Stewie was well travelled from the start, first making his presence known when I was in Madrid for a week teaching a module at Conde Nast College and Carlos III University.

His Grandma had also come over for a couple of days for some exploring and to share the best steak sandwiches and Basque cheesecake I’ve ever had (this evaluation may or may not have had something to do with being pregnant as it happens - they’ll need to be retested on the next Madrid trip). It was a lovely week and her visit made it even more memorable. 

During the trip my suspicions were raised by sudden exhaustion and the most incredible nausea, and finally a definitive test confirmed the happy news. 

However, to add some adrenaline to the situation, we were about a week away from embarking on two months of travelling around the Middle East, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and Thailand - a trip that Stewie ended up significantly influencing. 

I decided to wait to tell Adam until we were together at home, which meant two days of silence. On getting home I was greeted with the announcement that we had days of preparations to get through still to be ready for our trip during Covid times, added to the hours Adam had already spent organising (not a ‘how was your trip?’!). It took some effort to get Adam to sit down on the sofa (not least because the exhaustion and nausea made my protests quite ineffective), but when the happy news was finally shared the reaction was quite amusing. 

We were absolutely thrilled that we were going to be parents, and goodness there would be quite a bit of reorganising to do for our trip!