When A 'Rom Com' Reveal Turned Psycho!

Written by Lucy Kemery for her blog, Mum With No Manual.

Hi everyone and welcome to my first blog. A bit about myself, I’m 29 and a first time mum to the coolest dude I could have ever imagined! I’m not what you would call an “earth mother”. Don’t get me wrong I’m loving being a parent more than I could have thought but I am most definitely making it up as I go. I had a lot of my choices and decisions planned out for me from the get go because medically I fit into a certain box (I’m around a size 18 – 20 so BMI is a word you will hear almost as much as I did during pregnancy) but I set out to prove that I was just as capable as anyone else. I want to use this blog to tell my tales and even if that resonates with one other person then that’s great.

I never saw myself with a child until I met my husband.

I knew he would be a great dad which slightly outweighed the fact I wasn’t sure I would be a great mum. I’ve never been the girl to fuss over babies and I work in retail so actually children have always been a hindrance in my day to day life….  I constantly heard “don’t do that or the lady will tell you off” or watched as a child proceeded to tangle an arm of very thin sterling silver chains into one huge ball of mess. We had been married for 3 years when I came off the pill which I had been on for 11 years. We had just come off a holiday where the time difference had obviously confused me taking it and I had a period when I came back. This was reassuring after such a long time to know I could have them. We made the decision for me to stop taking it and just see what happened.

I would never say we were actively trying. This was far too real for me and in all honesty the idea of falling pregnant and the reality of being a mum felt like two completely different things. My periods were so regular, ever 28 days so when boxing day 2016 came and went with no sign of my period I started to have an inkling. A few days later and still nothing made me decide it had happened. I’m not ashamed to say that I had come to this conclusion whilst out with a few friends and I ordered a goats cheese pizza for dinner knowing that this would be it for me and my dear friend for a while.

So I finally grew the balls to take the test the day before new year’s eve.

My husband went to do the washing up and I snuck upstairs to take the test. My hands were shaking so badly that yes, I weed all over my hand. (Little did I know that I would become a pro at aiming my wee in to and on to things in the coming months). I waited with my phone timer next to the test and turned it over. 2 lines. I instantly had so many feelings, happy, terrified, shocked, excited and slightly weirded out which I pretty much summed up into one word “F**k” which I think you will agree covered all the bases!

I managed to wobble down the stairs as my legs were shaking.

This was my chance to do some kind of epic rom com style reveal to my husband. I’ve seen so many YouTube and facebook videos that made me cry, I could do something like that! Charming and lovely which we would tell others about and it would sound like a fairytale. Putting it on the Christmas tree and saying something like “Santa must have dropped this one off late”. So I go to put the test on the tree and as my hands are shaking so much I knock off and smash my favourite bauble which my husband then has to sweep up whilst I stood there like a weirdo hiding a pregnancy test up my sleeve. As he goes to discard the remains of my lovely broken tartan bauble I have a second attempt of putting the test on the tree. He comes back and I am all prepared for my line about extra presents when I hear myself say “when did we get that decoration”.

OK so not as clever as my initial plan but kind of good?

Although my husband has man vision where he wouldn’t have known what was new or old anyway. Eventually he looked at it then me and said “oh my god”. Queue the rom com spinning cuddle with background music… Nope. I burst into tears. Like full on snotty, red face blubbering mess. “I am really happy I’m just shocked” I managed to get out (no idea if he could understand that). I then spent the next hour crying a mixture of really happy tears and some terrified I’m going to be someone’s mum what if I’m terrible tears. There was also a oh my god how am I going to tell my parents moment, including saying to my husband “my dad is going to know you had sex with me, oh no.” There’s a line you probably wouldn’t hear in a romantic film! A few hours later as I calmed down amidst all the fear, I laid in bed and put my hand to my tummy for the first time coming to terms with a tiny little thing being in there and I was again really overwhelmed with emotion but it was happiness.

So there’s the story of how we found out. Broken glass, snot and the words dad and sex in one sentence.

More a horror film than rom com!

Now I think back to that moment which as I type this was just over a year ago it was actually perfect for us as it was very unconventional which suits us well. The unmaternal girl was now going to have to hope she was maternal after all!