One of the reasons I have not blogged in such a while is because I have found out I am expecting my fourth child so have been wandering round for the past three months in a state of exhaustion, nausea and general ennui. I don’t normally suffer any of these symptoms but am obviously experienced enough in pregnancy to recognise the symptoms and wallow in them to my heart’s content feeling little remorse for the fact that I have become an utter bore.

Part of my resolve this pregnancy is to avoid stepping foot in any filthy maternity hospital or have any patronising obstetrician tell me what I can or cannot do. No scans to tell me when I have to have my baby by or to advise termination if what is seen doesn’t conform to a graph. No inductions, fake hormones, stirrups, scalpels, forceps, protocol and other paraphernalia that characterise modern childbirth.

This birth will be like my last and totally unlike my first two – quick, quiet and unfussy, at home in a pool.

I have hired my midwife and am getting on with my ennui perfectly satisfactorily, not bothering no one.

What surprises me each time I get pregnant are the changes in state policies towards the support of our nation’s mothers. I have only been at this business five years – my children are quite close in age and yet each one has seen quite dramatic updates – the increase in maternity leave (still woefully inadequate), the introduction of paternity leave, the introduction of Child Trust Funds (which the government are now trying to scrap, given the current economic state of affairs, leaving a couple of million children with risible legacies of this ill thought-out scheme). But this latest initiative has had me in stitches (or would have done had my ennui permitted laughter). I don’t know which is more pathetic – the title of the initiative (‘Health in Pregnancy Grant’) or the pukingly cutesy URL that gives the details:

http://campaigns2.direct.gov.uk/money4mum2be/en/

See what they’re doing? Text-speak to appeal to the teenage girls this incomprehensible policy is aimed at? Or just the government being funky and in touch as usual.

Is it just me or has the word ‘mum’ taken on a rather nauseating and patronising connotation in recent years? I feel as if some civil servant one day has realised that British mothers are undervalued, ignored, misunderstood and lacking in confidence so the solution is to eradicate the word ‘mother’ and replace it by the more contemporary and empowering word ‘mum’. This gives rise to such incomprehensible gatherings as ‘mums nights out’ and baffling neologisms such as ‘mumpreneurs’. Consequently I have barred the mum word from our house and my children call me ‘mama’.

I digress. The Health in Pregnancy Grant. My midwife has just told me about this one. The gist is every woman who gets to 25 weeks’ pregnant gets a payment of £190 (tax-free) from the government to ‘help you with your wider costs in the run up to your baby’s birth’. At least that’s what is says on the website although I have been told that the aim is to get women eating healthier (hence the title). So £190 to spend on cabbage and prunes. I think we all know where the majority of that money won’t end up. Nobody gets a windfall like that and decides to empty Sainsbury’s salad rack. Some women will buy a new maternity dress, some will buy 200 packets of Benson & Hedges, some will pay off a credit card but for most it will just get swallowed up with the household bills. The nation’s mothers and the babies they deliver will be no healthier or even wealthier than before.

But get this, a quick Google search informed me that there are approximately 630,000 women a year who become pregnant. That is a staggering £119,700,000 a year (not including the administration of these grants) chucked down the pan. What if, what if, they used this money to improve the abominable state of maternity services in the UK. That money could employ another 4000 midwives, it could encourage home birth, it could fund classes to teach women about nutrition and to get rid of the culture of fear surrounding birth.

On the other hand, I suppose the money is better off in our hands, however we decide to spend it, than in the hands of our ministers… Let’s face it, if all 630,000 women said, ‘No, we don’t want this, we want improved maternity services instead’ I doubt the government would heed my advice and sort out the understaffing on maternity wards up and down the country. They’d find a better way to piss it up the wall, like investing in some ill-conceived climate change initiative or something.