22 weeks pregnant with no clue
A cryptic pregnancy
This really happened.
To me.
I was 28 years old, and five and a half months pregnant and I did not know it.
In 1998, I was ready, willing & able, and joined a sea expedition to study the world’s coral reefs.
My first voyage. I had never been on the sea before. I was travelling across the Atlantic Ocean on a Chinese junk from Miami to Madeira, part of an eleven-person crew. The crossing it took seven weeks, two weeks of dead calm. It was a new life. I had given away everything I owned that I had in England, and I left with a backpack, dive equipment, and the greatest wish to see the world.
It was an afternoon off the coast of Madeira, and I was on tea-time. We had taken a group of German tourists out to go swimming in the ocean, have lunch, have tea, and then back to land; we’d make some money. I was in the galley. After making the tea, I headed to the storage bin to pull out the jam to serve with the cookies I had made with love. The ship was very still, so I did not ship-shape the lid of the bin with the simple hook to the wall. I reached into the bottom of the bin. Suddenly the heavy metal lid crashed onto the back of my head. Owww… it hurt. It sounded loud in my head. I had never felt that type of impact before. Yeah, it was the…