Chapter 2
The exact moment
The scene, as it happened.
After leaving the bridal shop, still determined to lose a little more weight before the wedding, I stopped to buy tampons. My period was due. At the till, the friend who’d come to the fitting with me said, “Imagine if you’re pregnant.” I answered with complete confidence. “The plan is to get pregnant a month before the wedding, or just after.” Because apparently I’d decided my body had received the schedule. A few more days passed. Still no period. I blamed the wedding stress. Perfectly reasonable, surely? I’d wanted to marry this man since the beginning, and now I had a wedding to organise alongside work, our son, family commitments, the honeymoon, the cake, and my diet. My to-do list was busy enough to explain a late period. That was my theory, anyway. To reassure myself, I bought a pregnancy test. I took it absolutely convinced it would be negative. We were using the calendar method, and my periods ran like a Swiss watch. Yes, our first baby had arrived as a surprise under similar circumstances. But come on. Surely not twice? It was a digital test. I left it to do its thing and got into the shower, giving it three minutes. When I glanced out through the shower glass, the steam made it difficult to see clearly. Pregnant. I stayed under the water for another couple of minutes. Then I checked again, as though the result might have reconsidered. PREGNANT. Five months before my wedding. Honestly, I wasn’t upset about having another baby. Our son was already three and a half, and I hadn’t wanted a much bigger age gap between our children. Financially, we were doing well. We loved each other. It was the timing. I’d just tried on my dream dress. A mermaid dress. With a corset. And now I was going to get married pregnant. My husband wasn’t exactly delighted for the first hour either. This hadn’t been the plan we’d had in mind. But we wanted another child. Our little boy would have a sibling to play with, and we felt good about the family we were building together. And I believed this baby was a gift from God. A gift arriving on a schedule of their own.
