As soon as it finally sinks in that in about six months your life is going to change indescribably and forever, you start to share this notion with the world.

It was something I was really excited about, not least because I could stop any (futile) attempts to hold my expanded belly in and could be honest if I felt less than my best (or looked less than my best).

I had been warned by my mother-of-one-with-two-more-on-the-way sister not to expect people to be surprised. I wasn’t. After all, from the moment I got hitched people asked when we would be reproducing as if suddenly once married it becomes your sole purpose for existence.

What I wasn’t as geared up for was the amount of people who claimed to already know. Not by some strange super-power to read my mind but because, apparently, I looked pregnant.

It’s funny, at no other time in a girl’s life would she be expected to keep shtum if someone told her she’d piled on a few pounds, looked rounder in the face/ belly or was just generally overweight.

Some people have couched it in more gentle language — telling me I am “glowing” or have “that telltale pregnancy face” (surely that just means a fat face?) while others have gone for the more direct “you look bigger”, “you look overweight” line.

I know that I am meant to almost be proud that my body is apparently so blatantly preparing itself for motherhood with all its imperfections, but perhaps I am not quite the mother incarnate yet. Because however much I say I am fine with being told I am looking a tad podgy, I am not. I might have something growing inside me which is meant to make me grow up and realise there are more important things in life, but I am at least in part still a girl, and girls don’t find this acceptable.

So next time you see or speak to a pregnant woman, however far along she is on her road to maternal bliss, remember that she is still human, and a female human at that. She doesn’t want to be told she is glowing unless you really mean she looks uncontrollably happy and not at all because she looks fat and sweaty and she doesn’t want to be told she’s growing in places other than her belly.

Pregnant women know the truth. The fact that all our clothes have to be elasticated, that we can no longer do up that beautiful fitted coat we bought for the changing seasons and that we can no longer find our cheekbones to apply the blusher means we are under no illusion.

But spare us the reminder and tell us we look wonderful. This is one time I fully accept you lying to me.