Today Master Pest n.1 turns seven, and as we do everything ordinary to make his day special, I think of how extraordinary my own day was, seven years ago. How undaunted I was by five days of labour; how concerned that I should be spending that private time with a girlfriend, rather than Mr Husband.

I never wanted to be seen defenseless and quartered.

Not by a man.

Mr Husband obediently obliged, and I only saw him twice, during my labour: once, when he came into the room where I was rolling on an inflatable ball, and I already no longer knew where the ball stopped and my enormous bump started. Through the haze of pain, I think I shouted at him to leave immediately. My girlfriend patted my back reassuringly so I kicked her.

The second time, though, I noticed that his face was ashen when it floated among the many thoughts and mirages my brain was producing by then. The ball had long gone, and I was being tortured, strapped and immobilised whilst a team of men (men!) in white coats talked over my head, passing to each other tubes and other implements.

'Send him away!' I shouted.

'Emma, we have got to ask your husband permission to operate.'

'Fuck off.'

'Look here. You are about to lose your baby. Either say yes or we put you to sleep and ask your husband.'

'Fuck off.'

'What would you like to eat?' I ask Master Pest n.1 whilst we are waiting in a queue at McDonald's. I look at his enormous brown eyes and remember how I very nearly never saw them.

As I emerged from the ordeal into a sleepy kind of awareness, I became aware of two things: one, that I was alone in a room with what looked like a skinned rabbit in a plastic box, near my bed. Two, that I was all wired up and couldn't even move my hand to pull the little blanket away and make sure they'd given me a real baby, not a real rabbit.

Truth be told, I'd never seen a baby before.

It was several hours before Mr Husband arrived, with Mother of Mr Husband and the Suitcase Children. I had said I wanted to deliver the baby without him; I had not said I wanted to be on my own for the rest of the day.

'Where have you been?'

'On holiday.'

'Very funny. Why didn't you come earlier? I've only had your baby, you know.'

'It was a rough night. We all needed our sleep.'

'I would like a chicken burger meal with a coke and lots of ketchup, please.' The enormous brown eyes leave my face as Master Pest n.1 skips happily back to his bench.

If I could have bottled up the smell of that baby, and my relief and happiness, I would have done: a tiny little bottle to keep jealously tightly shut, only to be opened once a year to remember.

Should Mr Husband not be in the same bottle? A look, perhaps. A smile. A hug and a stroke.

Where did I go wrong? Maybe denying access to the complete visualization of my guts alienated him from the very intimacy I was trying to protect.

'Let me have some of your chips, you mean child', I scold, trying to pinch one or two from his portion.

'Get your own!' he steals a look at me, worried that I might get really offended by his denial.

I got my own baby, complete with black poo and powerful lungs. I flung the first dirty nappy at the wall when the stickers got stuck to my fingers and I was trying to shake them free.

So, here I am, seven years later, eating rubbish because my child likes it, and watching Treasure Island at the theatre with the rest of my family because Mr Husband likes it.

Somehow and somewhere down the years, I have lost my self-respect and have allowed a canyon to develop between the parents of Master Pest n.1: a wide gap I can see clearly and of which I have complained many times before, warning Mr Husband that watching a movie together does not necessarily mean spending time together. It just means looking at the same object but having different thoughts, sometimes diametrically opposite, which never meet because they never get a chance to be discussed.

I have allowed domesticity to invade privacy. Instead of trying to be less needy, and turn to my bland interests and my children as a source of contentment, I have become even needier, circling around both reality and dreams like a blood-thirsty vampire.
Mr Husband is more self-sufficient and - being a man - expects me to 'get on with it.' He expresses love in a primordial fashion, offering me five bunches of flowers with one hand and switching on the TV with the other. He honestly and completely believes that love is something which grows on its own, giving it enough time and suppers together.

'I am the only one who can kiss you, mamma', says seven-year-old Pest n.1. 'I want to marry you.'

There. That will give me my 'fix' of love for a while.