This article was commissioned to Magus Education by ParentVille. We republish it with their permission. This is how it goes. You pee on a stick. Small hurrah. You bite your nails for the next 12 weeks before sharing the news. Toast. Sorry, mocktail for you. Flash- forward a few weeks — you have yet to hit check out on that flattering maternity dress in your Seraphine basket — when it starts. A whisper from a colleague here, a flash of panic across a well-meaning friend’s face there, a schools’ special in Parents magazine. The chorus of voices becomes deafeningly loud, the same question repeats again and again: have you put your unborn child’s name down for nurseries? Schools? Universities? You laugh it off at first; they can’t be serious. But they are. And soon you laugh no more, because the whisper has built to a terrifying roar of third-hand horror stories along tales of creepy...

