Listen to this story being read by Mia Freedman, here.
The first thing everyone asks when you announce your pregnancy is, “How much time are you going to take off?”
Two weeks, I said.
They laughed, always.
But I wasn’t joking. Three months earlier, I’d begun my dream job as editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. I was 24 years old, and I’d wanted to be a magazine editor since I was old enough to buy Dolly with my pocket money.
At 19, when I’d started as a work experience kid at Cleo, I set the goal of becoming an editor by the time I turned 25 which seemed preposterously ancient.
My boss, Lisa Wilkinson, had become Dolly editor at just 21 but I thought I should be realistic and there’s only one Lisa, so 25 it was.
This pregnancy was unexpected although it shouldn’t have been because my new boyfriend and I had been pretty lame with contraception.
And in my career as a women’s magazine journalist, I’d written enough sealed sections to know how babies are made.
We’d only been together a few months though, and I was brand new to my job so my pregnancy came as a shock to everyone - including us.
Was I clucky? I was 25. I’d never even held a baby and didn’t particularly want to.
Did I want children? Well, yes of course… at some stage. Did I think of not having it? Not for one second.
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