As I may have mentioned before, I don’t really seem to do blooming pregnancies. I’ve heard mythical stories of thick, lustrous hair and glowing skin, but have no personal experience of them. My skin is spotty, my hair limp and my tummy, in the words of my daughter is ‘absolutely enormous’. I actually quite relish the enormous tummy – it’s not like it was flat to start with, so it’s quite liberating to be able to stick it out with pride for a change. The other changes are less pleasing.

It’s quite hard to know how to play pregnancy style and beauty. On one hand I have minus levels of energy and suspect that I’m going to look awful whatever I do, so I may as well give up entirely, scrag my hair back into a ponytail, abandon make-up and wear pyjamas whenever possible. On the other hand, I seem to remember that things get even worse in this respect after the birth, as in addition to the hormonal spots and greasy hair you actually start to lose your hair in handfuls, and your beautiful baby bump becomes a seriously saggy stomach. Oh yes, and there’s a layer of sick over everything anyway. So, if now might actually be the best I look in months, perhaps I should maximise it.

Well, I’m trying. I bought some new posh make-up – after gleaning advice from wise friends as to what exactly ‘BB’ and ‘CC’ creams are – and I’m actually taking five minutes every morning to apply it. I think it works. Not that I look amazing when it’s on, but the other morning when I’d run out of time and went without it, several parents at the school gates asked me with great anxiety if I was ok, because clearly sans make-up I look like I’m going to expire any moment. My daily make-up is now Clinique CC cream, Benefit erase paste concealer, Clinique Chubby Stick cream blusher and No.7 mascara. An accumulation of advantage points gleaned through buying nit treatments is a wonderful thing. I also took advantage of the current Boots offer to find the perfect lipstick for your skin tone, discovered that I am a ‘Cool Vanilla’, and bought what I hope will be the perfect red lipstick, although it hasn’t been out of the tube yet.

I’ve also booked an appointment to have my hair cut and coloured tomorrow. And, shock horror, I’m thinking of changing my hair colour. For some women this is almost a monthly event, and they think nothing of going from blonde to brunette to red and back again. I am emphatically not one of these women. My hair started off naturally blonde, turned mousy brown in my late teens, and has been restored back to it’s ‘natural’ colour by careful application of subtle blonde highlights ever since. But  I know that post-baby I won’t have the time for three-hour sessions in the hairdressers, and so was planning on asking her to tone the highlights down so that the inevitable regrowth is less obvious. Then a little voice whispered that now might be the time to experiment – I could really do with a lift, and if I hate it then I can just revert back to my natural light brown. Can’t I? I’m far more nervous than the scale of the decision probably justifies, but I think I might just do it. And as a seven months pregnant redhead then at least people will definitely see me coming…

Wish me luck!