The baby is due to be overdue

I sat in the hospital consultation room in a state of despair as the unnecessarily cheerful midwife scrawled in big letters on my file "no sign of labour". Marvellous. Exactly 39 and a half weeks of waiting, and absolutely nothing is happening. Zip, zilch, zero. The likelihood of me catching a glimpse of my newborn before or on my due date is becoming increasingly slim, unlike my waistline. All of the odds seem to be stacked against me. According to one leading pregnancy website, only five per cent of babies are born on their due date and a whopping 75 per cent of women give birth late. That means I could still be sitting here, looking like Jabba the Hutt out of Star Wars, for another 10 days.

Depending on the maternity hospital, if a baby hasn't arrived between seven and 14 days after the due date, then the mother is induced. There are a number of ways that this can be done, one of which is to be wired up to an intravenous drip and fed hormones to "force" the contractions. Midwives say that this induction process can make the contractions very strong and "difficult to cope with". It gets worse by the minute. I'm reaching crisis point.

I have tried instilling a bit of premature discipline into the baby by talking sternly to it and insisting that it shows its face to the world as soon as possible. Each night before I go to bed, I point my bump over the top of the carrycot, which is ready and waiting, and say, "Look there's your little bed. Are you going to be in it shortly?" No response. I did get a small jab of an elbow one night, but it seemed to be fairly disapproving. Maybe it's the Kelly Hoppen-style neutral colour scheme that's turning the baby off.

I showed off the nursery with pride to one of my horrified earth-mother friends and she was flabbergasted by the bland tones. "Children need bright colours," she said. Mmm. Obviously she knows nothing about fashion trends. Even my baby's carrycot is in a neutral colour (black). Maybe I should compromise and buy a brightly coloured teddy bear. That could entice it out. Then I could just hide it in the wardrobe whenever I have visitors. The teddy bear, that is, not the baby.

I've decided to seek solace and comfort in food, or more specifically, desserts and sweets. I didn't think it was possible to consume any more calories a day than I have during the last nine months but, alas, I was wrong. I've been wasting hours and minutes of potential eating time on cleaning, shopping and sleeping when I could have been devouring more scrumptious puds. My new unhealthier eating regime began last week in the shape of a large tub of Italian mango and coconut ice cream with three toppings. I wandered brazenly around Abu Dhabi's Al Wahda Mall shovelling it down so quickly that I looked like I was taking part in one of those weird American pie-eating competitions. I stopped only once, to grumble to my husband about the number of people staring at me.

"Why is everyone gawping at me because I've got an ice cream. Can't they see I'm pregnant?" He gave an inevitable sigh, looked at my bump and said, "Yes, that's quite clear. But it's only 9.20 in the morning. And you've got a trail of raspberry sauce down your top." Mmm, could I get any more attractive? Please, baby, come out soon.