ASKING questions may be how I make my living, but that doesn't mean it isn't tough when the tables are turned.

As a news reporter, I spend my entire day asking people stuff, and I'm fully aware that quite a lot of my questions are probably very hard to answer.

I've been pondering on this issue, of how to answer questions in a sensible way, after finding myself on the receiving end of a great deal more interest in me, Mrs L Stephens, than I've been used to for quite a while.

This has come about as a result of recent news, joyfully announced by the husband and I, that we will soon be joined by a Stephens junior, who is expected to make his or her arrival in October.

Since then, we seem to have been faced with a constant barrage of questions, and we're not sure what the answers are to any of them.

Where do we want to have our baby? Have we thought about a water birth? Do we want to know whether it's a girl or a boy? How do we wish to be presented with our child when it arrives?

Um, not sure. When's the latest we can decide? On the day?

The questions aren't just from medics, either. Friends and family are of course incredibly intrigued as to what we might call our offspring, and will it have a middle name? Do we want the family Moses basket which has so far been the sleeping place of four different cousins?

But the hardest question of all is the one that everyone asks: "So, how do you feel?"

How do we feel? Blimey, there's a poser.

What if we don't really know how we feel? What if our emotions are blank slate? Does it make us bad parents-to-be, to have no readily expressible feelings about the impending arrival of our first born? Are we frosty, buttoned-up? Will our child be in therapy by the time it's two because its parents are so bound up with British reserve they can't communicate?

Worried about the relative non-existence of any discernible emotions about the new Stephens family unit, I have made an effort to instigate talks in the marital home on the tricky subject, thinking this might make it easier to talk to other people.

Thinking it best to be direct, I kicked off our talks with this punchy opening gambit. "So, how do we feel about our impending new life as parents?"

But all it elicited was a shrug and an amused grunt from the husband, while he carried on reading his cycling magazine. "Ask me again in five months time," he replied. Brilliant.

Well, I suppose I know how he feels. When people ask me how I'm feeling about being a mother, I'm completely at a loss.

"A bit weird," is the best I can come up with, which sounds incredibly ungrateful, not to mention unenthusiastic - not the impression I want to convey at all.

The tricky problem of expressing our feelings was one I was discussing with a relative over the Easter weekend. She is shortly to undergo a kidney transplant - and all being well, the donor will be her husband.

"People are always asking me how I feel, and I don't really know," she said, sentiments I can readily understand.

After all, how can she possibly know what it will be like to have such a major operation?

By the same token, how on earth can I imagine what chaos will be reaped (wreaked?) in our lives with the addition of a young 'un?

For the record, here's how I feel right now. Excited, anxious, terrified and intensely curious about the future. Oh, and a bit fatter than usual. I'm told that's normal.