May I begin by apologizing for the rather long … er … ‘pregnant’ pause, which is a rather appropriate turn of phrase considering how Phoebe apparently trapped me! Anyway one February evening I was about to work late when I got a phone call from my mother to say my grandmother had died so I stopped work and sadly made my way home, I’d been close to my grandma and her death hit me hard. However, when I arrived home I was greeted by one of Phoebe’s friends telling me to ‘pull yourself together’, as my wife was about ready to give birth.

All thoughts of mourning were pushed out of my mind as we made our way to the hospital, and thankfully I was allowed to be there at the birth. Although I didn’t give it too much thought at the time, due to the emotions that welled up in me seeing a new human being come into this world, I later came to realize what a curse it is that we girls will never experience the pain and joy of childbirth.

I still remember watching this little new human being appear coughing and spluttering into this world, so helpless and so vulnerable. This baby is now a 6 feet 3 inches young man and even if he is not physically my own child (I will explain my doubts late on in this series) he has become mine through upbringing. Andrew may well be my child, but a nurse getting accidentally pregnant makes me wonder!

Anyway I soon settled in to my new lifestyle of working more than a 35 hour week in Manchester, together with at least a 40 minute commute to Manchester and back by train added to anything up to three-quarters of an hour walking/bus journey out to the Manchester suburb I was working in. Then I had anything up to half an hours commute home in the town I live in. Small wonder I was often semi comatose, when not actually at work!