Life Lesson 2: Everything is a dirty stinking lie.

Suffice to say, I've always been under the impression that a period is a happy, high fiving, gory salute to the fact that there is categorically, under no possible circumstances a baby inside you.

A total lack of fanny-weepage, on the other hand, was a threatening commiserating signal that slut karma had decided it's big pay off moment was this, and took the opportunity to knock you the fuck up.

Turns out that all of this is one big, awful, stinking lie. All of it.

I heard a horror story about a year ago from a close friend of mine who described how her boyfriend had become extra paranoid about sex.

He'd just returned from visiting friends - two of which, a couple - we're now suddenly in possession of a little newborn baby.

He didn't even know she was pregnant, he said. But as it turned out, neither did they.

For nine months she got her period. For nine months she showed no other symptoms of breeding - no stomach, no weight gain, no mad cravings, no morning sickness. Nada, nothing, zilch.

She just woke up one morning, felt ill, experienced the worst stomach pain of her life, and popped out a kid. Just like that.

Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror. Horror.

A close pal of mine, Pearl, has somehow managed to recently become a doctor.

We got totally fucked up the other night and I told him about this story - he's a doctor of vaginas, or whatever you call it - and asked him if any of it was at all plausible. I begged him to tell me it was all bullshit. An urban myth. He shook his head.

Happens more often than you think. All of it's plausible.

ALL OF IT???!

All of it. You could be pregnant right now.

I gasped. Threw a hand over my mouth. I felt vomit lurch up through my throat.

Why would you say such a thing...??

Sorry.

It is true though. Had a woman in just the other month. She was athletic - had a stomach like Jet from Gladiators.

Oh, I loved Jet.

Oh my God, I know, right? Killer. Anyway - she comes in complaining of extreme stomach pains. We all shit ourselves thinking it's appendicitis - this bitch is going to die, right? WRONG. I get a finger up there...

He gestures his two finger vag-wiggle technique at me, making a face like he's trawling through sewage.

...and that's when I feel the baby's head.

NOOO....

Oh yeah - she gives birth to a baby girl. Nine months of bleeding - worthless.

Shit.

I feel swathes of paranoia wash over me. I, like most women, get paranoid about pregnancy whether or not I've even had sex that month - and now this?? Fuck.

The next day I browse the pregnancy tests in Boots. They all cost over £8, which is nearly a quarter of my weekly budget. I decide I'm going to shoplift one. Maybe two - just to make sure.

But then I notice that all of them are security tagged up to high fucking hell. I try Superdrug - the same. I try St Johns market - SHOCKINGLY the same, even though security tags probably cost more than the walls in that place.

I've no solution to this, other than to live in abject fear for the rest of my still fertile life. Thanks a bunch, womb.