This story is part of The Wall of Wombs, our 2024 exhibition sharing honest, deeply personal journeys of motherhood.
What you’re reading is a direct transcription of a spoken story — shared bravely, in the speaker’s own words.
Listen to this story and explore others at wallofwombs.com.
I’m 13 weeks. And today I’m feeling just really excited because it’s my very first day of being 13 weeks.
So we knew that we wanted to try for a baby since the end of last year. And then we went, we were going to Costa Rica for three months, and we were like, “Oh, let’s just start trying in Costa Rica. It’ll be so chill.”
We were on holiday, but then I read up because I’m a researcher. I read up about Zika virus. So then I was like, “You know what, let’s not risk it because, you know, it’s a really low chance, but just in case, if it happened to us, we would just be so distraught if we could have controlled that.” So we did a lot of waiting to actually start trying.
It only took us 4 months, which actually in the grand scheme of things is not long at all. But for some reason, it just felt like a long time.
And then, getting through the first trimester, there’s so much waiting, and so many milestones that you’ve got to get through, where the risk goes down as you go on. So, getting through all of that felt really good because you feel like in the first trimester, you’re a little bit left on your own. You don’t have a midwife yet, or you don’t have a contact of anyone at the hospital or anything like that. So you’ve just got to rely on friends and family and ask them all the questions.
I feel that becoming a mum for the first time, I’m just super excited and super ready for this kind of next step in my life. Probably because it took a while to get here, even just mentally, because I didn’t feel ready before my trip to Costa Rica. I felt like I knew I wanted to be a mum.
But I didn’t quite feel ready yet. I didn’t feel like I’d done a couple of the things that I just really wanted to do that would be really hard with the baby. So once I kind of did that trip to Costa Rica, I guess we did a lot of soul searching and growing on our journey there. And then when I came back, I was kind of like, “Okay, I’m so ready now. I’m ready for this next step. I’m ready to be a mum and all that that brings, all the life-changing things that that brings, and just embracing it all.”
It just feels so special to capture this part of my journey because even though it’s still quite early and I don’t have a big bump, it’s still kind of nice to commemorate the beginning of the journey and how much I’m going to change and how my whole life is going to change.
I’m still doing lots of research and getting all the information, but it’s been really important to me to get as much information as I can so I feel empowered to make the choices during the birth and in the lead-up to the birth that I can.
I feel like if you don’t go in with enough information, you won’t know what you can say yes or no to during medical interventions and stuff. So knowing the statistics and the reasons why they might want to induce you early or things like that, I just want to go in with all the information I can because I’d love to have just the most natural birth I can possibly have.
Having control over your choice is just the best you can hope for, and trying to make the right choice for you and baby. I guess to all those women out there trying to conceive, I would just say, “Just hang in there. You’re almost definitely going to get that day. You’re going to get that good news yourself. And everybody’s different, it just takes a while to get there sometimes, and, you know, sometimes you go through very hard parts of the journey, but it is really beautiful once you do get that good news and yeah, just hang in there.”
And then to all the mums, just embrace your body and how beautiful it is, postpartum as well as during, because it’s just done the most amazing thing a body can do. And even if it looks completely different, just embrace that because it’s absolutely beautiful.