I’ve been running around feeling pretty smug over the last week or so. People have stopped marvelling over the enormity of my bump, and instead consistently tell me how ‘neat’ I am. (I’ve always suspected I’m pretty neat.) I’ve been feeling good, aside from some back ache and a bit of tossing and turning at night. The end is in sight, and I really feel like I’m almost there, now that I can count down in weeks (days, even – 57 to go!).
https://instagram.com/p/5sJuEKKVby
Yesterday I was having a great work day, skipping about London actually getting out to a few press days between writing stories. I left the office for a meeting (that I was running a little late for) and, ironically, thinking how great it was that pregnancy wasn’t slowing me down, I proceeded to trip on the pavement and fall face down, landing on my knee and elbow and skidding over onto my baby bump.
Needless to say, this was not very nice. Falling over in the street is never ideal, and the usual response is to jump up, shout ‘I’m fine!’ (while blinking back embarrassed tears) and run away before anyone gets a good look at your face. But when you’re seven months pregnant, a whole stream of thoughts run through your head. Actually, it’s not a stream of thoughts – there’s just the one. ‘Is my baby OK? What have I just done?’ Two lovely men rushed over to help, hailing a cab in case I wanted to go straight to A&E and one of them reassuring me that his wife had done the same thing eight months into her pregnancy and everything was fine.
I called the doctor, and my husband, and hopped on a train home to go be checked out by the GP. I could feel baby moving, and was fairly sure my throbbing elbow and knee had absorbed most of the pressure from the fall, but I can’t describe the worry and guilt I felt until I heard my baby’s heartbeat two hours after hitting the ground.
I filled the two hours with intensive google-searching, and the accounts of women falling without issue in their third trimester offered me a lot of reassurance. I hope that one day someone might read this one and feel slightly better, too.
The googling also offered many reasons for the fall; shifted centre of gravity, relaxin hormone causing looser joints, general tiredness and unsteadiness. But when it comes down to it, it taught me an important lesson; I need to take it a bit slower. I don’t always need to be the person power-walking down the curb on the edge of a crowded Regent Street pavement. Sometimes it’s OK to let other people set the pace. But if you could all walk a little faster, that would be great…
Thank you to the two men who made me feel 100 x better. Even London throws up a few gooduns from time to time. And to lovely Cat at Jo Malone London PR, who I was dashing to meet and left stranded at the Charlotte St Hotel. She sent bath goodies that I very much don’t deserve.