I was, I was abused as a child and have a, have issues about men and it was very difficult because I had a little girl already. I was, I was petrified, actually, that I’d, I’d have a baby boy and I wouldn’t love it, that I would hate it. On the day of my 20 week scan I was, I was saying in the morning, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do, I’m so scared they’re going to tell me it’s a baby boy. I don’t know what I’m going to do; I’m not going to be able to cope. And during my scan I got to know this baby, he was lovely. It, this baby kicking about on the screen and then it came to sex of the baby and she said, ‘Would you like to know the sex?’ So I said, ‘Yes. And my sister was with me at the time and so she zoomed down and in this, in his little true male character [laughing] opened his legs and there, there it was. And it was just so funny the way he did it and my sister looked at me as though I was about to cry but it was, it was fine from then on, it was fine. But that, that was actually a huge issue, a huge, huge thing. Not many people understand it at all; very few people understand it.

So what made it okay, because you did have a little boy?

Yeah.

What was the moment where you realised, I’m going to have a little boy and it’s okay?

I think I fell in love with him while I was having the scan. I think I just fell in love with him and I, I just thought, it doesn’t matter. Hes so gorgeous, you know, you see their face and, and you, you kind of see a personality shine through those scans and during the scan it just came across that it didn’t matter at all. And I was actually quite proud that I was going to have this little boy in the end but it was, it was, you know, it was ruining the pregnancy, the fear of having a boy which, like I say, not, not many people understand.

Did it change your sense of your own appearance, of your own attractiveness when, when your shape started to change? Did that worry you at all?

It worried me because I’d always been reasonably slim and looked after my appearance. And I think the, at the beginning, you know, sort of you get to 3 to 4 months and you don’t, you don’t feel pregnant, well, I didn’t feel pregnant at all. And I just felt that I looked like I’d put on loads of weight, you know, there wasn’t a specific tummy shape or anything like that and nobody really knew I was pregnant. And I think that hit home a little bit. And I was finding it really hard to do my jeans up and I was like, ‘Oh, no’ which sounds silly but, you know, it was just, but the more I’ve progressed and the, you know, obviously the, the more shapely I’ve got as far as my bump is concerned, I’ve just loved it, absolutely loved it. And now I just, I just love being in maternity clothes and I, I just really enjoy being pregnant. So, yes, so it hasn’t really bothered me at all.

Yes, I felt I was blessed with an amazing pregnancy. Whilst it had been difficult to get pregnant, actually being pregnant was wonderful and I really didn’t want it to end. I felt that 9 months wasn’t long enough, which does make people laugh. Every, everything was straightforward. I did have a slight hiccup when I was 5 months pregnant; I, I had a heavy cough and cold, mild ‘flu, and I couldn’t feel the baby moving. So I was admitted to hospital, just for a night, and I was actually dehydrated, which meant that the baby was dehydrated and so had been a bit sluggish. The baby had never been in any danger but I did find that my pregnancy was closely monitored and I had frequent scans. Once I’d got to about 30 weeks I had growth scans every 4 weeks. But I really did love being pregnant, felt very healthy and I didn’t feel worried at all.

One of the things that I am looking forward to most about being a dad, being a father, fatherhood I suppose is taking the baby for a walk in the countryside. Not necessarily walking but having the baby on my back or on my front and walking with the dog, just out, me, the child and the dog. And my partner hopefully at home having a sleep or, yeah probably just having a sleep, maybe a bath and a sleep, usually sleeping – if she is anything like as tired as she is now when shes actually had the baby, that would be a lot of sleeping. So that’s a, an image that I can hold on to. It seems quite real to me. Looking down on a sleeping child and smelling a sleeping child are things that are fantastic things and I look forward to very much. And seeing, seeing a child just feeding, just breast-feeding is a beautiful thing, I think, and to know that’s my child and my partner’s is something that I’m really looking forward to very much indeed.

Obviously teaching my child to do all the sad things that I enjoy doing as they grow older. I don’t know, playing computer games or, obviously looking forward to getting Scalectrix. Never really had Scalextric as a child and I think it’s very important that I should, whether it’s a boy or a girl playing Scalextric. This growing and learning to play and finding out what that child likes. Telling stories, I like telling stories and that will be fun.

I think once we sort of went ahead and then, you know, everything was going smoothly with the pregnancy, I started getting a bit more positive, but it was worrying at the same time. But it was, you know, it was finally something happy coming out of all the sadness that wed been through. And it was like making you believe again in life, I think;

That was important for me because I thought life was not worth it. If it’s like that, then it’s not worth it, but now it is worth it. And that’s been a turning point in our life, I think. To realise that, yes, miracles happen and, you know, because I always feel shes a miracle anyway, because first of all most people don’t get pregnant first time – and shes been always healthy and so, you know, shes our little miracle, I think.

Yeah, nobody [laughs], you just don’t get, you know the feeling when you go along for your antenatal check-up and you get excited hearing the baby’s heart beat and looking – because I didn’t buy anything for him, didn’t buy any, any equipment or baby clothes, nothing. So I, I just wanted to be sure he was here first.

You said you bought one thing for him, did you?

A little babygro, which said ‘I grow in my sleep’ on it.

I didn’t, well, I haven’t, I haven’t felt embittered or anything about that, you know – oh, all that wasted time, or how unfair it is, or anything like that. I haven’t really thought about those sorts of things. I also wanted to continue with the pregnancy because I thought, I don’t want to cut this pregnancy short. I want to experience pregnancy to full term. I might not have another chance.. Because I’m thirty-nine now and I never know what’s going to happen, do I? So I wanted that experience as well, and I thought it just felt more natural to go through a life cycle and to have a funeral. Because if you terminate a baby, although you grieve over them it’s very private, people don’t acknowledge your grief.. the same way that they do, if the baby’s been born and died.

How did you cope for such a long time with all the sadness and all the trauma and all the difficulty and all the decision making? What got you through?

To go through all this five years of waiting for our daughter to finally be born, I think I spent enough time to grieve, especially for the termination. The miscarriage I didn’t allow myself time to grieve, I only was off from school [as a teacher] for a week, and that was a big mistake. Because I think when the next pregnancy started I was really very, very, you know, emotionally exhausted and I don’t think it was right;

But for the termination I took six months. I didn’t go to work, and I just sort of took time to grieve and think over, and talk to the psychologist. I think that helped a lot. Me having the kitten as well helped me a lot. And then once I’d got over that, and I went back to work I obviously continued to focus on how to have a baby and all that.

With the pregnancy itself, my last pregnancy, seeing the psychologist as well helped me. Unfortunately I couldn’t do sports any more, at five months, but I, what I also remember is just having a diary and every week that I was advancing in my pregnancy I used to turn the page and tear a piece of paper from, in the corner, to say I’ve gone another week. So I think I was taking a week at a time. I was not, I was trying to not sort of look too much ahead but just taking one week at a time. And every time I had passed another week I was saying, "You see, I’m getting closer, I’m doing another week this time, another week, another week, another week", and then suddenly it came to 40 weeks;

And that’s how I coped as well, trying to – but it was very stressful. But I was, I was actually – in a way it’s very strange – but I thought, this time it’s going to work. It has to work. So I had a lot of faith in a way, at the same time I was so scared as well, but I had some faith that it was going to work. But the psychologist was definitely helping, definitely helping.

Did you worry with the first one about something going wrong or about miscarriage or something like that?

Yes, of course. Yes. I worried about miscarriage, although that wasn’t the sort of biggest concern. I mean obviously I was concerned about that, I think everyone is, but that wasn’t a sort of major concern because I haven’t had a lot of history of problems and there weren’t many histories of miscarriages in my family and things, so I didn’t – that was obviously an issue but it wasn’t a sort of overriding issue. I suppose I was more worried about there being something wrong with the baby, because we didn’t have many scans, we only had the twenty week scan with my first baby because we realised that, just for us personally, the scan result wouldn’t have made any difference, so there was no point in having them. And I wasn’t particularly encouraged to have them by health professionals. They didn’t – it seemed to be something that one would have to go out of ones way to organise and they didn’t seem to imply that they were particularly necessary, so, and we didn’t feel they were particularly necessary either, so we didn’t have the scans, but then subsequently that meant that we didn’t actually know that everything was okay. So we still had that doubt right until up until he was born. So it was kind of a mixed blessing whether we had the scans or not.

Did you feel that you didn’t want to have the scans because you wouldn’t have done anything about it anyway?

Exactly, yeah, yeah. I had that discussion with the midwife and she said, ‘What would you do?’ because when we were talking about the scans she said, ‘What would you do if you had a certain result from this scan?’ and I said, ‘Oh I don’t think we would do anything. She said, ‘Well theres no point in having them then. Which was quite right, but it did mean that there was the added anxiety of not having been told that everything was fine. And I understand that the scans can’t do that necessarily so in fact it probably – we wouldn’t have been able to be told that everything was fine anyway, but you we still didn’t have any kind of medical confirmation until, except for the twenty week scan, which was fine.

That’s quite an unusual choice these days, to not have your husband there or your partner there?

I don’t know. I just felt I didn’t want him to see me in, in this state. The birth was a very scary thing for me. I suppose it’s all psychologic, well, it is in fact psychologic. I think the first time I’ve seen a documentary on birth I was too young. I was a young teenager and I was probably too young to see, you know. It was just a mistake, flicking channels, and I saw something I should have not seen at that age and it just scared me. And all these years, the thought of the birth was just something so scary for me. Something you can’t think of, it’s just too much to take. And so I think I didn’t want my husband to see me in that stage. It was a big, big step, the birth. Not too much the pregnancy. Even so the sickness was not nice [laugh]. Pregnancy was not that much of a big step, but the birth was the big, big step, you know, to go through, the big wall to go through for me. And because my expectation was so high, you know, the fear, the expectation of the fear and the, and the pain and, and the blood and all that was so high for me, I suppose that I had a pleasant surprise [laugh] that it was not as bad as I thought it would be.

And how are you anticipating life with a small baby and a toddler?

[laughs] Trying not to think about it, because I know it’s going to be really, really difficult. I just – well, I know it is, we both know it is. But again you can’t imagine what it’s going to be like until it happens, so I’m not, I’m just kind of, hmm, not thinking about it, [laughs] but I know it’ll be hard.

Do you kind of get those feelings when you, when you look at your first child and think, ‘How can I love another one?’

Yeah. Because she just gets all our attention. We love her to bits and, you know, you think, ‘Well, how can I give any love to another one?’ But people you speak to say you do, you just do, it just sort of happens naturally, so that’s what I’m hoping is going to happen. And just try and involve her in the new baby and not, you know – so she doesn’t feel like excluded.