Sometimes when I look at No 1 Son, so healthy and strong, I find it hard to believe we both had to fight so hard for him to be here.
I started being sick almost from the moment the blue line appeared on the pregnancy stick. Before then I had always thought that 'morning sickness' would be exactly that, but my nausea started the moment I woke up and went on until the evening. 'It'll soon pass,' everyone kept telling me as I puked my guts out, but it didn't. Foolishly, we decided to go on holiday to Florida. 'I'm desperate for a holiday,' I told my concerned mum. 'I'm only three months pregnant, it'll be fine.'
And the flight was fine. But the minute I set foot on the tarmac in the 100F plus heat, the nausea started again. We were staying in Key West, a five hour drive from Miami, and I was terribly unwell most of the way... not pretty.
I managed to go on the beach for an hour or so, but by the evening I was vomiting everywhere. The following morning we went to the drugstore, where they recommended Pepto Bismol. It didn't help. By the afternoon, I could no longer hold water down. We rushed to the local hospital, where I quickly lost consciousness. When I woke I was on a drip, in a private room (thank God for travel insurance), and had been diagnosed with Hyperemesis 'Silly duffer,' my baby's father kept calling me, the concern etched in his voice. I was too weak even to smile. All I cared about was that our baby was OK.
The scan showed a heartbeat, thank God, and we wept buckets, so grateful our little boy (there was no mistaking the fact that the baby was a boy) was still there. Gradually, thanks to the round-the-clock nursing - it was all very Grey's Anatomy - I stopped being sick every hour on the hour. I managed to drink Snapple, and hold it down.
10 days later I returned to the UK, having spent the entire time in hospital. I had lost a stone and dropped two dress sizes, but for once this wasn't a good thing. And it wasn't over. Further tests revealed that I had a small (benign) tumour in my pituitary gland, in the base of the brain. It was growing at an alarming rate. Because I was pregnant, there was nothing that could be done. All the doctors could do was monitor me and our baby.
To cut a long story short, though it was a difficult pregnancy and labour, No 1 Son was born screaming at the top of his voice. (He still does this). The tumour shrank, but my belly didn't.
I call him my 'Spartan' child, because he really did battle to be born. I only wish he'd let me cuddle him a bit more often.