Olivia Siegl - Bonkers

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.

BRING IT ON!

CHAPTER 3

PREGNANT AND BLOOMING – (AKA BLOOMING DEMONIC, STARVING AND WILLING TO KILL FOR A CHEESE BURGER AND A FULL-FAT COKE)

Those weeks when we carried around our secret really were magical. Just the two of us, feeling excited and special, sharing the baby whilst the rest of the world was unawares. We went to the doctor and he assigned us a gynaecologist (down the mountain). We already knew of him thanks to his God-like status; he had delivered most of the babies in our village. My mates and I used to joke about how the same man had seen all our fannies! Bit crude maybe, but hey, when you’re pregnant and not drinking you have to get your kicks somewhere right?

MORNING SICKNESS – AKA FEELING CONSTANTLY HUNGOVER MINUS THE FUN OF GETTING INAPPROPRIATELY SMASHED!

Boy, oh boy, do we need these kicks when the all-day, ‘When is this going to end?’ morning sickness kicks in.

Oh yes, along came the seven weeks pregnant mark, bringing its stomach-turning mate with him, and so ensued six weeks of me feeling worse than I did the morning after drinking my body weight in Jaegar with the Vietnamese mafia. Oh and not to forget me looking radiant and blooming aka stuffing my face with Fizzy Haribo, Cheese Burgers and full fat Coke under a blanket on the sofa whenever I got the chance.

God, it was hell (not the stuffing my face obvs that was pretty, darn special). The sickness. Ugghhhh! My early pregnancy days consisted of peeling myself out of bed and wanting to puke or crumble into smithereens of exhaustion (usually both). And then having to get my sorry-for-myself ass ready to face the long and winding drive down the mountain and then across the border into Switzerland. All whilst switching between wanting to suck the life out of orange segments to wanting to puke up in the plastic carrier bag I now carried as a staple accessory on the passenger seat.

So, as you can imagine the last thing I felt at nine weeks pregnant was sociable! And I so wish someone at the time had told me it was OK to want to cocoon myself away from the world, to be able to come home, put on my fat bum pants and flake – after a day of fooling the rest of the outside world that I was feeling my usual normal self. If you are currently pregnant and wanting to do nothing more than sit on your gorgeous pregnant bottom and chill out, then guess what? You can! Now, go get your stretchy telly pants on, get horizontal and enjoy every moment of it, my lovely.

I was not prepared mentally for the level of emotions and exhaustion I felt. I had brought into the ‘I’m not sick, I’m just pregnant’ malarkey and was determined to carry on as normal despite just wanting to rest. No one had told me to ease off the pressure, to allow myself to be pregnant and tired and to know that this is OK. This is normal.

Without this little nugget of advice, my hubby had to learn the hard way of what it is like to cross swords with a knackered creator of human life.

One evening, I was feeling like total and utter dog turd thanks to the morning sickness. I’d spent the day at work pretending I was on top of my game to all my work colleagues whilst taking sneaky naps in the staff loos. I’d finally made it home after a particularly stomach-churning and exhausting drive home up the winding mountain roads, which had me dry-retching at every bend like a rabid dog. I walked into the house desperate to get into my PJs and onto the sofa, bury my face into my standard bag of Haribo, when my darling hubby reminded me that, there were other plans afoot: I now had to get my glad rags on because we were leaving in ten minutes to go for dinner with friends.