1. Relishing the early weeks when only you and your partner know your special secret.
2. Knowing you've got nine whole months to plan, dream and fantasise.
3. Throwing away your ovulation charts and testing kits and going back to having sex without a timetable.
4. Choosing maternity clothes - they've never been more practical or more sexy.
5. Now you've got the perfect excuse to pamper yourself - spending hours in a scented bath, enjoying a massage or rubbing soothing lotions into your growing bump.
6. You can join an antenatal class and find a whole new bunch of friends (and don't forget our BabyCenter birth clubs: another great way to meet people due at the same time as you).
7. For once in your life you need to get heavier - pregnancy is nature's way of making you feel good about putting on weight.
8. If this is your first baby, enjoy the next nine months sleeping late at weekends: you may not get many chances later on.
9. At last you've got the bosom you've always wanted, which means you also have...
10...a great excuse to buy lots of pretty new bras.
11. Now you have the good reason you have been looking for to take up yoga, meditation, healthy eating and deep breathing.
12. At last you'll have something more than potplants and cats to care for and nurture!
13. Suddenly you'll find you're getting lots of extra attention from parents, aunts and uncles, not to mention your partner.
14. You may find you develop a closer relationship with sisters, cousins or friends who are parents themselves. Congratulations, you've just won free admission to the parents' club!
15. Telling your mum, dad, sister, brother, aunt the good news and watching their faces light up.
16. New talents! Whether it's knitting bootees or assembling a flat-pack cot, you'll suddenly find yourself trying out all sorts of new skills.
17. Suddenly you'll feel a new appreciation for your own mother and all she went through having you.
18. Decorating the nursery: one of the most exciting things you'll ever do.
19. Feeling those first fluttering kicks and thinking, 'Is that what I think it is? Or is it just wind?'
20. Feeling OK for sending your partner out for chicken tikka masala followed by double-choc chip ice cream.
21. Your parents digging out your old cot or clothes, which they've kept safely all this time 'just in case'.
22. Going for healthy walks with your partner and getting fresh air in your lungs because it's good for you and good for your baby.
23. Enjoying the extra-vivid dreams you get in late pregnancy - and laughing about them with your friends.
24. Feeling a little pair of heels prodding under your diaphragm and knowing you'll soon be meeting the little person they belong to!
25. Choosing baby clothes - or just phoning round for all the catalogues, leafing through them and planning what you're going to buy.
