It’s amazing how uninhibitedly candid having a baby will make the most inhibited and… can-didn’t… of people. Before the days of labour (yes, days), breasts liberated and leaking in the middle of Nero’s and very loud conversations about episiotomies in very quiet bars, I was such a person. I didn’t wear crop tops (which I and my mummy tummy now wholeheartedly regret) ‘topless’, to me, meant a wine bottle with the cork pulled out, and when faced with the daunting prospect of a communal changing room, I was the one hopping around under a towel tent, Miranda Hart style.

Pregnancy didn’t change matters much. If anything, I was more self-conscious than ever, what with the bowling-ball-cum-beachball belly and the oddly-fitting maternity clothes (they always looked so pregnancy-chic on the models, why did I always end up looking like I was wearing a tent?). During the last few months the temperature reached insane heights. I would get home from work, peel myself out of whatever tentish outfit I had crammed myself into 12 hours earlier and shuck on a pair of my other half’s boxers along with mansize t-shirt from gigs I had gone to in my lighter years (knew they’d come in handy), before raiding the freezer for ice cream. But I never once slept without PJs.

It was around 8am on Tuesday, September 24^th when I lost my sense of modesty. When the only thing standing between you (plus 26 hours of labour already clocked up) and a shot of pethidine is an examination down below, I defy anyone to open their legs slower than a reverse bear trap. From then on, it only got worse. I was in and out of the birthing pool, in and out of the little adjoining bathroom, I think a catheter got involved at one point. All and sundry saw pretty much everything.

If that wasn’t enough to rid oneself of all qualms about nudity, seven months of exclusive breastfeeding will do it. I think pretty much everyone has seen my boobs now. Grandparents-in-law, waiting staff, work colleagues and one extremely alarmed postal worker (forgot. Thought it was just a breezy day.) Not only that, I’ve had discussions with friends, family and, yes, total strangers about nipples, poo, sick, pelvic floors, and – mother of all silence generators – episiotomies. Once I was discussing how breastfeeding gets so much simpler with another mum I’d just met in the John Lewis parents’ room when my baby abruptly detached herself – to check that the wall opposite was in fact still a wall and hadn’t transformed itself into an even bigger boobie whilst her attention had been elsewhere, one can only presume – leaving me hanging and literally, er, dripping in irony. Far from being mortified, we had a laugh about it.

I suppose it’s all part of that thing where you have a child and realise that there are much bigger things to prioritise over people desperately trying to look anywhere other than at your naked breast. Like your child’s most basic need for food, for example. But don’t get me wrong – just because a few dozen more people have seen my breasts now than this time last year, it hasn’t turned me into any kind of exhibitionist. Though it might sometimes seem like it to my poor family and friends, I don’t whip them out for the sake of it. It’s just that having them out doesn’t bother me, because my particular form of toplessness is to serve the purpose of making my baby shut up (ahem, I mean, feeding and nourishing my daughter). In fact, there probably isn’t a better purpose for toplessness. Except, perhaps, that of a good bottle of Sauvignon.