'Pregnant? I just thought I had an upset tummy’
How could the British soldier in Afghanistan not have known she was expecting a baby?
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"I know how she feels.” Those were my first words to my husband yesterday morning when we heard that a British soldier in Afghanistan had given birth to a baby boy – without even suspecting she was pregnant. Because it happened to me, too.
It was a Sunday morning in December 2004 and I was tackling a pile of ironing before we went Christmas shopping. Suddenly I was aware of sharp pains in my stomach. I headed for the bathroom, assuming that I had an upset tummy. The pains got worse and worse. Then I began to worry that it was appendicitis or something more serious. And finally I got this overwhelming urge to push. It was such an odd feeling. It was as if I was on autopilot. As I was doing it, all that was going through my head was: “What on earth is going on?”
Which is exactly what that soldier in Camp Bastion would have been thinking on Tuesday. Like me, she believed it was just stomach pains. And then, suddenly, she was holding her baby.
At least she was in a hospital. I was sitting on the lavatory in our house at Wickford in Essex. I tried calling my husband, Martin, but he was downstairs in the living room with his music on, playing computer games. He couldn’t hear me. I had no idea what to do, but somehow that didn’t matter. Instinct took over. I gritted my teeth and shut my eyes. I couldn’t bear to look because I knew I would faint. All I knew was that I wanted the pain to stop and that the only way to make that happen was to push.
And thank God, the baby was born quickly. It took about half an hour. The doctors told me that Ben – now eight – had the right shape of skull to come out easily. It wasn’t a maternal instinct that made me reach down and support his head. It was more logistics. I was on the loo. I didn’t want him to drown. And there, in my hand, was my baby’s head. The baby I’d no idea had been growing inside me.
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