After bleeding most of the night on the pot, Anushree Majumdar lay down on the floor to catch a few winks before the morning turned. “I was bleeding what felt like litres of blood,” says the 38-year-old, “and the floor would be easier to clean up. I had to wait until 9 am, when the gynaec down the road from my apartment would open.”

Majumdar, then 24 and a journalist in Delhi, was three months pregnant, but didn’t know it. “I was glad to have just broken up with a toxic boyfriend,” she says. “This was in 2008, when social media was not the landscape of our life, and medical conditions such as PCOS [Polycystic Ovary Syndrome] were not on our radar. I wasn’t tracking my periods and had never been pregnant before, so I missed all the signals my body was sending. My period was erratic anyway, sometimes 40 days apart. I worked odd hours, ate out a lot and was overweight, so becoming a little more rounded was not unexpected. I didn’t have morning sickness, but in hindsight, I realise that the overpowering desire for chocolate was a strong indicator. I was a slave to that craving.”