Was it something I said?:

On the one hand, there are those moments when you catch people staring happily at your belly or your baby. Women and men, young and old alike.

Sometimes they progress to your face, and start a conversation. Sometimes, they are content simply to have stared and smiled. Initially I found it odd, and even quite confronting – after all, my mum taught me it’s rude to stare at people. So I was somewhat unused to being stared at myself.

But as my belly got bigger and rounder, I grew used to the stares, and enjoyed the chats. Eventually, it became one of the nicest parts of my pregnancy. It seemed to soften other people, and to soften me, too.

By the time I was due, I’d changed from someone who went around the supermarket with my head down, scanning the list, to someone who stopped and chatted to the person staring at my belly. And it’s carried on now – when I have our daughter with me in her carrier, we often stop and have conversations with people in the shops or on the street. It’s turned the place we live, into our community, our home. It’s lovely.

On the other hand, it appears that, as soon as you are visibly pregnant, it becomes acceptable for strangers (and friends) to tell you in no uncertain terms what you should or shouldn’t be doing for the benefit of your child.

Case in point, last weekend. Being obsessively organised, when I leave the house, I take with me a nappy bag. It contains what I assume are the usual baby accoutrements – nappies, change mat, wipes, bib, change of clothes for our daughter and so on. Thus prepared, we arrived early to meet a friend for lunch, about an hour from home.

As we got out of the car, I noticed my little girl had a leaking nappy, and was able to provide her not only with a clean bum and nappy, but a change of clothes, too. You might say I was feeling a small sense of mum based achievement as I pottered happily along the street.

As I made my way round the stalls of the vintage market, I stopped to chat to a couple of grandmotherly stallholders. After cooing and expressing their opinion that my daughter was beautiful, they asked how old she was. So I told them – nearly four months.

They looked at each other, made a silent agreement that they should say something, as I am so new to this, and told me I should pop some socks on her. (I should explain that her first outfit of the day had leggings with little feet – the second outfit, no feet. So her feet were indeed bare. But it was an unusually warm day, and I was holding her feet as they dangled from the carrier on my chest, so I knew they were warm.) I thanked them for their comment, and said not to worry, her feet were pretty warm. I thought no more of it, and continued happily on my way.

By the time my friend arrived ten minutes later, three other people had told me to put socks, or shoes, on our daughter. Well, I say they’d told me. In reality, one of them did, and the others muttered it to each other, just loud enough for me to hear. It was accompanied by the sort of look you might give someone who had taken a naked baby out into a snowstorm.

The piece de la resistance was an American lady, actually shouting at me down the street “YOU SHOULD PUT SOME SHOES ON THAT BABY!!!” As she was the fifth person, I had unfortunately lost some of my cool. I said, quite loudly that she should keep her opinions to herself.

This is only the most recent example, and perhaps I only used it because it ended with me losing my manners, too. But to cut myself some lack, it has been building for a while now.

For a year I’ve been the surprised, then resigned recipient of lectures by everyone from casual acquaintances to close friends and family.

It seems that what I do or don’t eat or drink, where we have chosen to live, how much I weigh and how much my husband and I earn are all going to have some kind of negative impact on our daughter.

I’ve also had strangers quiz me on our sex life, asked (within 24 hours of having a baby) when we plan to have another child, and been told my inability to breastfeed was all in my mind.

I’m not the world’s most tactful person. In fact I took up yoga largely to ease the removal of my foot from my mouth. Added to that, I’m also in possession of a few opinions, which I’m not afraid to share with my nearest and dearest.

However, due largely to the efforts of my mother, and also as a benefit of growing older, I like to think I am generally capable of knowing when it simply isn’t okay to say something.

Of course, there are moments when we see a friend rasing their child in a way we disagree with. And most of these times, we don’t say anything.

When we do, I think it’s as much about understanding the difference of approach as much as it is a criticism. But these are people we know, from whom we learn, and for whom we have trust and respect.

We know their circumstances, background and beliefs. And we share enough of them that we have chosen to form a friendship. For me, that’s what makes it ok to sometimes ask, to sometimes question.

Despite the softening of my character that pregnancy and motherhood have brought about, I still find it hard to be criticised by strangers.  But I have a feeling that as a mother, it’s something I’ll get used to. And I think it might be ok.

Because for every person who takes the time to stop and tell me I’m doing something wrong, there seem to be two who tell me how beautiful or smiley our daughter is, or how happy a baby she seems. And I can live with that.