When I was pregnant with my second child….at the time I didn’t know if it was going to be a girl or a boy…
I had been back at work after my first child and after a few months I got pregnant…
I wasn’t planning…but the combination of stopping breastfeeding Antony (my first) and the stress of having to leave him for the first time to go on a work trip made the magic happen.
I had a terrible pregnancy. I thought I was going to be sick for the normal 14 weeks but after the 14 weeks, the sickness never stopped.
I had joined a new company after having Antony and I was on a mission to prove myself.
Does it resonate to kill yourself each day to prove to the outside world your worth?
Antony was getting sick every other week due to being at day care and I never allowed myself time away from him…
So I was exhausted, stressed and I didn’t look after myself at all…
At week 35, they told me I had gestational diabetes. The baby was predicted to be 5.5 kgs by the end of the 40 weeks so they were monitoring me closely. They put me on a diet and I remember meeting with the diabetes nurse who asked me a simply question:
You are getting a spike on your blood sugar levels after your breakfast. Could you go for a walk after breakfast?
I used to leave home at 6:30 am to get to work at 7 am so I could pick Antony up at 4:30 pm. Nick and I had worked out that if Nick dropped him off and I picked him up, we could leave him there for the least amount of time.
I used to leave work and literally ran to my car so he didn’t have to stay at daycare for a minute more if he didn’t have to…
Daycare was lovely by the way and he was happy but I was on a mission to do and be everything I thought it was perfect…the right thing…
Back to my answer to that nurse, I said: “No Way! I can’t go for a walk. I have to go to work…”
I thought to myself “Is she serious?”
The doctors had given me “Metaformin” which are the first line medication you take when you get type II diabetes. I had to take quite a few of them, test my blood sugar levels before and after each meal and eat a very strict diet.
It sounds hard doesn’t it? But in actual fact that was the easy option. (bear with me…)
I was 5 weeks away from having my daughter. Looking back and knowing what I know now, I believe I could have kept my blood sugar levels at normal levels if I had taken the real hard option.
The hard option was to leave work 5 weeks earlier, focus on my health, go for a walk after each meal…
And no…I didn’t do that…it didn’t even crossed my mind…
When I was diagnosed with cancer, I saw chemotherapy as the easier option but this time I chose the hard option too.
I knew that turning up to chemotherapy wasn’t going to save me if anything was going to give me more issues even though mentally was given me a security net. Yes this is what the world we live in leads us to believe in…
Take the magic pill and everything will be fine
This is not a note of regret…I have always look back at my life and think…could I have done it differently?
The answer is NO. I did what I could at the time with the resources I had physically and emotionally.
After I had cancer, I decided that I wasn’t going to hope for the best anymore, or leave my future up to chance. All of a sudden, the possibility of having a future at all made me proactive…it made me ask myself some hard questions…it made me face the reality of it all…
We are all crazy busy, wearing many hats in a day. But sometimes we need to STOP and ASK ourselves: what if I took a moment to just be well?
This is why I believe in changing small habits…it is a moment that you STOP to invest on YOU…on YOURSELF.
Start small…FEEL A BIG DIFFERENCE on yourself, on your health.
Set an intention this week: What if I took a moment to just do one small thing for yourself?