My mates keep offering unwanted parenting advice. How do I make it stop without offending them?

Anna Whitehouse, aka Mother Pukka

Now, this isn’t a particularly light start, but I struggled to get pregnant. We navigated five miscarriages to have our two daughters and every second of those pregnancies felt like existing in a pressure cooker of anxiety.

I remember sniping at a kindly auntie saying ‘congratulations’ when I was 23 weeks. I was in the dark, so when people started trying to help me see the light, I wanted to shield my eyes. Much in the same way you probably do. How could I show any interest in a crocodile-shaped weaning spoon when I wasn’t even out of the starting blocks?

Eventually, I began to recognise that the intention was always good from those offering advice. Some of it was a little more prescriptive, though, and anything with ‘have to’ or ‘just must’ got banked in the ‘probably won’t’ tab in my mind.

And when the conversation ratio edged towards one part fun and three parts baby, I just steered it into Love Island waters – or spoke from the heart about my deepest uterus fears. Only once did I have to stop seeing a friend who tried to unload her unwanted, Weetabixencrusted toys on me.

But once I had heard that first cry – a place I never thought I’d reach – I did appreciate knowing about the powers of Ewan the dream sheep. Because however intense friendly advice can be, it still beats the internet. There, you end up not just fearing the worst, but often believing it, too.

Anna runs the Flex Appeal for flexible working