My third day at sea, sick of the Friends theme tune and feeling like a lump of clay, I managed to wash and ventured a walk around the Flor de la Mer at the ass crack of dawn. I couldn’t get my bearings at all – it was a confusing puzzle of corridors, lifts, spangly staircases, auditoriums, fountains, casinos, designer shops, clubs, pubs, pools, pizza shacks, sushi restaurants and cafés, linked together by a chaotic swirl of blue carpet.

My body was not mine anymore. It had stretch marks in new places, sags in others, unexpected leaks everywhere. I couldn’t look in a mirror without wanting to smash it. I had aches and pains and constant mind fog. My anger – the scaffolding that kept me upright – had disappeared.

There was no more yearning to hack down every Tom Dick and Harriet who pushed past me in the line for bagels. No desire to do anything other than sob and sleep. Had the old me slid out along with Ivy’s afterbirth? I didn’t have a clue. I located the Business Centre in the bowels of the ship and bought myself some Internet access – $17.00 for the day, I shit you not. I needed to google my post-partum symptoms to check they were all normal. And for the most part, they were. I ticked every box:

1. ‘After pains as your uterus contracts back’ – tick. I was popping paracetamol like Maltesers.
2. Night sweats – tick
3. Absence of libido – tick. Normally I can get turned on watching the Yorkshire Vet ram his arm up a heffer but since Ivy, Gobi gusset.
4. Perineal discomfort – tick. ‘Try wearing loose clothes to give it an airing and lukewarm herbal sitz baths to soothe the area,’ the website suggested. I had to sit my vadge in a bowl of herbs? FML
5. Burning piss – tick
6. Sore porn-star tits – Tick. They ached like hot boulders.
7. Constant tiredness – tick
8. Piles like The Borrowers are stabbing your arsehole with tiny knives – tick
9. Incontinence when you sneeze – tick. I always dreamed of being in TLC when I was a kid, little did I know that it meant the Tena Lady Club
10. Persistent sadness – tick tick tick tick BOOM.

All the other advice was to do with the rapid changes to ‘the new mum’s life’ – the sudden sense of responsibility. Breastfeeding. Adjusting to the baby’s unpredictable sleep pattern. Dealing with the demands of visitors who all want to see the baby. Of course I had none of this but there wasn’t a section on Dealing with Giving Birth But There Being No Baby.