'It was really hard work'June, 27, says that having her first baby was a real test of will.
‘One of my friends had recently had two children fairly quickly, and both pregnancies had been a real joy for her. She kept telling me about how great she felt, how she loved the feeling of being pregnant, like she was in a special club or something. So I was really looking forward to being pregnant.
‘But it wasn’t like that for me at all, it was really hard work. My blood pressure was all over the place so the doctors had me constantly running in and out of the hospital and I felt really run down most of the time. And that just brought with it more and more worry and stress. My fiancée was doing everything for me because I’d been told to take it easy and I just felt a bit useless really. I mean, I know that I was busy making a baby and Dave would tell me that no matter how much he was doing he wasn’t doing as much as me. But I still felt a bit wet.
'It's definately all worth it'‘What made it worse was that the friend who’d had two babies already was pregnant at the same time. She lives quite a way away from me, but we’re constantly on the phone. So even though she was having to trail around after two kids whilst pregnant, I was the one with all the sob stories and I had nothing to do.
‘By the time it came to give birth I was desperate for the whole thing to be over. The birth was a real stop / start affair, and with the high blood pressure the doctors were really cautious. I’d have liked a water birth, but it wasn’t even an option. In the end, after my contractions seemed to stop altogether I had a caesarean section, which I was really worried about. But Dave was great and it really wasn’t as bad as I thought.
‘Now Lewis is born it’s not exactly like I’ve forgotten all that, but it’s definitely all worth it. And I definitely want Lewis to have a little brother or sister, but I might wait a bit longer between births than my friend did!’
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