Introducing Raspberry

Me: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | Kampala and Soroti, Uganda | Nairobi, Kenya

Him: Nairobi, Kenya | Zanzibar, Tanzania | Nairobi, Kenya

Raspberry: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | Kampala and Soroti, Uganda | Nairobi, Kenya

Distance: 1,552km | 650km, 600km | 0km | 926km | 0km

No-one told me how terrifying it is being pregnant. Or maybe they did, but in my pre-pregnant state I perhaps smiled politely and wondered when I could get myself another glass of wine. For a start, there is the very real physical threat in the first few weeks that it will all go wrong. During my first trimester (finishing this week, thank goodness), two people extremely dear to me lost their pregnancies. I have watched from afar as they have grieved, reasoned, and picked themselves up to carry on. And I am in awe. I can only imagine how difficult it is to do this, in spite of the fact that reportedly 1 in 4 pregnancies are miscarried. You girls are awesome in the literal meaning of the word (although, as a side note, why is 'awe-full' not better than merely having 'some' awe?!).

In the meantime, I have also had a few scares. For one of these, my husband was in Tanzania and I will be forever grateful to the friend who came with me to the appointment and calmed me down (as best she could) after I had been told that I may not have a 'viable pregnancy'. When I had a bleed a few weeks later, it was another friend who referred me to her excellent doctor, who told me to come in right away in spite of the fact it was Boxing Day. There is no dignity in pregnancy, but there is also an unbelievable strength in friendship and support.

Then there is the exhaustion. It is not like being tired. It is like chronic jet-lag with a bad head cold and a serious case of vertigo all at once. And it doesn't go away even with ten hours sleep a night. Instead you sit and stare at your work computer, trying not to blink during a Zoom video conference call, because if you do, you will probably fall asleep. And obviously no-one at work knows at this stage, so there needs to be an alternative cover-story to allow you to bolt for home when you need it (in my case, I had a handy case of fictional e-coli).

Then there is the emotional side. Hormones are real, people, they are real. One of the early side effects of pregnancy is mood swings, which I joked to my husband would be difficult to tell if I had as I tend to experience life in ups and downs anyway. However, after a few months of this, I think he would agree that pregnancy takes it to a new level. It has also introduced a rather delightful tendency towards hanger (anger when hungry) that I've never experienced before!

And then, perhaps worst of all, there is Google search. It turns out pretty much anything that happens during pregnancy can either be explained by 'oh yes, that is normal' or 'call the doctor immediately, this is a sign of miscarriage'. (People posting on pregnancy forums appear to be screened for their lack of grammatical understanding and dislike of punctuation. So I am now a strange combination of terrified and annoyed with an unattractive sense of intellectual superiority. If only that would translate to some sort of biological superiority).

However, all this aside, there have been moments of unbridled excitement. I did a first pregnancy

test in Addis on a work trip. It was Monday afternoon, and I'd been suspecting for about 24 hours. I wouldn't see my husband for a week, but I'm not the sort of person that can wait to do that sort of thing together (also, I'm not sure how much fun he'd get from me peeing on a stick). The line was very faint, so I did another two on Tuesday (it turns out pregnancy tests are only about 30p in Ethiopia - bargain!). For the rest of the week I felt I was harbouring this huge secret, which tinged everything but I could not allow to effect anything. On the Wednesday I travelled to Uganda, where I took a couple of potential partners on a field trip. As we bumped up and down on the dirt roads across country I hoped that the little thing - apparently the size of a poppy seed, thanks Google - wouldn't get dislodged.

​​I arrived back in Nairobi on Saturday morning, and took a quick detour to buy a baby bobble hat from a local shopping centre. As an obsessive planner I've always been jealous of men traditionally getting to plan proposals, so I decided to plan sharing this news in a more unusual way. For those of you who do not know my husband, there is history here. The first time I ever saw Roo he was wearing a bobble hat, which when I got to know him I discovered was not unusual. He often goes out in shorts, flip-flops, and bobble-hat. A signature item of clothing for someone who cares nothing about clothing. A favourite picture of him with his father is him as a tiny baby in a front sling, wearing a bobble hat, and his father looking at him in adoration.

I told Roo I had a present and gave him the tiny hat. He was delighted on the news of a present and realising it was a hat, but then told me "it's too small for me". He admitted later to guessing where I was going with this, but not wanting to leap to conclusions in case he was wrong. The next week or so he was in a bit of a state of shock, but I knew the excitement was finally sinking in when he told me one evening he had been researching collapsable buggies that could fit in overhead cabins so that he could take Raspberry on work trips.

And so that's us. We are not just two now trying to manage distance and proximity, but will shortly be three. In the next quarter I am likely to travel to Uganda, San Francisco, Malawi, Geneva, and the UK. He will travel to Uganda, Tanzania, coastal Kenya, Paris, and the UK. And that's just what we know about now. We are going to have to learn to manage things differently, but for now, just know, Raspberry, you are going to be born into a life of adventure.