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It was at a party held in honour of a friends’ baby. The air mingled idealism with Afghan hash. And children – the spawn of the liberal. Some ran around naked, all were grotesquely cute and had names like Nova.

At parties like this, the conversation invariably turns to babies and pregnancies. I’m sure it’s lovely if you share that in common, but it’s aggravating if you don’t. I don’t want to discuss the finer points of breast pumps and nipple cream when I’d rather be turning my brain to jelly with vodka in the sunshine.

New mothers develop a statistic aptitude of a horse-racing announcer. And a propensity for stomach churning detail.

“Rosie has five teeth through. She’s 13 months. Came out 6 and 6 ounces.”

“Hector was nearly 8lbs. If I hadn’t done yoga, I’d’ve torn so much worse. My stomach muscles ripped as I got larger.”

“Do you have children?”

Then I got the Baby Fear. Was I writhing visibly? Yes. Images of a pregnant Leah – ankles swollen by excess weight, overstretched skin, the inability to see my own genitalia. I wasn’t glowing with expectant motherhood, I was Shamu the whale and I was unable to control my own bladder.

Fast-forward to the birth. Screaming, uninhibited pain. That stuff of life you’re meant to embrace as you curse your partner for having functioning sperm. I know it’s horrible. I’ve seen it on television. The noise. The blood. The swifting, clashing chaos.

I sought wiser advice.

“You can’t admit to hating children when you’re pregnant,” says a heavily-laden friend half-way through her first pregnancy. “But I can’t stand them. Friends who already have children offer them to you in case you want to ‘practise’.”

“You mean parents pimp out their kids?”

“Uh huh. Half-arsed cheap childcare I reckon. Hang on. I have to cross my legs when I sneeze in case I wee myself. Achoo!”

There’s a word for this. Tokophobia. The fear of childbirth.

Should the “up the bum, no babies” policy fall foul, around 43% of tokophobics opt for a Caesarean section. So if a living, breathing, crying object just over a foot long squeezing its way out of a passage the size of a cigarette lighter doesn’t tickle you, some dude in a white coat can slice you open and take it out. Like removing your groceries from a hatchback.

I’m not alone. After hearing how some mothers are sent home from delivery wards immediately after childbirth to allow a quick NHS turnaround, I know of many ladies who abhor the prospect of being treated like a heifer in an abattoir.

What bothers me is not the choice of having children. It’s being forced to have that choice. Childbirth isn’t the scent of optimism and the future or even the product of an animal breeding instinct. It’s a societal pressure to justify your womanhood. I get on with kids but have no overwhelming desire to go through the effort of having my own. Just because I think abortion is a valid option compared to being shanghaied into parenthood, that doesn’t mean I’m evil.

Young mothers, think on this. You don’t want to hear how talk of teething and breast-feeding bores me. I don’t want to hear about prams with full suspension or your third trimester effluence. Do we have a deal?

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This article was originally published in Who’s Jack Magazine, October 2009.