Well, that was fun. I really, really must remember to do that more often. If you ask me, four years is just too long to wait between bouts of mind-blowingly, knicker-explodingly awful pain.

As I write this, I am sitting serenely on the sofa, new babe in arms and boobs at a stately half-mast. But a week ago, give or take a couple of hours, I was yelling obscenities at strangers. This is not something I do very often - last week's swearing session brings my life's total to two - but when it occurs the volume is undeniably loud and the language distinctly fruity.

Thankfully, the strangers in question, a wonderfully calm, and calming, pair of midwives called Christine and Kirsty, had heard worse in their time and were not even remotely shocked by my liberal use of earthy Anglo Saxon. And my partner, the other victim of my verbal tirade, is pretty much immune now as he has heard worse on an almost daily basis since he met me, particularly if my favourite television programme has been knocked off the schedule by snooker or if someone has scoffed the last fig roll and left the empty packet in the tin.

Snooker and fig rolls were not the problem last Tuesday though. The killer combination of a 7lb 10oz baby and a deficit of heavy duty drugs was my particular bugbear that day.

Some people, presumably those with unlimited access to all the drugs, claim childbirth is a beautiful thing. In my experience, it is a tortuous process that only goes to prove that if there is a God, he is most certainly a man. The end product is beautiful (if a little bruised and crumpled), but the means to that beautiful end involve just a bit too much blood, gore and screaming to make it into my all-time top ten great nights out. Although it does beat a New Year's Eve I once spent in Cleethorpes.

Drugs often help to take the edge off (I'm talking about childbirth again now, not Cleethorpes - there aren't enough drugs in the world to take the edge off that), but it seems me and certain birth-friendly drugs are just not meant to be.

In the days, weeks and months before Munchkin Minor came along, the only thing that kept me from becoming a gibbering wreck at the thought of the excruciating hours of "beauty" to come was my special mantra: "What do we want? An epidural! When do we want it? Now!"

I requested an epidural when Munchkin Major made his appearance four years or so ago, but it didn't quite go according to plan. The very tired and emotional doctor who was charged with sticking a needle the size of a telegraph pole into my back managed not to paralyse me (hurrah!) but forgot to connect the top-up drip (boo!). This meant the floor was feeling little pain, thanks to an ever-increasing anaesthetic puddle, but I was still a tiddly bit uncomfortable and still swearing like an oil rigger.

This time, Munchkin Minor was in such a hurry to meet her public, there was no time to raise an anaesthetist from the dead to carry out the procedure. Hence the inordinate amount of swearing and shouting.

But the weird and wonderful thing about childbirth is that once the final push has been pushed and the final scream has been screamed, the swearing and shouting stops immediately and your personality twangs back into place quicker than a physio can say "pelvic floor clenches".

Within minutes of telling the midwives where to stick their gas and air pipe, I was thanking them profusely for all their invaluable help and advice and asking them in my most polite voice - the one my mother would be very proud of - if I might have a bath. But my slightly schizophrenic behaviour didn't faze them one bit. Whether I was screaming obscenities at them or asking them politely to pass the soap, they were caring, calm and thoroughly professional throughout.

So, here's to the next time ladies (I'm raising a D-cup of breast milk in salute to you). How about giving me that epidural now?

Updated: 09:32 Tuesday, April 29, 2003