I was five months pregnant when I shared a bag of cocaine with a dozen other glamorous women at a swanky perfume launch. I didn’t hesitate… but the consequences were horrifying and it’s the biggest regret of my life

Sitting around a dimly lit table with a dozen other women at a swanky perfume launch, our plates of food were carried away – largely untouched – by the waiting staff.

Because the truth is, we were all much more interested in ‘dessert’; the small baggie of white powder that was surreptitiously passed around afterwards.

I think everyone partook; I certainly didn’t consider turning it down. It was just seen as the norm in the PR world in the late Noughties. No biggie.

Except for one, supremely shocking fact: I was almost five months pregnant.

You’ll rightly be horrified that not only would I take an illegal drug, but that I would do so while carrying a child.

But I’m sharing my story as a warning to other young women who may be tempted to continue their party-loving ways while pregnant – or have a lifestyle that means they do so unknowingly. Because it remains the biggest source of regret of my life – not to mention supreme guilt.

Why? Because I believe that my cocaine use is responsible for the learning difficulties my daughter now struggles with. 

Research shows that, like alcohol, cocaine rapidly crosses through the placenta and the foetal blood-brain barrier, disrupting the developing brain and nervous system.

This can lead to learning difficulties, attention and behavioural problems, impaired vision and hearing, trouble processing emotions and language problems.

Shockingly, research shows I’m not alone in my risky behaviour. In 2013, America’s National Institute on Drug Abuse estimated there are about 750,000 cocaine-exposed pregnancies every year – around 20 per cent of America’s birth rate.

This is likely because – like my own – half of pregnancies are unplanned.

At the time of that perfume launch, I had only discovered I was going to be a mother a week beforehand. A single career girl who loved to party, I had somehow sailed through my first trimester and most of my second unaware my body was nurturing new life. I hadn’t experienced any morning sickness, and my periods had always been erratic.

As a busy PR executive, I rarely ate three meals a day and put my slightly more rounded tummy down to having slacked off with my training.

So realising I was four-and-a half months pregnant – too late to do anything about it – left me reeling with shock and denial.

Then in my mid-30s, I was in an on-off relationship with a man I’d met 18 months earlier. He lived in New York, and we met up just twice a month. It was hardly conducive to raising a child together.

But the bigger issue was I hadn’t ever thought about becoming a mum. Yes, friends around me were doing so but I didn’t want to swap the glitz and the bustle of my career for the mundanity of motherhood.

I’d been introduced to cocaine when I started working in PR in my 20s. Networking was key to being successful, and I’d have been an outlier if I hadn’t used it.

Over the years my use would yo-yo according to work pressures, though typically it was a couple of times a month, and I enjoyed the energy boost and the confidence it gave me.

My on-off boyfriend was also a user; we’d take it together with the same ease we’d crack open a bottle of fizz. Yet the negatives included everything from crashing comedowns to nosebleeds.

I can only blame my decision to take it at that perfume launch – for polluting my innocent child – on the shock I was experiencing. I never did so again. But casting my mind back over the previous months, when I’d been unaware I was pregnant, I asked myself: had I been a regular user?

Of course I had. I don’t think I went a fortnight without at least one line. I hadn’t considered myself to be an addict – I had a successful career, lived in a beautiful terrace home in north-west London and was as far from being a stereotypical ‘druggie’ as you can get – but it didn’t matter. The damage had been done.

I had the awkward conversation with my boss about becoming a mum a fortnight later. He knew how we had ‘networked’ together the previous months.

He rearranged his shocked features pretty well, although I burst into tears afterwards when my PA told me she’d overheard him saying: ‘It’s a pity she didn’t know earlier and could have taken care of things differently.’

My boyfriend had a similar reaction, making it clear he would support me on a financial basis only. I told myself I didn’t need his support or my boss’s pity. I was going to do what I could to make things up to my child and give them the best life.

I was 34 when I had a scheduled caesarean. When I held Esme in my arms, I couldn’t believe I had made her; she was perfect.

Admittedly Esme, who was born at full-term, was a little small at 6lb 1oz, but I didn’t think anything of it. She was quieter than other babies, but her gummy smile would put any worries to the back of my mind.

It was only when she started at nursery aged three that I really started to notice Esme was different. She was never the first to join in, and everything seemed harder for her, from learning to put on her clothes to brushing her teeth. And she’d get fixated on certain foods and toys.

As time went on, she struggled with basic things such as learning the alphabet, counting to ten and catching a ball. At that point, I didn’t join the dots.

The connection to cocaine started to dawn on me when I began to do my research into delayed development in children. By now Esme was four, and it was obvious she was different. She was struggling with her vision too, and started wearing glasses.

When I searched for the impact of taking cocaine during pregnancy, the results underlined that my use could be responsible for Esme’s struggles. I almost keeled over with guilt and self-loathing, before vomiting.

When Esme turned five, I decided to move to Shropshire to be near my mum. I’ll admit Mum often had more patience with her.

Esme had also started having meltdown after meltdown, sparked by things such as if I hadn’t prepared her breakfast a certain way. That was when I started taking her to specialists.

Of course, I couldn’t tell the doctors what I thought was behind Esme’s struggles, though now I wish I’d been honest with them. But then they just told me she was ‘slower’ than her peers, reassuring me there was no such thing as ‘normal’. Though when one doctor said she ‘wasn’t ever going to set the world on fire’, I wanted to strangle him.

That night I broke down, and told Mum about my cocaine use during pregnancy. She held me tight as I cried over how I had behaved, abusing my body, but more importantly my poor little girl’s tiny developing life. Mum was far more generous towards me than I deserved, telling me that regretting the past wasn’t going to change Esme’s future.

At eight, Esme was diagnosed with Asperger’s.

Studies into the effects of taking cocaine during pregnancy are understandably limited.

However, while the proportion of people with autism is believed to be between 1 and 3 per cent, one American study, published in 1992, of 70 children with cocaine exposure in utero who were referred for developmental evaluation, found 11.4 per cent were diagnosed with autism.

The researchers noted that higher rates of autism were not known to occur in children exposed to alcohol or opiates alone, suggesting it could be an effect specific to cocaine.

Today, Esme is 15. Though she still struggles, she was able to attend our local schools and has a nice group of friends.

Recently I attended a reunion of PR friends – polished, respectable women in their late 40s and early 50s, with children of their own. And yet, when someone got the ‘Charlie’ out with a twinkle and a wink, many of them were happy to slide back into old habits.

I didn’t touch it. How could I, with the vision of my daughter’s sweet face swimming before me.

Despite the guilt I still feel, I love her with all my heart. To me, she is imperfectly perfect.

Perhaps one day I will tell what I fear might be the cause of that. If I do, I just pray she’ll forgive me.

■ Camilla Peters is a pseudonym. Names have been changed.