Not Stupid Read Free Page B

and, without telling our families, we married at Uxbridge Register Office in front of two witnesses we didn’t know on 24 September 1986. We moved out of the bedsit into married quarters at Brunel University and, not longafterwards, moved again, this time into a shared-ownership house in Uxbridge. It may have had only one bedroom, but we were so excited when we moved in.
    Then, in 1989, I fell pregnant. We were delighted. This was meant to be the start of a wonderful experience for us both, but little did we anticipate the heartache and traumas ahead of us that would have such a devastating effect on our family.
    I had always hoped to have my first child before I reached the age of 30, but I endured a really bad pregnancy. I suffered from pre-eclampsia which, basically, meant my ankles became swollen and I had problems with my kidneys, which resulted in proteins leaving my body via my urine. It is an extremely dangerous condition for both the mother and her unborn child. There were fears that there could be deadly complications, one of the main concerns being my high blood pressure.
    Toxaemia, which indicates toxins in the blood, was also diagnosed. My body was giving up on me and I knew I was really ill. It was really scary. For the first 12 weeks I couldn’t stop vomiting, which meant I couldn’t go to work. I thought, If this is pregnancy, you can keep it!
    After a while, though, the vomiting became less frequent and I was able to return to my work at Sanderson’s but, within weeks, my feet had swollen up like balloons. When I was 25 weeks’ pregnant I was getting severe headaches and silver dots began appearing before my eyes. My colleagues were telling me that I didn’t look well and that I should visit my doctor. I made an appointment but found I couldn’t even get my shoes on.
    After checking me over, my doctor wouldn’t even let me get off the chair. She tested my urine and discovered that the samplecontained three plusses of protein, which put my baby and me firmly in the danger zone, and my blood pressure was through the roof. She immediately telephoned for an ambulance.
    I was taken to Hillingdon Hospital and there I remained for weeks and weeks in the maternity ward. It had been decided that I needed bed rest to bring my blood pressure down and I was placed in a room next door to the nurses’ station because I could be more closely observed through a window in the dividing wall.
    Despite all the care and attention I had been receiving and weeks of bed rest, at 28 weeks my blood pressure went through the roof again and, because the special-care baby unit did not have a suitable cot and the doctors had decided I might need to have an emergency Caesarean operation, the hunt was on for a hospital that could not only deliver my baby but would have a specialist cot to accommodate him or her after the birth.
    When I was informed that the nearest hospital to meet these requirements was in Brighton, I panicked. I didn’t want to go there. After all, there was no way Sean would have been able to get there and I really wanted him to be with me when our baby was born. The doctors and nurses tried to reassure me. If, they told me, my blood pressure could be reduced, I could stay where I was. Nurses came in to help me with relaxation exercises and, thankfully, my blood pressure responded accordingly.
    Two weeks later, on 5 January 1990, a nurse came in and told me I would be OK to go on for another day. ‘The longer you keep the baby in there, the better.’ The next thing I knew, I was surrounded by medics telling me they needed to get the baby out straightaway after they had studied the results of somemedical tests. I was to have an emergency Caesarean operation. There was just enough time to telephone Sean before I was put under a general anaesthetic.
    For the next 48 hours I had to have a nurse by my side. My kidneys were packing up and I was continually being sick owing to an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic.