Having a baby is a bit like joining a secret society: other women offer advice and support like never before.

In Boston I see a presentation about the success of the Pampers/UNICEF alliance - Pampers donates money for vaccines for newborns around the world when you buy a pack. The insight behind the campaign is that there is an unspoken connection between mothers. 

The insight clarified a thought that had been rumbling: I’ve become a member of a secret society.  Women offer advice, empathy and support when you are expecting a child as they never would normally.  A gulf is bridged by your pregnancy and their experience. Time and again in airports, offices and public places I am surprised when women confide their intimacies: pregnancy stories, parenting disasters and the occasional (sadly very occasional) orgasmic birth. A woman I work with, who I like very much but only know a little, tells me that she had had postnatal depression: ‘If, at any moment, you even start to think you may have it, you call me straight away.  I promise I’ll help you.’ American mothers are particularly supportive; the serious can-do demeanour many hold is dropped in talk of families. 

My PA shouts: ‘Portugal wants to know if you need anything special for your visit next week’. A loo every 45 minutes, food every two hours and a quiet hotel, please.  By the time I arrive at the office the women have already worked it out, and share their delight enthusiastically.  One confides she is a few weeks pregnant, information her boss shares with me many months later as breaking news.  I don’t have the heart to tell him it isn’t.

Over lunch the best management coach in the business, Pat Watson, demonstrates the breadth of her wisdom without any prompting.  'There will be times when you wake up at 3am absolutely certain that there is something very wrong with your baby.  You will be sure of it.  And you will be wrong.  The baby will be fine.'

While dropping off a form at the hospital first thing, I overhear a woman pleading for a new scan because she is sure that something is wrong with her baby. She can’t really explain why, but says it hasn’t been moving today. The receptionist is not taking her seriously and the woman is becoming upset. 

She’s too early in her pregnancy to have realised she is joining a club that will help her and keep her sane.  When she meets her NCT group, the unacknowledged meeting point of professional women who are pregnant, she will start to realise she is connected to something bigger. When she finds her Pat, the night frights will have met their match.