I was at a baby shower a couple of weeks ago. It was so much fun: lots of good friends, laughter, mojitos (for some ‘virgin’, for me – definitely not) and finger lickin’ good food.

At one point, while gathering around a yummy dip and tortilla chips, and talking about the joys and hardships of being pregnant, one of the girls announced: ‘But everybody’s so nice to you when you are pregnant!’. The rest of the moms, including me, nodded their heads.

Everybody IS nice to you when you are pregnant. How do I know? First hand experience.

I remember exactly how I felt once I saw this – I couldn’t stop smiling to myself the entire day.

Beno had left for work early, and so the whole ‘peeing on the stick’ business was done in total peace and quiet. And rightly so. I had done a pregnancy test a week before, and the result was negative. However, those of you who know me, can see me reading the instructions before using the kit, and after, just to make sure I didn’t miss out on anything. And I remembered reading that if you did the test too early, the result might be a false negative, so just check again. And that’s what I did.

Time that day simply flew by. I had sent a text to Beno telling him that I could not wait to see him that night. I was so excited about the news.

In the early days, when we just met, Beno used to tell me how much he wanted to have a pikney. I guess I had always been easily swayed one way or another, depending on the partner I had been with at the time. I had changed my mind about wanting to have a child at least a dozen of times during my life. The Peruvian, for example, did not want to have a baby, and I was ok with that. Beno longed for a baby, and his desire rubbed off on me pretty well.

I climbed into bed and settled next to Beno later that night. I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t find the right words. So I laughed instead, and he laughed with me.

‘I’m pregnant’, – I finally said to him.

And no, he didn’t do the happy dance, he didn’t lift me to the ceiling. He said:

‘You are gonna be a mommy. And I’m gonna be a daddy’.

And so, it is true, that people are nice to you when you are pregnant. I loved being pregnant very much. I enjoyed, for a change, every kilo of extra weight on my body. I smiled more, I believe I glowed! I read about the development of the baby from start to finish. I took pictures of my belly to see the progress. The only annoying things were, to me, not being able to drink coffee (I had opted to go for decaf at that time) and the increasing frequency of trips to the bathroom I had to take.

Beno was extremely careful with me, like I might brake at any point. I loved it, of course.

We had things to do, plans to make, future to look forward to.