I always imagined I’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment … the moment of earth-shattering bliss that would signal the successful exchange of DNA and the beginning of cell division …

Not feeling sure I even wanted a baby, there’d be those moments when I would lie in post-coital bliss thinking, “Hmm, now if I was to fall pregnant, THAT would be a good way to do it.” I even started planning holidays to Fiji, Bora Bora and Hawaii at the mere hint that perhaps we might be ready to have a baby. After all, conception is as important to the parents as birth is to the baby. But the actual planning for the baby never reached fruition. So, at the onset of nausea, headaches and exhaustion, my first thought was to pull out the unused self-test malaria kits I had lugged half way across the malaria-infested Indian subcontinent several months earlier. The lack of pictorial instructions proved too complex and, after puncturing two fingers on my left hand, and one on my right, I drowned both test kits in my blood before figuring out that my stupidity must surely be indicative of the onset of a far more dangerous ailment … Motherhood.