Now here’s something to get your teeth into – My Heartbeat Bear’s teething tricks to ease your baby’s discomfort as those first white pearls start to emerge. There are lots of old wives tales out there – some are worth a try but others perhaps best avoided, despite advice from different generations as each seem to have their very own ideas on the best ways to soothe and ease the process.

Victorian author Charles Kingsley got his feet wet with The Water Babies, a children’s novel which many of us oldies read as youngsters or watched the Disney film in the seventies which offered a liberal interpretation of the novel. Whether the idea came from the eccentric writer’s friendship with a wasp he once saved from drowning or whether it triggered the vision of a softer, enveloping underwater sanctuary is anyone’s guess.

Are you expecting a girl or a boy – that is the question? And do you want to know? That’s another question! And if you do want to know, do you want your friends and family to know too? So many questions – but everyone is different. Some mums and dads in waiting want to savour the 40 week moment and wait to be surprised in the delivery suite, others want to know early...