At first I could suppress the nausea with determined chewing of American hard gums - the harder the better for venting the frustration. I got through so many packets that I frequently jumped off the Tube mid-journey to work because I could no longer wait for fresh supplies.

By the time my pregnancy was confirmed, at about six weeks, the nausea was overwhelming and even two pounds of gums a day were failing to help. The gastric effects of sailing through a mountainous Bay of Biscay in a force 10 gale had nothing on the sickness engulfing me by now - not just in the morning, but afternoons, evenings and nights, too.

Then the vomiting began. Everything came back up - from dry toast, to plain biscuits, to a mere sip of water. I was sick not only through my mouth some 25 to 30 times a day - but often through my nose, too. I struggled in to see my GP, having been sick in her car park, her waiting room loo and very nearly on the yucca plant next to her desk, pleading for help.

Her response was that morning sickness was normal in pregnancy, and that, anyway, as I was moving, my new GP should take on my case. Chastened, I returned to work but barely surfaced from the ladies' loo once again. By the next day, eight weeks on, I had kept down no water for 36 hours, my limbs were trembling, my lips parched and my skin leathery.

I pleaded with the doctor, in the area where I was to move to in four months time, to see me. Just one look at the wreck in front of her and she sent me to a specialist emergency clinic at Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital in west London. I stopped the taxi during the short journey between her surgery and the hospital no fewer than eight times to vomit.

Once there, an enormously patient male doctor took my details from the other side of the door in the bathroom where I had had to ensconce myself. I emerged finally, looking 30 years older than usual, to be met with a flurry of doctors and nurses and the first acknowledgement that this might be a bit more than run of the mill.

First off was an emergency scan - interrupted twice by mad dashes to the loo - to try to find the problem. No, I wasn't expecting twins (which can cause terrible sickness) and nor were there any other visible causes. Indeed, there in the centre of the picture was a strong, regular, pulsating white light - my son's heartbeat, and a sight so wondrous, it convinced me that whatever happened would be worth it just to save it.

I was taken upstairs to a ward and connected to a saline drip to re-hydrate me, and was given powerful anti-emetic injections to stop me being sick. My tearful protests about the dangers of drugs in pregnancy, and particularly anti-morning sickness ones in the wake of thalidomide, were met with reassurances about the relative safety of modern versions - and a warning that I had no choice if I wanted to keep the baby.

In effect, they explained, I was allergic to pregnancy. My body was at war with the key pregnancy hormone Beta HCG and its line of attack was constant vomiting to try to get rid of it. The only way to go was to restrict potential damage to both of us by reducing the vomiting. Wired up to the drip and drugged to the eyeballs, I was later able to enjoy my first two-hour blissful break from being sick in a fortnight. Five days later, I left hospital weak and nauseous but with the vomiting under control. But over the next three weeks, it slowly built up again, even more corrosively this time. It felt like I was drowning in nausea.

Spring is my favourite season, but that year the colours of the spring flowers all faded into grey and beige and everything I tried to eat tasted of metal. Once again, water would not stay down and I was rushed into hospital for another bout of treatment. Now five months pregnant, I returned to work and prayed the phone wouldn't ring on my desk, as moving to answer it would make me sick. I prayed no one would speak to me, as speaking made me sick. And then I hoped I wouldn't have to leave my desk, as walking made me dizzy - until one day the floor appeared to rise up and a blackness descended.

Another trip to the doctor unearthed high sugar levels in my urine - a sign of diabetes, and possibly brought on by my unprecedented consumption levels of American hard gums, as well as the erratic nourishment my body had been getting.

At 34 weeks, feeling like a zombie and at my wits' end, my waters broke. It was one of the most dramatic moments of my life. Not only was there water everywhere but the nausea and the vomiting stopped instantaneously - that very second. I felt hungry for the first time for seven and a half months and, although urged to go straight to hospital, I insisted on eating one of the biggest meals of my life.

I had second helpings of my mother's homemade hamburgers, mashed potato and leeks (a childhood favourite) and second helpings of apple crumble (another) as well. And still I wanted more, the sheer joy of tasting food and the freedom from nausea made me want to laugh and laugh - and eat and eat.

At last, we drove to the hospital, where I was kept in until an infection brought on early labour four days later. I was warned that waters breaking that early are almost certain to spark infection but that it was important to keep the baby inside me for every hour possible.

I sat and ate to my heart's content. NHS fare tasted like Michelin-rated cuisine. I was pregnant and at last I felt great to be alive. Then on the fourth morning, I woke with pains in my knees and I vomited again. Slowly the pains spread and my temperature soared. The midwives monitored the baby's heartbeat and I could see long faces all around.

My partner, Jonathan, arrived after the mild contractions began. I was ordered to stay in bed, until suddenly my son's heartbeat started to falter. They pushed me and my bed out to the lift to the surgical floor at breakneck speed but it failed to arrive. When we finally got to the delivery suite, no one was smiling. We were given five minutes to see if there was an improvement. There was none.

There was more running and I was told it would have to be general anaesthetic for the operation, as it worked quicker than an epidural and the baby had to come out now. My last memory is of a man in a dark jacket, I presume the anaesthetist, complaining he had not had time to change before attending to me.

Sometime later I awoke in huge pain: when the anaesthetic wears off there is little to protect you from the searing wound in your abdomen. As it was an emergency, they had had to shove a tube down my throat to clear my stomach before operating, and it had taken my voice away. My only mode of communication was to draw the letters P-A-I-N with a finger on my palm. After what seemed like an age they brought some morphine, and my partner told me we had a perfect little boy. I was so dopey I never asked where he was, or if I could see him.

That night I slept next to the operating theatre, dreaming strange drug-induced dreams of fields and flowers. At six sharp the next morning, I was given a bed bath by two midwives while a couple of floors down my son was also being given a wash and brush-up. At 7.15am, 12 hours to the minute after he was born, we were introduced to each other, both trying to look our best for such an important meeting.

He was a tiny but perfect human being, who had entered the world after all our traumas with the lustiest of cries. Despite being six weeks early, his birth weight was a respectable five and a half pounds, and he looked like a giant compared with the minute little ones in the special care unit where he stayed for two nights for observation, and a course of prophylactic antibiotics. He looked so gorgeous, I wondered whether he was really mine. Could there not have been a mix-up in the furore surrounding his birth?

My fears of associating him with all the pain and suffering have been completely unfounded. As time goes on, I think I love Laurie all the more for what we went through together to bring him into the world. But every spring, when the trees are in bud, I dare not look - even two years on the sight still makes me feel queasy.