As I’m nearing the end of my pregnancy, I’m feeling emotional, tired and stressed. I have too much time on my hands. I’m looking back over the last few months, and I’m seeing a picture that I don’t like.

In the first weeks of pregnancy, when the tiredness was extreme, I mentioned how exhausted I was to Tom just once, and his reply was, “Just because the books tell you that you’ll be tired doesn’t mean you have to pretend you are.”

It’s been pretty much the same all the way throughout. If I’ve mentioned anything aching or any symptom, he’s rolled his eyes. He even said we won’t be having another baby because he couldn’t go through it again. I rarely complain about pain or discomfort, so his comments are unfair.

I’ve been having Braxton Hicks for the past month; he told me the other day that he doesn’t want to hear about it until I’m dropping on the floor in pain.

I’m starting to have thoughts about leaving him because if it’s like this now, how will it be once the baby’s here?

He’s always gone to the pub twice a week; he said that once we got near the due date at thirty-seven weeks, he either wouldn’t go or he’d drive and not have a drink. The pub is twenty miles away. He gets a train there and back and is gone a total of about six hours. Now my due date is a week away, and he’s still going, but for the last three weeks, he’s been three times a week and out one night a week to college. He drinks five or six pints, and then once he’s home, he has more to drink.

Some nights he gets home and comes upstairs to say hello, but not every night.

We haven’t spoken for days. I am so fed up with him going out and leaving me alone with the children. I am indoors alone most days as I’m too apprehensive to go out in case labour starts, and I’m spending half the week nights alone too, while he goes off out having fun with his drinking buddies.

He barely lifts a finger to help with housework; he might wash up occasionally, but that’s about it. I do everything, and then he has the nerve to complain that he’s tired and has a nap on the sofa. If I try to rest, which I badly need, he wakes me up. Yesterday, he woke me because he decided that if I napped, I wouldn’t sleep at night. I got up to find that he’d made dinner for Amelia, Rosie and himself, but he didn’t make one for Josh or me. Today, I napped for ten minutes before he woke me, telling me I needed to get up and watch the children as he was going to the pub again.

I don’t know what I can do. I’ve thought about booking myself into a hotel to try and sleep without him disturbing me, but I can’t risk it in case I do go into labour. At this rate, I don’t know how I will cope with the birth given how exhausted I am.

It seems to be a no-win situation, at least for me.