue and black, cold, dead newborn hanging between my legs as I scramble to bring it upright and make it breathe.

Oh my God, please let it be breathing.

Jack's returned to the hospital. His presence gives me courage that I'm not alone in this battle. But I'm so tired, so very tired. I crunch his hand in mine and screech at him.
"I can't do this, Jack! It's not going to happen. Tell them to cut it out, there's no way this is going to work."

He smiles awkwardly, probably as petrified as I am, I squeeze his hand again, making him grimace under my grip. My body no longer feels like it belongs to me as it's put through the ultimate test. It's a machine and nothing more, an instrument of humanity, doing it's job.

It takes two more hours before baby Simon joins the world.

He's cleaned up and handed to me just as Mum and Gran come through the doors. A tiny scrunched up whimpering blanket packet, with the most enormous deep blue eyes I've ever seen. I stare at this amazing creature, not able to comprehend the reality of his having lived inside me for ten months. I whisper to him.

"Where did you come from?"

As wrecked as my physical state is, the emotional one is bursting with unconditional love. I can't seem to stop smiling. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Jack softly touches his son's cheek, then bends to kiss me on the nose, his eyes brimming with tears as he says, "He's perfect, thank you."

Jack helps Mum and Gran with their first meeting, while they ooh and ah over the new family member.

"Oh, look at that!" Mum exclaims, "He looks exactly like your father, Jill."

Jack's eyebrows raise up in a quizzical fashion as we both try to make out the similarity. Gran links her arm through her daughter's and gently taps my mother's arm with her hand. No one is going to be heartless enough to tell my Mum that she's wrong.