Skip to main content

Falling Pregnant

Gerhard and I always said if we do not have kids, that's just fine too.  We both have busy careers, we love international traveling and we felt that if we were lucky enough to have kids, great, if we were not so lucky, life would carry on in the same way that it has been for a while. 

Anyhow, about four years ago, I literally woke up one morning and decided that I want kids really bad!  Where this came from or what triggered this, I will never know.  So the active trying to conceive part started with a little ceremony that involved flushing about three months worth of contraceptive pills down the toilet.  It took nearly eight months and in the end after giving up the very scheduled counting of days and ovulation calculations, it just happened.  I fell pregnant with Liam on the 12th of October 2007.  This was of course the time of the rugby world cup in France which I think the Boks won (you will gather over time that I am not the best of fans). 


Gerhard and I left for a three week vacation in the UK, France and Italy and by the third week of that vacation, I suspected that I was pregnant.  My sense of smell improved by about 400%, in Paris of all places.  Paris of course smells like pee...nothing romantic at all about Paris.  And if it was not the tantalizing smell of pee, it was gabon!  Ham absolutely everywhere, it was revolting.  I had the worst morning sickness known to the human race.  Gabon, pee, gabon, pee...it was a relief to eventually get on a plane and head back home. 


Our travel agent decided to save us about R500, the price of a meal for two in a half decent restaurant, so we flew with a connecting flight via Dubai.  When landing in Dubai, my feet were swollen about twice their normal size, so I did what any self respecting woman would do, I went into the first shop I could find, ditched the walking shoes and bough a pare of the ugliest Crocs in a light blue known to man.  These were pretty much all that I wore for the next none months.  

I had a dream pregnancy, I was the very essence of a first time mom, I did everything by the book, did preggy bellies, did not eat biltong, drink too much coffee, baby room was ready and our hospital bags were packed by 30 weeks.  And then it all changed...



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tinsel and all that glitters

And so the 1 st of December happened and we put up a tree.  A very simple version of a story that is just a tad longer… As in the past, I decided not to put up a tree at home as we leave for our annual beach holiday soon in any event.  Well after seeing trees, baubles, glitter and what not on Facebook, I felt extremely guilty for denying my kids the pleasure of Christmas for two whole weeks whilst my virtual friends’ kids were all rolling in the tinsel.  So I decided to put up the tree after all, how lazy can one person be.  Out came the box and the tree and the lights and horror of horrors, we are missing a leg.  So Luka and I went to the mall last night and got a new tree, a bigger tree and more sparkly things than we need.  If it says Christmas, and if it even has a hint of glitter, we have it, we even have fairy lights running up our balustrade, we have baubles and glitter and advent calendars, I really went to town on this one.  It is just that Christmas takes on a s

Raising Luka

A miracle happened in the past week and a half.   Luka went from being an utter little shit to a rather cute little girl.   We are still reeling with shock, waking up every morning waiting for an earth shattering blood curling tantrum, and then she calmly walks into our room, gets in bed with us, cuddles a bit and drinks her tea and off she goes.   We are literally dumbfounded by the turnaround in our little girl, and we are too scared to even speak about this, let alone tell strangers on a blog about this.   Luka is just different.   Not a single teacher ever described our Luka without using words like ‘feisty’, ‘strong willed’, ‘determined’.   Good when you are Margaret Thatcher or Helen Zille dealing with issues like unemployment and corruption, bad when you are a two year old girl with a mom and dad short of patience. What changed? I think two things happened, Luka started speaking much better and clearer than before, so we are better able to understand her wishes (comman

The state of the world we live in

Before having kids, I used to read newspapers and watch the news on TV all the time.   My current affairs were really very up to date and I knew the names of most heads of state and had insights into the economies of several states.   After having kids I know the names of all the teletubbies, I know the words to most nursery rhymes and I can recite the content of a couple of kid’s books when woken at 3am.   I also know that you need more than twenty coins to buy a house.   My knowledge of current affairs these days comes from the bits of news I can gather on the radio in the morning in between getting my brood dressed for school and most of their teeth brushed.   I also need to get myself dressed and hair blow dried, lunches packed and the like in a very limited amount of time.   Getting kids dressed really is an ungrateful job and if I do not check underneath all the winter’s clothes, I fetch Liam at school in the afternoons and see the oddest thing.   I see a kid running aroun