BABYBOGGLES: Pregnant? Moi? Whatever gave you that idea?

'When is she going to tell anyone she’s pregnant? She must be 12 months by now.'

While Myra’s brilliantly unexplained bump in BBC2’s Episodes might be a slight exaggeration of reality, trying to hide my up-the-duffness from my work colleagues was about as easy as Kanye West trying to be humble on stage at Glastonbury (although when Kim captioned a picture of him as a ‘GOAT’ it took me a while to realise she didn't mean he was good at climbing mountains but in fact the 'Greatest Of All Time'.)

So there I was - trotting around the* Heat* office, happily thinking I'd been covering my tracks/ lumps with a chic line in baggy t-shirts - meanwhile the ‘Lucie’s got a bun in the oven’ rumours had been circulating not just in Heat towers, but Grazia in the office next door and pretty much every person in senior management waaaay before I was ready to tell anyone. Why? Because I’m clearly such an alcoholic that when I refrained from having ONE glass of wine at a work event everyone knew instantly. And someone also later told me I’d been walking funny (as if I had one leg shorter than the other apparently).

So I limped and waddled around for the first four months of pregnancy oblivious to the fact that virtually everyone in the office was waiting for me to tell them the big news. Which obviously I wasn’t going to do until I knew I’d got past the chance of having another miscarriage. And luckily being on a course of steroids prescribed by Dr Shehata had a positive side effect – and it wasn’t that I suddenly acquired huge Schwarzenegger style deltoids - in that the tablets masked the symptoms of pregnancy so there was no rushing to hug the toilet bowl every morning.

But while wanting to do everything I could to hide my pregnancy from colleagues for at least the first three to four months – the journey into work gave way to a whole different set of rules entirely. Suddenly all travel on a train, tube or bus found me maneuvering myself into any position that made my stomach stick out and appear as expectant as possible – from pulling my t-shirt so tight I looked like I had a hernia to rubbing my belly like I’d just eaten a massive great pizza. But for the poor people on the train, in the early days of someone's pregnancy it’s pretty hard to work out whether said woman is pregnant and genuinely needs a seat or they've got it totally wrong and she's just very constipated (for the record this has happened to me, and yes I did still take the seat when the poor confused man offered it to me thinking he’d done a nice thing). So my advice in those early ‘Are you pregnant or just bloated?’ months is to get yourself a very cringe ‘baby on board’ badge from the tube station. What’s more, no one bats an eyelid when you ask for one, which made me realise I could have had one ages ago and used it on the days when I really needed a seat. Like those difficult hungover Monday mornings.

Over the last few months I've found myself treating the journey into work like a scientific experiment – surveying my commuter packed laboratory every morning and asking the internal question: Which muggins is going to be the first to offer me their seat today – a man or a woman? And it’s been most enlightening. On some particularly packed journeys I've watched out of the corner of my eye as people glance at my bump and then look quickly back to their Kindle - which suddenly becomes much more interesting than it did a few seconds earlier - pretending they haven't seen me. Sometimes I've actually felt guilt standing there with a bump that presumes to require special treatment (admittedly not for long though).

There was one occasion when all the men on my journey ignored me completely until one kind woman clocked me, jumped up immediately and apologetically ushering me into her seat. On another journey, an elderly lady offered to give hers up but I insisted I was fine (I wasn't going to take a seat from an old person!) until a very sweaty man, surrounded by suitcases stood up and ordered me to take his seat, bellowing across the carriage like he was my dad - 'I won't take no for an answer!' (Thanks Mr suitcase man). If I had to tot up scores I'm pleased to say it's been a pretty even split of men and women giving me a place to park my bump. The key difference being that those female sistas who don't have a seat will still try to help when it's a busy train. I'm forever grateful to the girl who found herself next to me, being shoved into people's armpits and decided it was her duty to assist me and shouted at the men sitting down - 'This woman is pregnant! One of you should stand up you ignorant idiots!' That sure told them.

As for my husband Ben, he has always been very gallant and polite - opening doors and carrying woman's bags whether they are expecting or not. But for some reason, my pregnancy has done things to his brain and he's had moments of trying to 'test' me (like he thinks I need to get in practice for something called motherhood). On one particular occasion, I was with a couple of mates having food half a mile from our house and I felt tired and groggy and didn't want to walk home, so I asked him for a lift.

Here's how the text conversation went:

Me: 'What you doing?'

Him: 'Lying on the sofa watching telly'

Me: 'I'm tired, can you give me a lift?'

Him: 'No'

Me: 'Are you joking?'

Him: 'No, you made your bed now you can lie in it’

Me: 'Come on, I'd give you a lift if it was the other way round. Pllllease'

Him: 'No I refuse to mollycoddle'

Me: 'What are you on about?'

Him: 'I won't be one of those 'yes' dads'

Me: 'But I'm not your child'

Him: 'It's good practice for you being a mum. Now leave me alone I'm watching Game of Thrones'.

Follow Lucie Cave on Twitter @luciecave