I remember being helped from a wheelchair onto an x-ray table to have a paracentesis tube placed under ultrasound guidance at the radiology unit of the hospital where I was being treated for OHSS. It was February 2006.

As I lay back, the nurse gave a chuckle and a wink. "The things we do for kids!" she said, and there was a general echo of friendly laughter around the room. Then she continued more gently and seriously, leaning closer and brushing the hair from my brow: "It never stops, you know." For a long time those words gave me comfort. For a long time I wondered why.

On Friday I cross-pollinated The Secret Society from Mrs Spock's blog, and it threw a new light onto The Mummy Club and its hazing rituals. It was also quite timely, it turns out, since my hazing began this morning when I phoned my mother. Somehow or other I ended up hearing my birth story - suffice to say it includes an emergency C-section and a stay in the NICU - as well as a cheerful history of my mother's breast-feeding difficulties. To finish, because by then she was on quite a roll, I got to hear about the arduous battle to have me sleep through the night, which was finally won, for the very first time, when I was no less than fifteen months of age. "You were such a horrible baby," my mother concluded dreamily. "No wonder I got depressed."

But you know what? It all kind of rolled off my back. Now perhaps, in my mind, it's just too early to be worrying about those sorts of things, but to a certain extent I think I've already been hazed. Our conception story may seem pretty par for the course - tame, even - to most of you, but from the untrained comrade it commands awe and respect. C-section? NICU? Sleepless nights? I'll raise you one bout of moderately severe OHSS, three biochemical pregnancies, a miscarriage and a vanishing twin - not to mention the infertility, IUIs and IVF. When it comes to rocky beginnings, my own mother can't beat me. But that's going to take her a while to accept.

That radiography nurse, on the other hand, awarded me my Mummy Club papers long ago, on an x-ray table in a hospital, during an injection of local anaesthetic. Far from labelling me an inductee - or an obsessed tryhard who doesn't know when to call it a day - she spoke as one member of The Club to another. "The things we do for kids!" she chuckled. And then, because she could see I was freshly arrived, "It never stops, you know."