Different nationalities respond to your bump in very different ways, as I soon found out.

At a two-day digital course outside of Paris, I arrived late to a crowded meeting room to be greeted enthusiastically by (statue-handsome) Stefano, who manages one of our Milan operations. “Christina!” he surveys me, “you are pregnant!.. It is mine??!”  Delivered with the perfect balance of delight and camp, mock horror.

In Germany, hardly anyone comments.  In America, service people always do: the doormen, waiting staff and taxi drivers gush about their kids and express their enthusiasm. The professional classes ignore it unless you raise it. The Dutch and French acknowledge it without drama. The Portuguese are excited and thumb their iPhones to share pictures of their kids and suggest names. The Spanish are completely baffled that we don’t know the gender; despite explaining that we’ve chosen to wait, they cannot conceal their suspicion our health service is medieval.

The professional American men I meet are the least moved. While a few enthuse privately about children, most seem to prefer the subject to be kept remote from the real business of business. Which makes me wonder if there is some link between this and the lack of maternity pay or support structures for working American women who, I am told, instead qualify for some sort of disability benefit. The American-written baby book a friend sent me has a chunky chapter dedicated to food restrictions and meal plans, but also notes that women who work in offices can safely continue to do so until they go into labour. Some of them are back at the office in a couple of weeks. Reflecting on my three years working in the US, it strikes me now how few senior women I knew had kids and how many of my contemporaries chose to step out of our business when they did, either to stay at home or to do something more compatible with family life. Some of the most driven women left conception late and chose to adopt from overseas.

One American CEO I met during my pregnancy asked how long I’d be off work. When I said six months, he was aghast: “Please God, tell me no one pays you for that”.  He reminded me of an American CFO I used to work with, who was famed for exploding at the mere mention of maternity benefits.

At the other end of the spectrum, when a CEO from our Portuguese operation realised I was still working a month before my due date, he was appalled and happily told me I was completely crazy. Similarly Germans and Scandinavian colleagues are very concerned to hear I am 'racing' back to the office.

It’s a broad spectrum. In America there is a commitment to separate corporate business with the insanity of biology. Whereas in many European countries, having a family is considered to be too important to confused with work. Inevitably, Brits seem to sit somewhere in the middle and, maybe as a result, seem to me to feel the most guilty about the whole business.

The thought of going on maternity leave is frightening. But the alternative is no more appealing.

How the hell do you process the potential impact of a child on your career?  Everyone who has kids tells you that the child will be The Most Important Thing in Your Life.  On one level know you that they are - they must be - right.  But when you are waddling around with a bump and a hypothetical baby timed to arrive at some unspecified time in the middle distance, you cannot reframe your life to such a hypothetical change.

So reviewing the impact of the baby on your job is very scary.  For me, the much-publicised Fawcett Society report that concludes that being a mum has a devastating impact on earnings is not reassuring. I’ve decided against reading it, but assume that it concludes in equally negative terms on progression, advancement and career-satisfaction.

Initially, as I wrestled with my fears, I was drawn towards certainty.  I focused on plans for when I was on maternity leave.  No one else seemed to think it was worth addressing in months four and five, but I booked several hours with another director planning how we might structure the team.  I was nervous about the meeting; consciously at war with the thought of letting go.  You spend so much time building a team and establishing work patterns, it’s frightening to think of walking away from it.  The meeting went well until she said thoughtfully: “You know, I might move some of the team into your office.” I had a vision of our office with all trace of me removed; my body seemed to lurch; I said “NO” far too loudly.  (The meeting ended awkwardly.)

As I pondered this overreaction, I was reminded of a visit, years ago, before I met my husband, to the home of the most successful career woman I knew.  Glamorous and in her early forties, she lived in the kind of elegantly appointed apartment you dribble over in The Sunday Times Style.  As in the magazine, the artfully battered period features were nestled cosily with shiny gizmos, highly-feminine antiques and agonisingly-arranged objects of beauty and curiosity. Her wardrobes were carelessly overflowing with the contents of Saks, Selfridges and selected boutiques. I was as impressed as I was clearly intended to be.

Right up to the moment when she went to the loo, and I nosily opened her vast, American-style fridge. As I recall it now, the fridge contained absolutely nothing.  It must have had something in but, in my mind, it is as bare as in the showroom.  No milk, no wine, no puckered lemon, not even crusty mustard.

Inside this icy cavern was a vision of a - my - possible future.  The fridge told me that if you give all your passion, your energy and your love to work, in return, you may well get a magazine lifestyle with no one to welcome you home to it.  Not even a cat.  And I hate cats.

Not long afterwards, on a business trip to Asia with clients, I was taken on a tour of a Japanese shrine.  Inside people wrote their dreams and ambitions on a piece of parchment-style paper and placed them on an altar in the hope that their wishes would be granted.  I frightened myself by writing: "To get happily married and have children".  And then felt rather embarrassed about it.

I stare into that bleak fridge every time the reality of taking time out of work gives me a dose of the heebie-jeebies. Then I take a moment to indulge in Bridget Jones-ish fantasies about pink and glowing babies in the bath and my husband frolicking with our toddler in a sunlit garden.

Yet I still hated the oft-asked: ‘So when will you finish work?’ Finish??  P**s off...