But by then, I was obsessed. ‘We can’t. I’m going to look into IVF.’

His face became solemn. Shake and his wife Melanie had spent tens of thousands of dollars on IVF which hadn’t worked. They had just got divorced.

‘In the meantime,’ I said, ‘the sex will continue until morale improves.’

It had taken over a year of sex that had become more and more stressful but here I was, finally pregnant!

Excitement battled with fear. I wanted to be the best mother there ever was and the thought of failure was terrifying.

‘So what do we do now?’ Luke asked. ‘You should see a doctor!’ Then, ‘Am I patronizing you? You’re not sick, you’re pregnant.’

‘Hold on there. I’m not sick, no. But…like, I’m pregnant. I want special treatment. Cushions for my lower back, that sort of thing.’

His laugh was loud. He was so good at pure joy.

‘But I guess I have to decide how to’—I quoted what I’d heard other women say—‘ “take control of my birthing experience”.’

Minimizing medical involvement in childbirth was very Brooklyn. Also very NA. Nearly every woman I knew was vocal about their right to choose where and how they’d give birth. Home birthing was popular. My New York sponsor, Olga Mae, had planned to have her baby in a beautiful ceremony with her partner and two children in an orchard in upstate New York, but the day she went into labour, she got stuck in gridlock traffic on her way to Stone Ridge and Baby Carter ended up entering the world in RBS Furniture Liquidators in the Bronx.

Decisively I said to Luke, ‘We need a doula.’

‘A what-a?’

‘A woman. I don’t know, she advocates for us, for me. In the hospital. Say if they wanted to do a C-section, well, she’d say no.’

‘But what if you needed one?’ Luke looked alarmed. Quickly, he changed tack. ‘Sorry, no, hey, I get it, you’re the one who’ll be doing all the work, you get to decide.’ But he couldn’t help himself. ‘Rachel, what if something goes wrong?’ He looked slightly sweaty and I felt relieved. While Luke and I had been ‘trying’, I’d paid lip service to the idea of a natural birth. But now that I was actually pregnant, I was afraid. Pain panicked me. Other women, more evolved than I was, could meet it—‘dance with it’ as they’d probably say, and good luck to them and all, the weirdos—but as soon as I touched up against it, I’d be yelping for pain relief.

I blurted, ‘I’m so happy to be pregnant, but, Luke, I’m scared of the pain.’

‘Babe!’

‘I want all the epidurals and painkillers and everything but I’m scared I’ll be judged.’