I wanted a natural birth. I am not religious, but I always like that bit of the bible where the man has to “earn his bread with the sweat from his forehead” and the woman has to “give birth to her children with pain”. Meaning also that if was giving birth with pain it would have meant I didn’t have to work anymore? So I found it very fair, to try this pain – a pain that almost every woman has tried. I wasn’t scared a lot, I was curious above all.

Anyway – I never got to try that pain. I had a few complications and birth had to be by elective caesarean section. What a weird thing to know the date of birth of your child a week ahead. Thanks goodness at least I didn’t know the sex, otherwise there would have been no surprises at all.

The week before birth was crazy. One the 22nd December they told me my child had to come no later than the 29th. Exactly one week, with Christmas in the middle. The 23rd was my last day of work. It was also the day I had to do Christmas shopping. It was also the day Christchurch was hit again by a significant earthquake, which caused disruption and I couldn’t do my X-mas shopping. I had guests coming over, too. It was pretty stressful. The 24th I achieved to do the shopping, running this huge trolley of food on the floor of the supermarket not cleaned yet from the damage cause by the quake, if it wasn’t slippery it was sticky. Every second day I had to go back to the hospital to observe the heart beat of the child onside me: if they were not liking it, the baby had to come out. Fortunately didn’t come out before the 29th and my mum landed here the 28th and could see me one night with the big belly.

On the 29th I set of for this strange “appointment”, the birth of my child! Everything went well and Martin was born, healthy and energetic from the very start. A boy, who would have thought? And everything went the way I asked it, so I have a fantastic memory of my birthing experience even if it wasn’t exactly how I imagined it at first.

Clearly we all knew I was pregnant in 2011. But I never wrote about the pregnancy itself. It has been a pregnancy with up and downs.

It was wished from the start and therefore I picked it straight away. But after the great news it made a wobbly start as I started bleeding in the early days – with the understanding I gained later, I would now call this only “spotting”. Even if for a moment maybe it was at risk, the embryo was stronger that what it looked like at first, as thanks goodness it stayed inside. When I turned 13 weeks I was incredibly relived as finally I was able to think that this baby really was on its way. And at the end of the first trimester finally the morning sickness and the amazing tiredness started to fade and I could come back to life.

The second trimester was excellent. I was able to go back to some degree of physical activity. During this time we resumed some hiking (the intensity of the walks were reversed to the size of my growing belly!), my appetite became again normal but somehow I kept gaining a hell of a lot of weight. I couldn’t wait to start showing and when at around week 26 people started asking “when is the baby due?” I was very proud and happy.

However, again I had some moments of big worry as at the 20 week scan the modern technology picked a few odd things that were going on in my belly. The first was an amniotic band, the second was a very low lying placenta. But soon I realized that it was no point worrying (what for? Nothing I could have done anyway), so I just tried my very best to enjoy the pregnancy and so I did. I started reading a lot about parenting and babies, both online and on paper - actually I didn’t touch a single “normal” book for the whole time.

At the beginning of the third trimester we did the baby shopping, which I thought would have took ages but unfortunately actually was very quick. For my disappointment, as it was great fun! I washed and ironed all baby clothes.

Now we are talking, I was getting really big! At around 32 weeks I slowed down heaps, only doing a run of stairs to get to my office was big work! Meanwhile the hospital kept an eye on me, the check-up scan for the amniotic band thanks God didn’t give any bad results but the follow-up for the placenta in the opposite wasn’t great news for me. Nothing bad for the bay, simply they started talking me into the necessity of having the baby born by C-section. I was really disappointed, as I was very curious about labour ad wanted to try the sort of pain (and the wonderful experience, too) that most women try. In the last few weeks of my pregnancy I was at the hospital so many times and had so many scans that my midwife was getting confused keeping track on them and that we run out of room in my pregnancy book.

However, the story of the birth is another story, for now you can see how big I was – few days before the birth.

About a month ago we went for my last walk of the year (well I didn’t know that for sure at that point, but I do now!). I was 29 weeks pregnant.

We went to Hawdon hut, which is only 8Km of flat-easy ground up the valley. In the past, this would have been jus the warming up of much longer trips, but this time I could not have walked a further 5 meters. It was even raining! We had a lovely afternoon in the hut with Darrin and Gill, we celebrated their engagement with Cheesecake and alcohol-free bubbles.

Then I had a horrible night: my back was very sore and I hardly slept. Downsides of pregnancies, not even the nice hut mattresses are comfy anymore! Surely I won’t be able to spend a night in a tent...