The best view comes after the hardest climb…

Eight years ago today I became a mummy. I am so proud to have two young girls who are so full of joy and happiness. They give me strength and purpose at a time when my personal life is colliding with old fashioned views of what it takes to be married.

Back in 2015, a series of life events culminated in arriving into Inverness newly married, only one of us with a job and just five months after being in the Nepalese earthquake and having a mass casualty evacuation from Everest Base Camp unfold on our volunteer clinic at the Himalayan Rescue Station the following day. I had always wanted to live and work in Scotland and the Highlands was a place my family and I had frequented annually during my childhood. I had secured a training programme in General Practice and we found a beautiful house to rent on the outskirts of the city with a log burner and forests encircling us.

However, six months of shift work, predominantly anti-social hours and a stint over New Year of six 2 p.m. to 2 a.m. shifts was the start of an isolated existence in the Highlands. We made friends, yes, but with the frequent changeover of jobs (as had been the case since qualifying as a doctor - I have had twenty different medical posts before finally completing training), I never felt part of anything. Family were a 3.5 hour or 7 hour drive away and increasingly over the years, visits became less frequent . As our family grew, the girls became less familiar with one set of grandparents as school calendars started and travelling became restricted to holidays.

The first couple of years being a mummy were not easy. My eldest was not my first pregnancy. The life events beforehand didn’t stop there as I experienced three recurrent miscarriages. I had no clue or concept, even as a clinician, that this could happen and so commonly. The first time was a heartbreaking experience. We had won flights with KLM and chose Havana as our destination. A private midwife scan to check the pregnancy was in-utero before flying resulted in a long, quiet pause before she explained there was no foetal heartbeat. I was devastated.

My family visited but the respite was transient - imagine being told to “change the record” some 24 hours after being in hospital and losing the life you had been planning. It was brutal. A trip to Cuba did indeed heal the soul - particularly the chance to scuba dive which otherwise would have been denied had the pregnancy continued. I remember the vast underwater expanse of the ocean floor as I descended deep into the quiet realm, accompanied only by the sound of the regulator and the water.

I remember vividly the moment a friend who went on to have a baby exclaim that the cramping I experienced was hardly labour. But what many women don’t realise is the mental anguish of a failed pregnancy being set free either by nature itself or medically-induced, is heartbreaking. I still have a photo on my phone of the tiny butter-bean that passed at home and was placed in a pot. It had scant but recognisable features. I have no idea where it went when I took it in to hospital.

After the third time at hospital and this time a surgical intervention and a drop in blood levels that hit like a train, I found solace elsewhere as Mera, a cocker spaniel puppy joined us. My eldest arrived 363 days later. Life has its ways of distracting us, doesn’t it?

Without those early losses, I wouldn’t have my beautiful girls. They wouldn’t exist. That knowledge is a real dichotomy - to not know the three babies I couldn’t hold onto and yet be able to cherish the two growing so quickly in front of me. However motherhood isn’t easy - trying to fit into mum and baby groups, keep up with the spoon or baby-led weaning questions and astronomically priced wafers so a coffee could be enjoyed in peace - it took time to adapt. Breastfeeding was a marvel and helped the bond however there was always that shadow of doubt and of second-guessing myself. Then we had covid of course, with a pregnancy through lockdown and navigating a new job where I had to navigate personal risk and pregnancy with trying to be part of an overstretched team dealing with a global outbreak.

The early years were exciting when I found my stride - lone dog walks with the Thule chariot buggies - first a single then the double - and the ability to run with the chariot and tow it on my bike. I naturally adopted surroundings I felt comfortable with and took the girls with me. Snacks by a Loch, a quick open-water dip whilst they paddled in the water and then a road trip in the van - just the three of us and Mera. School for my eldest then capped that freedom as 2.45 p.m. came round so quickly. Their social lives gained pace - less with the friends they had made as toddlers and now after-school clubs and lessons.

Over time, my relationship frayed. The girls were a steady constant but the pressures under the surface were cracking before I realised. I didn’t like my day job as a General Practitioner. I found it difficult to keep to time and focus on patients with such a short appointment time. I missed connection. I thought it was the job but only in recent months had I realised it was home that was lacking that.

In April 2024, I ventured to the Sahara as a medic and there, I found my old self. It felt wrong that my peers there had the real me and yet at home, I was an empty shell. Two months after my return, on my 9th anniversary, I learned the roots of this crack ran deeper than I thought. Over the next 18 months I buried myself in work - remote shifts, out of hours work, locum days up North and on the Hebrides for a spell and that still didn’t fix anything. I was working full-time now and unhappier than ever. The volunteering had unlocked a window to a new life but I still didn’t know how far that door would open.

And then one evening, driving home from a day in Aviemore out of hours, I listened to my usual Meatloaf tracks and realised I had misunderstood his songs. Almost two decades of listening to his belting tunes and I had a moment, an epiphany if you will, and when I mentioned it at home that night, it was dismissed.

The next morning I woke with clarity. I was done.

Eleven months on, I am approaching the summit. I was challenged some time ago that the grass is always greener on the other side but for this chapter of my life, I am done watering the weeds and just want to focus on my two, not-so-little babes.