Pregnant on a zipwire
Saturday 2nd January 2010
I'd just got back from an interview for a teacher training course when my mum, Jenny,
45, started looking me up and down.
'Have you put on weight?' she asked.
'Mum!' I frowned.
I knew I'd put on a few pounds, but I'd just got back from an all-inclusive holiday in Colombia with my dad Steve, 61, step-mum Sandra, 32, and sister Claire, 15. We'd had a fantastic time. I'd gone diving, joined in a tribal dance display and even been on a tree-top zipwire. But I had tucked into the hotel's enormous buffet three times a day and my size 16 jeans were a little snug.
'I suppose I'd better go to WeightWatchers,' I sulked.
Things got worse hours later when I went round to my boyfriend Troy's.
'Sarah,' his mum, Bronwen, said, 'one of my neighbours offered me her congratulations this morning. Anything you want to tell me?'
I tried to laugh it off, but Troy, 23, looked serious.
'Do you think you might be pregnant?' he asked.
'I think I'd know,' I huffed. 'And besides, I've still been having periods.'
Troy looked relieved.
Don't get me wrong, we loved each other but we'd only been together a year.
'Still,' he said. 'It's best to be on the safe side.'
Two days later we went to see my GP. As he examined me he put a heart monitor on my tummy and Troy and I both heard it: thump-thump, thump-thump. Oh. My. God.
'By the looks of it you're at least seven months gone,' the doctor explained.
Seven months!
I thought back to all that had happened in the past seven months: my boozy 21st birthday, the diving and dancing, the flaming zipwire.
Had I harmed my baby?
Troy was as quiet as a mouse, but as soon as we got out of the surgery he wrapped his arms around me. 'We'll get through this,' he said.
Later that day we saw the midwife who said I was 38 weeks gone. I'd be giving birth in a fortnight. Luckily I don't smoke and only drank on special occasions. As far as she could tell the baby was healthy. Troy told his mum that day, but I was terrified about telling my mum
and it was three days before I rang her.
'We'll all be here for you,' she said.
She even came with me to tell Dad, who took the news surprisingly well.
Soon, family and friends were dropping off cots, baby equipment and clothes.
The news still hadn't sunk in three weeks later when my waters broke as I was working on my final dissertation for my English degree at University Campus Suffolk.
Mum came and picked me up, collecting Troy from work on the way to Ipswich Hospital, where our beautiful son, Jayden, was born.
Back home, whenever Jayden woke me for a feed it would hit me all over again: 'I've got a baby!'
Luckily I bonded with him straight away and I gradually got used to being a mum.
When Jayden was 3 months old, Troy and I got our own place and, six months on, we've really learned to be a family.I wasn't expecting to start 2010 with a 7-month-old baby, but we couldn't be happier.