Every mom has their pregnancy story, their push and pull into motherhood. Life can be often bewildering if we dare go outside our known comfort zone and test the water. I never believed in the happily ever after fairytale, that was until my pregnancy story began.
My ideal pregnancy story
Woman experience pregnancy differently, some love being pregnant others hate it. Personally I loved being pregnant, but yeah it was a surprise.
Id love to tell you that I had 10k in the bank, was happily in a relationship, had a reliable job that paid maternity leave, and had bought a house, and my pregnancy was planned. But then I’d be lying.
Of course, these were all up there in my check list of must haves, before I had a baby and factors I’d considered, before falling pregnant.
Ain’t life great at showing a different way?.
Symptoms pregnancy story
When I eventually found out I was definitely pregnant on the seventh pregnancy test, it was way past the stage, I could even begin to live without this little light.
I’d been living in India and was in Thailand getting my India visa renewed. I wasn’t feeling well and hadn’t for months, sleeping loads and still feeling tired with mood swings and unusually, highly emotional.
I’d suspected I was pregnant. That wise intuition of body signs we can be blessed with. So I repeatedly took the test having missed periods for months. Which to be honest with you happened the first time I was in India, so I wasn’t alarmed when it happened again.
However each pregnancy test I took came back with a negative result.
The final test in India, was after falling from my friends veranda in Milani, onto a heaped mountain of bricks.
Im very grateful to this day, I chose to fall left and not right.
Pregnancy story the chaos before the calm
A friend Dave had just arrived in Milani and was staying in a hut down the hill from us, and we went to visit.
The view from Dave’s veranda was beautiful. All you could hear was the rush of the river, no normal Indian noises of tuk tuk, or touts.
It was absolute paradise.
As Saif and Dave were making chai in the hut, i’m on the veranda in utter awe of his view. I lean over the veranda and now my head is at my feet, I realise the wooden slat signifying the balcony was loose. As the slat falls, way past my ability to negotiate the height in meters, I manage to stand up, but know, i’m going to fall.
You know when you know you’re about to fall and you have that split second uh oh, except my uh oh was either between two buildings, which there was no coming back from in the Himalayas, or onto another roof, with a wee mountain of bricks as a cushion.
I chose the brick option, somersaulting 360, 4 meter fall and landing on my coccyx. I felt more relieved that i’d managed to fall the non death route, then scared that I couldn’t get up. I literally bounced off my coccyx a few foot forward and was now lying in complete agony.
I’m crying, as the boys come out and realise what’s happened. I can’t walk properly and I guess i’ve broken my ankle, but i’m more anxious i’ve cracked my coccyx.
Signs of pregnancy story first trimester
Off to the hospital I hop into a tuk tuk. I’d not been in a tuk tuk for a couple of months and realise I cant sit,
It just doesn’t feel right.
I always ask mums, how does it feel to you?
For me it was a big, deep, assertive voice within, telling me NOT to sit.
So there I am, on one foot in a tuk tuk, negotiating the Milani Himalaya hills, holding all my body weight up, while the tuk tuk swayed right and left and my boyfriend and friend looked at me like, WTF are you doing! sit down.
I couldn’t, it didn’t feel right, it was that simple.
So as we are seen by the doctors and they say, we need to X-ray your ankle and spine, I ask them to give me a pregnancy test before the X-ray. They observe my skeleton like body weight with confusion, but I know there’s something not right with my inner body. They do the test and its the 6th test which returns negative.
I just burst out crying, pointing to my belly and asking them
What is this then? It’s just getting bigger and bigger.
Mmmmm, Do you eat street food? The doctor asks me.
I reply of course! its the best food going.
“Mmmm maybe you have a bug type animal inside you, like a tapeworm or….
Now i’m totally freaking out that its even more alien than a baby.
My sixth sense was challenged and proven with tested science AGAIN!!.
Second trimester of my pregnancy story
A month later I fly to Thailand to renew my visa. A friend is living and working in Bangkok and offers me her flat. Another friend of her’s is flying in from Edinburgh at the same time, and they’re heading south to the party islands, and she invites me to join them later, and gives me keys to her flat.
My priority was my Indian visa, so I stayed to sort that out and was totally in my element, living in a plush pad, with a swimming pool, gym, TV and a quiet space. I hadn’t encountered solitude and this kind of space in quietness or cleanliness, since I’d left Scotland, and was in total awe of the silent experience.
But I didn’t feel well. Sleeping lots and still feeling tired.
I started making excuses, like, i’m not as fit as I usually am, i’m not eating as well as I would at home, i’m smoking to much. The list of unhealthy habits was long.
So I started doing yoga and swimming in the morning and evening and really enjoying it.
One morning, I thought i’d go for a run, thinking it might boost my energy levels. As I began jogging, I realise my boobs were properly bouncing!
Ooooo! Never in a million years have I experienced that feeling. I have proud fried eggs, my boobs don’t jiggle around.
It was then, I realised I was most definitely pregnant, what else could possibly create bigger boobs?
How I found out pregnancy story
I went and bought my seventh pregnancy test, just for, still swimming up the Nile, confirmation.
As I held the positive pregnancy stick continuously crying, at the unknown journey ahead, feeling life within move and wriggle. I hugged my belly and said to my baby
“You’re a right fly one, aren’t you? I’ve been looking for you for months!”
Nobody knew for two days, as I processed the surprise and thought about what my next move was. I then called the father. Do I go back to India and work, as planned and try again with Saif? Who was now saying,
“We must marry and you must come back to India”
We’d split up a few days after I fell from the roof,
Or do I go home?
Where is home?
I had no plans to return to Scotland, but now I was pregnant, the only place I wanted to be, was Scotland. But where in Scotland? I’d been living in Aberdeen for eight years.
As I sat and meditated, Glasgow resonated so strongly with my feelings. I’d moved to Glasgow at 16 and left in 2006, to rehabilitate after a motorbike accident, and study at university to refocus my future. But Glasgow always felt like a home from home.
So after returning to India to tie up a few must do’s. I returned home to Glasgow, a month later, 5 months pregnant, with lice and dysentery.
I was nearly 33, homeless, jobless, penniless, lice infested, projecting water rapidly from my bum, underweight as a consequence, ‘educated’ and pregnant.
Support circle
How did this happen?
Didn’t even have enough money to buy toothpaste. It was a humbling, humiliating, heart opening, time.
With awesome friends and family support, lending me money til I got myself sorted, in which i’m eternally grateful for,
month by month, I got bigger and stronger.
A dear friend let me sleep in his flat til I got organised with a place.
I registered with the local surgery and went along to an appointment, lice free by this point. The doctor asked confusingly
“Are you sure you’re pregnant?”
I looked quite ill, having had dysentery for a few months and had lost a lot of weight and the doctor carried out another pregnancy test, confirming what I already knew. He still looked quite concerned, that I was.
I was classified as a high risk pregnancy, due to being in India, not knowing the exact date of conception, being severely underweight, having a speech disability and having dysentery.
This meant I wasn’t allowed a home pregnancy birth experience. Birthing plan one of many, throughly thrown out the window.
I had to have extra scans to make sure Seb, which means Apple in Hindi, was developing well. Felt very grateful for a National Health Service, family and friends.
The midwives were amazing couldn’t have asked for a better pair who guided me through, the remaining pregnancy.
Third trimester chaos calms
The nurses reassured me that everything seemed to be developing fine, I could relax.
I started ridding myself of unhealthy habits.
Smoothies were back, tobacco was out, a fuller more nourished diet was vital.
Being still and mindful of movements was necessary and putting weight on, was key for my babies health and mine.
By meditating in the morning and evening for inner focus, and practicing yoga most days, especially with the birthing ball I realised everything we needed, was provided for.
I got a flat when I was 7 months pregnant and it was then life really began again.
A new journey was born.
Seb, stage name Sebalicious, was born 2 months after moving into our new home. Healthy and hungry, with all fingers and toes and the most glorious presence of energy and smell.
After the dramatic pregnancy and not looking after myself as well as I would have, if i’d known sooner. I was just so relieved Seb was as healthy as he was and we were both ok. Will never forget that first hour of holding him and welcoming Seb to the world and the nurse saying;
“Well done mum“.
OMG i’m a mum!
Welcome to motherhood.
Self love check talk
They’re no perfect parent, and no perfect way of falling pregnant, only our ideal.
We all have our own way of doing it.
Life can give us a much needed shove, as it did me many times to realise, I was still gliding down a rockier path of self destruction and self sabotage.
I never wanted kids! ok maybe 6, one day, but that’s like when I’m 40, not 33!. But once it happened, I realised I didn’t know otherwise, it was like my son had always been a part of me.
I knew before the birth, i’d be doing it as a single mum, as living with his fathers culture, just wasn’t an option for us. I did consider aborting before telling anyone anything.
Real, deep inward questions, when finding out I was pregnant.
Am I ready to begin to start changing me? To shed skin that really won’t nurture either of us, in this new journey ahead.
Change and transformation is an often messy, small stepped staged, process. I spoke about this in I changed my thinking it changed my life
Nothing happens over night, real change takes time, hard inner dedicated work, before fruition is founded. It isn’t always a pretty picnic, just like pregnancy, motherhood and life itself, isn’t.
It is through our stories and experiences that define our character and hopefully shape us into a better version of ourselves, through the lessons we will learn repeating’y, until the guidance is no longer needed.
Motherhood created a woman out of me
I’d be lying if I said becoming a mum hasn’t changed me.
It’s transformed me back to my true essence of health and wellness. I was an avid 6am swimmer and athlete as a child, before alcohol, drugs, boys, and the rock and roll emotional lifestyle, took over.
Drugs were my preferred crutch used and by far the easiest one to continue, as life’s coping aid, until I realised the person I was running from, all this time…….. was me.
When will you sit still my dear, and just be.
Being able to sit still with our shadow with love and acceptance, is a great lesson to pass on to our children.
Every woman has their pregnancy story.
This is mine.
