Pre-baby pressure

"Ooh, make the most of this time;" "It'll all change once the rugrats come along;" "Go to bed now and sleep" - all words of supposed wisdom that have come our way in the course of telling people that we are soon to become parents.

However, without knowing it our beloved friends and family have heaped a whole world of unexpected pressure on us. We know things will change come October, but what should we actually be doing now to make the most of our baby-free days, and are we doing enough?

If we are to believe the nightmare stories of sleep deprivation and stress that seem all too common with newborns, then we need to take firm action now. Indeed, we should get ourselves up off the sofa this instant and plan a social calendar to envy that of Linsay Lohan.

Monday cinema, Tuesday theatre, Wednesday dinner out, Thursday dinner party with friends, Friday cinema again, Saturday/Sunday - city break to Paris/Prague/Brussels/New York (delete as appropriate).

Between films, meanwhile, we should be bedding down for a 12-hour kip, spending 'quality time' together and pampering ourselves.

The problem we have with all this, however, is that we never really did any of it before anyway. If we started now then I am pretty confident that we'd become far more stressed than we are at the moment. So is it really all that wrong to slum around the house, becoming engrossed in Big Brother and doing not very much at all? Well, probably yes, but I don't think we'll be joining Miss Lohan on the party circuit anytime soon.