My Babies Or My Life

I was expecting twins...  then given an impossible choice to make.

- Nicola Moors / Hannah Abbott

By Becky Anderson, 35, from Gosport, Hampshire

As I popped the kettle on for a morning brew, I heard the letterbox.

Still in my dressing gown, I made my way to the hallway.

‘Probably just bills, as usual,’ I muttered to myself.

But today there was only one letter and it didn’t look like a bill. I ripped open the envelope.

Dear Ms Anderson, your smear test is now overdue. Please make an appointment as soon as possible, it read.

The truth was, I’d already had two or three reminders but I kept putting it off.

I wasn’t embarrassed or afraid – life just kept getting in the way.

But it’d been a few years since my last test, and I’d been getting some bleeding between periods that I was a bit worried about, so this time I called my surgery and made the appointment.

Just a week later, I went for the test.

‘You’ll get the results by post in a few weeks,’ the nurse said.

I went home to make tea for the kids, Phinley, 9, and Morgan, 18, and thought no more of it.

It soon dropped even further down my list of priorities when I found out I was pregnant.

It was a bit of a surprise, but a very welcome one.

Then, a few weeks later, I got another letter. My smear had shown a high number of potentially cancerous cells and they wanted me to go back in for some cells to be scraped and tested further.

It sounded a bit concerning, but I didn’t dwell on it too much.