‘Super! We look forward to meeting Jason next week,’ Maggie beamed, her eyes lingering on mine a little too long – possibly trying to scope out how I really felt about my absent baby daddy. Thankfully most of the group were now eagerly looking at the couple sat to my left. It was two women: a small brunette and an equally small woman with black hair. The pair looked almost identical aside from the fact that one was Asian and the other white.

‘I’m Lin, and this is Susie – both spelt with an i,’ the black-haired woman said, before announcing, ‘She’s the one having the baby – I’m just having a food baby!’ The room rippled with awkward laughter. She patted her midriff, which, it had to be said, wasn’t too far off the size of her partner’s bump.

‘We used my brother’s sperm to make the baby with Susie,’ she continued, turning to smile affectionately at her partner. ‘It’s a boy. And we’re going to call him Charlie. We’re planning a home birth as natural as Mother Nature will allow.’

Damn. She really stuck the knife in there with the natural home birth. Plus Charlie was on our list of possible names, if the bean turned out to be a boy. Although my instincts were currently leaning towards it being a girl, I wondered if there was any etiquette involved in choosing the same baby name as someone in the group. Should you stake your claim, so they wouldn’t think you copied their chosen name? I thought about interjecting: ‘How funny! We’re thinking Charlie too! Loved that name from the moment I got pregnant. Bagsy Charlie!’ But would that seem too intense? Weird? Passive aggressive even? Really everything about being here felt strange because I wasn’t sure where the boundaries lay. I stayed quiet and tried to focus on how maybe Charlie wasn’t such a great baby name anyway, given we once had a family cat called Charlie when I was very little, and he got run over. Surely a bad omen. That settled it – Charlie was off the list. I made a mental note to tell Jason later.

‘And how are you feeling about the birth, in general, Susie?’ Maggie asked, drawing the other woman into the conversation.

‘Well I’m not a fan of Western drugs,’ Susie said, her voice quieter than Lin’s – I had to strain to hear her. ‘I’m opting for a drug-free, home water-birth involving hypnosis. And we’ve been researching a Balinese ritual involving burying the placenta in a special cemetery as soon as possible following the birth.’

‘Or we’ll have it made into tablets,’ Lin chipped in, looking a little cross. ‘We haven’t made a final decision yet. And we’re both planning to breastfeed. I’m about to start a groundbreaking course of hormones to make that possible.’ She squeezed Susie’s hand.

They seemed so resolute in their wishes, it made me feel even more insecure about my fears and lack of concrete plans. I made a mental note to google placenta tablets.