‘Enjoy it while you can’. Is there a more chilling phrase to hear while pregnant? | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett

Strangers are so keen to tell me my life as I know it will be over soon - thank goodness for those who have told me it will be OK

Enjoy it while you can": how I've come to dislike these five little words, which have followed me everywhere since my pregnancy became obvious. Suddenly, they are applied to anything pleasurable - sleep, holidays, a meal in a restaurant. Enjoy it while you can," people say (because when the baby comes, your life as you know it will be over).

They mean well, I think, but I'll confess that I've been shocked by the negativity surrounding parenthood. People seem to feel that they simply must tell you how hard it is, warts and all, maybe because no one told them, and they do it with the zeal of missionaries: they have seen the truth, and it is terrible to behold. Hollie McNish has a book of poetry about parenthood called Nobody Told Me. Mine would be called Everybody Told Me, All the Time, Until I Had to Ask Them to Stop.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist