Finding Out I’m Pregnant

My palms are sweating and my heart feels as though it’s beating out of my chest as I sit on the bathroom floor, a cup of wee on the side of the bathtub and a pregnancy test face-up next to it. I couldn’t bring myself to turn it face down, I needed to know as soon as possible. The screen of the test is flashing and I can’t stop staring at it, waiting for the moment it stops and tells me my fate. 3 weeks+ pregnant, it says.

Oh. my. god.

I couldn’t believe it yet I could all at the same time. I wouldn’t have been sat there on the bathroom floor with a pregnancy test if I didn’t think I was pregnant. The fact that I’d already been pregnant for 3 weeks or more blew my mind and I immediately started thinking about all the cups of coffee I’d drank in that time and what else I might have done to harm the baby. I remembered lying on my back on my yoga mat earlier that week and pressing my tummy — I’d been feeling so bloated for the past week with some sharp cramping, not like my usual pre-menstrual symptoms. I’m terrible at tracking my period, but I usually go by feeling for when my it’s going to come and I’d been feeling like it should have come for the past week or more. So that’s what eventually led me to be sat on the bathroom floor with a pregnancy test on a Monday afternoon in late February.

It was early Spring and the snowdrops were just starting to appear; the first signs of a new season, a new time. At the same time, we were in the process of moving house and there were boxes everywhere, the house was a state, and I’d been feeling both fatigued and de-motivated to work (symptoms I later understood to be likely due to my unknown pregnancy). I couldn’t wait to move, yet the process of getting there and feeling settled felt so far away. I felt like I needed some balance and structure back in my life, and then this happened.

It’s hard to explain those initial emotions that came when I found out I was pregnant. I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life, but I have always known that I wanted to be a mother. I felt so lucky to have found a career path that I loved in my mid to late twenties, and so envisaged that children would come perhaps in my early thirties; when I owned a house, had a steady and stable business and a few books released. But life sometimes has other plans for us, and I truly believe that “what’s meant to be will find a way”, so the imminent arrival of a baby in our lives in less than 9 months time felt very much “meant to be”, yet that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a rollercoaster of emotions that went with it.

After pacing around the house for a while, I decided I needed to get outside. It was still a few hours before Harvey would get home from work and I felt like I needed to calm myself down a little, or at least stop crying, before he returned. I wandered down to our local woods with a whirlwind of thoughts and feelings filling my mind and body. I couldn’t get my head around the idea that there was a baby already growing in my body, that I was already pregnant, that I was already entering motherhood. The sun was warm and I sat on a bench and wrote these words in my notes…

Monday 22nd February

Today the air is warm, there is a light breeze that feels just marvellous against my skin and I tip my face up towards the sun and let it’s rays dry my tears. Tears of happiness, shock, fear, change, grief for my girlhood. Today I found out I am pregnant. It still doesn’t feel real to say or write those words. I feel like I am someone else writing them, not Athena. Sometimes I feel I am still a girl so how can I bring a baby into this world? Yes at the same time I am so filled with joy for bringing a little being into this sun-filled world. Half myself and half my love. 

I later discovered that I was around 5 weeks pregnant when I found out, and it probably took until the 8-9 week mark to process many of those initial emotions. I always thought I’d feel only happiness to be pregnant, having always wanted to be a mother, and while there was that feeling of pure joy, I’m choosing to write so honestly about the overwhelm of emotions in the hope it might help someone else or resonate with you.

What shocked me initially was how I felt so pregnant pretty much from the day I found out. I was bloated, my breasts were swelling, I was fatigued and emotional. I didn’t think I would start to change so quickly and I felt I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my old self. I felt grief for the past Athena, yet at the same so happy to transition into another version of myself. I still feel so young, and for some reason I felt people would perceive me as being too young to be a mother (for the record, I am 28 and therefore not that young to be entering motherhood!). I realise many of these feelings were brought on by hormonal changes, but they are still valid and therefore still needed to be processed.

As an outdoorsy person, I was also worried that my outdoors friends would perceive me differently — as someone who can’t just “go for a climb” or “go for a hike” without having to drag a baby and everything that comes with it in tow. As none of my close friends had yet had children, I felt quite alone in these feelings. What helped me most was talking to Harvey about it and beginning to get really excited for all the adventures we would have as a family. The 12-week scan was also a big turning point and seeing baby move, spin around and put its little hands over its head. It was real, a real being inside my belly. I realised that I loved it and would do everything I could to protect it and make it happy.

After all our test results came back clear, I bought my first baby grow and cried my eyes out just touching the soft material and seeing how small it was. I started looking at baby hiking carriers and even booked a holiday cottage for the Cairngorms in February 2022 (I’ve never booked a trip so far in advance!). I started to visualise our life as a small family; all the things I want to show baby, and all the places I want to take him or her. Imagining Harvey as a dad and Oslo as a big brother dog makes me so happy I could cry, and sometimes I can almost feel the soft warmth of baby’s skin in my arms, with fresh air in our lungs and an open sky above our heads — these are the moments I dream about.

There is a lot more I could probably write and hopefully will do over the next few months. While now, at 16 weeks pregnant, I feel very different to how I did at 6, there are still anxieties and emotions that come up every single day that I know I will have to work through. I’m also planning to write a blogpost or make a video about the more physical feelings of pregnancy in the first trimester, as well as how I’ve found hiking pregnant. If there’s anything you’d like to know, please let me know! And just a reminder that everyone’s experiences of pregnancy are so different, so please be mindful of that.

Athena x