Bonkers: A Real Mum's Hilariously Honest tales of Motherhood, Mayhem and Mental Health. Olivia Siegl

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СКАЧАТЬ back to me and my foolish notion that we would get pregnant purely because we were on our honeymoon and I was off the pill. I missed a period a couple of weeks before coming back from the trip, we got overly excited – only to do a test and taste the first taste of disappointment, a taste with a strength that amazed us. A few weeks earlier, we hadn’t even known we wanted a baby. Now, we’d spoken about it, and it was all we wanted. We ended up shrugging this off and calmly chastising ourselves for thinking it would have happened so quickly, but also being happy that it proved to us without a shadow of a doubt how much we wanted this little person in our lives.

      This calm nonchalance was all well and good at the start. However, once the months started to tick by, without a blue line making an appearance, we started to worry. We both told each other it was crazy; it had only been a few months and we knew rationally that it could take up to a year or longer. But we still couldn’t stop the little niggling of fear of ‘What if it isn’t going to happen for us?’ and ‘What if there is something wrong with one of us?’.

      I’d heard about ovulation sticks from family and friends, but I didn’t know if this was the right way to go about things or just let things happen naturally. This worry was compounded by a remark someone said to me when we were talking about couples ‘actively trying’ for a baby and using these sticks to help them know the best time to be having sex: ‘Oh, I would hate to do that. To be one of those couples who have to have sex even if they don’t want to, just to have a baby. I’d much rather just go with the flow and see what happens.’

      My response to this?

      BULLSHIT!

      Give yourself a couple of months of ‘just seeing what happens’ and, when nothing does, of feeling the anxiety start to build along with the fear that it may not ‘just happen’ for you, that you may not be lucky enough to have the baby you’ve been dreaming about. Give yourself a couple of months of that and then tell me what you think about increasing your chances of conceiving by knowing the optimum time to get pregnant thanks to weeing on a stick? Anyone who has ever tried for a baby knows that once you get a few failed months under your unfastened chastity belt you will try ANYTHING to get with child – from having sex on the smiley days even when you are feeling more knackered than turned on to trying more ‘effective’ positions and the waiting with yours leg in the air after having sex. Literally ANYTHING. And you know what? So, you should. There is no shame in it, nothing to feel embarrassed or unnatural about trying anything you can to get pregnant, even peeing on a stick.

      Therefore, never feel ashamed or embarrassed about whatever route you take to being able to bring your tiny human into this world – and, most importantly, never feel judged on it. Never!

      FINDING OUT WE WERE PREGNANT

      So, these Bad Boy ovulation sticks worked a treat and after a couple of months of using them along with every other Old Wives’ trick in the book, we were officially in the club. However, thanks to me being crap at calculating my cycle dates – or, if I’m honest, anything mathematical (sorry, Mr Warton, all that GCSE maths tuition never really stuck!) – I didn’t realise I was late until almost a week afterwards! Oh yes, thanks to me miscounting the days on my work calendar, I was nearly a week late, and the smell of coffee (hard to escape when working in an office in Geneva because it runs through the veins of these people) was making me want to throw up during every meeting. In true Swiss fashion, we had a lot of meetings and a lot of coffee.

      So, there I was at my desk in Geneva, when it struck me that I might have miscalculated. I started to recount the days and yes, yes, divvy here had made a mistake. My stomach somersaulted (not just because of the reek of coffee) as I dared to let myself believe that I might have a little person already growing inside me. I reached for my phone and called my hubby straightaway.

      ‘I think I’m five days late.’

      He was so excited, and we both couldn’t wait to get home so we could do the test together. So there we were, hours later, at home surrounded by a wide-grinned bubble of nervous energy wanting it so much to be true. Not quite believing it could be and trying to hold onto our heads and our hearts in case the lines did not appear – or, in the case of our French digital Clear Blue test, the word enceinte did not appear.

      It was the longest few minutes of our lives. I did the test, saw the timer start and was so scared to keep looking at it that we placed it on the coffee table, out of sight and out of reach, and sat on the sofa together like two bunnies in the headlights, grinning and giggling at each other like loons.

      ‘Shall we look?’

      ‘No, it won’t have worked yet.’

      ‘The timer’s still going.’

      ‘Stop looking.’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘Stop peeking at it, I can see you looking, come and sit back down.’

      ‘Oh my God, do you think we could be?’

      ‘I don’t know, do you?’

      ‘What if it’s positive, can you imagine?’

      More grinning like loons.

      ‘Do you feel like you are?’

      ‘Yes. No. Oh God, I don’t know!’

      ‘Shit, we really could be pregnant!’

      Fingers crossed harder than ever before.

      ‘Right, time’s up. What should we do?’

      ‘You look.’

      ‘No, you look.’

      ‘OK.’

      ‘Wait! Let’s look together.’

      ‘OK.’

      And there it was for the world to see: Enceinte – 3–4 semaines.

      We were pregnant. We were three to four weeks pregnant. It had only bloody worked!

      We both stood in the middle of our lounge, clutching the test stick, clutching each other and crying tears of disbelief and happiness.

      We couldn’t stop staring at each other in wide-eyed disbelief, fast calculating the due date to be sometime in late January, hugging each other, minds blown that there were now three of us sat together on the sofa, and wondering: When would I start showing? When we should go to the doctor? Would it be a boy or a girl? So many questions, so many emotions, so many exciting times ahead of us. A whole new world. A world we had no idea about.

      Those first moments finding out we were going to be parents, that we were going to bring another being into the world, reminded me of how I feel when looking into the vastness of the night sky, so enormous, so unexplainable and breathtakingly beautiful. We were staring into the face of a miracle no words or thoughts could explain or even begin to contain.

      So what do you do when faced with such a miracle? Well, if you’re greedy beggars like us, you get your asses out for a slap-up mountain dinner, of course! So, we packed ourselves and our new beautiful little secret into the car and went to a remote mountainside restaurant, where we were guaranteed not to bump into anyone we knew (word travels fast in a mountain village) and were therefore able to talk freely about our new little person and start making plans for our future as a family of three.

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