Before H and I left London, we had one last hurrah in Santorini – a four day adventure in the Greek sun, before we’d head home and settle down and start nesting. I was 19 weeks pregnant and felt thin, fabulous and invincible, riding around the island on a quad bike, relishing our freedom and the fact that being pregnant wasn’t going to hold me back from my adventuring.

Then we got back to Oz and I decided perhaps one final final holiday might be nice – 3 nights in a 5 star hotel at Uluru, a surprise 30th birthday gift for H. And then we’d definitely nest.



H’s mum had read about pregnancy spa breaks, relaxing and bonding experiences for couples before their baby arrives, and thought I’d lined up a weekend in one. I’d never even heard of a pregnancy spa but with hindsight, it would have been the smarter option.

This time around I was 26 weeks pregnant. This time around I didn’t feel thin, fabulous or invincible.

-- I felt moody.
Even in the enormous, relaxing, bubble-filled spa bath, surrounded by the silent sounds of the desert and the clean Northern Territory air, I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and kept sighing without meaning to. This didn’t make me much fun to hang out with.

-- I felt sore.
We did the 9km Uluru base walk and I moaned and complained from about 3kms onwards. My back was so sore I began to wail dramatically about wanting to be shot. The following day we got to the beginning of the Valley of the Winds walk and I decided it all looked a bit treacherous and dangerous and I couldn’t really be arsed and would rather go back to town and eat ice-cream.


-- I felt tired.
On both weekend mornings we rose early for sunrise walks. While it was great to be up and alive and experiencing the world so early in the day, it meant I had to sleep for four hours each afternoon. Too knackered to walk up the road for food and too unwilling to pay $50 for a lump of nicely decorated goats cheese in the hotel restaurant, we had 3 o’clock lunches from the mini bar – possibly not ideal sustenance for a growing foetus.


-- And I felt diabolically stupid.
I like to think I’m normally quite sensitive to other cultures and leave a light footprint when travelling**. But that was in the days before Pregnant Brain took over the control room.

To offset all the physical activity, I suggested to H that we do the dot painting workshop at the Aboriginal Cultural Centre. When we got there, we were shown some standard symbols in the sand by our instructor, who spoke in a dialect of the local Anangu people. This was translated via our very sweet Japanese translator, Yuki, who had been learning both English and the Anangu dialects for a few short months. After ten minutes of basics (footprints for journeys, concentric circles for places of interest, and so on) Yuki announced that it was time for us to have a go, and to tell “our own stories”.

I took this quite literally, and while the others painted nice authentic-looking paintings of their trips to Uluru and Kata Tjuita, I began to paint the one story that was overriding my consciousness, which was the journey H and I had just taken from the UK to Australia. Just before I left London I became a British citizen, and this was a momentous rite of passage for me, given the long road I’d taken to get there, and all the things that had happened in the previous five years. After having lived with H for four months, I fell pregnant, packed up my worldly belongings, quit my job, attended my citizenship ceremony, and moved to Perth. It was a whirlwind and it was my story. So I painted it (very badly) (one thing my baby’s not going to inherit from me is artistic talent).

Then after 45 minutes we had to share our stories. I glanced down at my work – a big red and white circle in the top left corner, representing England, and a green and gold one in the bottom right, representing Oz. And our footsteps crossing the oceans to get there. I decided to go first and get it over and done with, as I didn’t want to have to follow on from the masterpieces the others had created, including H. “This is our journey from London to Perth,” I said, “erm, our footprints, the oceans…” Yuki smiled, and I felt like a pre-schooler desperately waiting for the teacher’s approval. There was a deafening quiet amongst the group while she translated, and a bead of sweat journeyed from my forehead to my knee.

I suddenly realised I had effectively painted a recreation of white man’s invasion of Australia! Our instructor nodded thoughtfully. I gave a pathetic smile and hoped that she just thought I was a clueless pregnant Englishwoman holidaying in Australia.

**Just to illustrate my point, I chose not to climb Uluru, in accordance with the wishes of the Anangu people. Even before I saw it and realised my pregnant body wouldn't have coped with the incline anyway.

The moral of this story is: holiday before your third trimester, OR: find yourself a nice spa break where your liability to get tired, offend, or be a pain in the arse, is generally limited. Or at the very least, expected.