Three teens and a baby: Pregnant women aren't meant to do these things - serious bike crashes included

There are several things women are encouraged not to do in their first trimester of pregnancy. Fall down the stairs. Drink tequila slammers. Sit on coat hangers. 

Probably also on this list are: start divorce proceedings; try to keep a happy relationship going with three teenagers you no longer live with on a daily basis due to said divorce proceedings, and who pretty much hate you for splitting up from their dad; still be recovering from a recent mental breakdown; come off the mood-stabilising drugs that helped your recovery, almost overnight, in order to quickly cleanse your system for the growing baby; launch a new business, give talks all around the country, and organise a huge exhibition and launch event. With no help. While being sick three times a day.

Now in week eight of my pregnancy, and very much in the Precarious First Trimester, I am doing everything on this list (bar the stairs, slammers and coat hangers). 

And I’m in my 40s, which makes the risks of early miscarriage even greater.

This sense of extreme pregnancy precariousness is new to me. In my 20s, I was utterly relaxed about it. A lot of life’s difficult water hadn’t run under my bridge yet, and I was young, fit, healthy, and life was generally pretty stress-free and happy. I’d had a few miscarriages, very early, but I was young and had time to try again. 

Now, I am on borrowed biological time. My ovarian clock has been ticking so loudly, I wouldn’t be surprised if my eggs had tinnitus. 

The fear of losing this baby, in what feels like my last stand at the Motherhood Corral, makes me feel I’m carrying Fabergé eggshells in my womb, with chopsticks, while running across the M25 at rush hour. 

If I cough too loudly I worry that I might have dislodged my now raspberry-sized embryo, and thus lost my last chance at having a baby with my partner of two years, Mike. I want to do everything I can to protect it. 

Coming off the mood stabilisers was a decision I made as soon as I found out I was pregnant. You’re supposed to do it very gradually. I went full ‘cold embryo’ in 24 hours. I Google-trawled to find any evidence that they could harm a growing baby, and while it seemed probably OK, I don’t want this baby grown in an un-Happy Hour cocktail of drugs, unnecessarily. 

So goodbye pills. Hello blinding headaches, anxiety, shaking, sweating, crying and generally feeling not super-fantastic, if I’m honest. It lasted a week, but now I feel fine. Really good, actually. Bar the nausea and exhaustion. 

And stress. When my older children were toddlers they were happy with a packet of stickers and a lollipop. 

Now I have three lots of University fees to budget for, one set of private school fees still to pay, a mortgage, the looming cost of my divorce, and cash-burning teenagers whose every breath seems to cost me a month’s income. 

Add to this all the emotional turmoil in my personal life, it’s a pregnancy seeped in stress, so I’m even more worried about the baby being OK. 

I don’t know if it’s all that, the argument I had with my 17-year-old about her University choices, my sickness, or something to do with Donald Trump – it usually is – but as I cycled home one night in the dark, I didn’t see the pedestrian step out into the cycle path without looking, until he was inches in front of me. 

I was forced off the road, across the pavement, and only stopped by my skull smashing into a brick wall, at high speed. 

The man ran off into the dark.

I lay on the pavement clutching my head, my bicycle on top of me.

Now shaking from the cold and shock, unable move or call for help, a HUGE lump growing out of my head and my vision blurred, all I could think was...the baby. 

Next week: '20 years ago, pregnancy was so different'