I kept my pregnancy SECRET

Instead of making a happy announcement, Georgette Culley, 33, worried about telling her family and friends

- GEORGETTE CULLEY

Carefully constructing my Instagram announcement, I picked a cute baby photo of Jude and clicked ‘send’. Then I waited for the inevitable comments to roll in. ‘I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend, let alone a baby!’ screamed one friend. Because, like Nicole Appleton, I’d hidden my pregnancy for nine months – and then my newborn for another three.

‘It was SOOOOO difficult keeping her a secret from all my friends…’ Nicole wrote under a photo of her newborn daughter, Skipper, recently. Kylie Jenner went into hiding for nine months before the birth of Stormi, now two, while Anna Kournikova and partner Enrique Iglesias secretly had their third child, a girl, in January. No one knows their reasons for keeping shtum, but I do know exactly how it feels to finally reveal the truth.

I was working abroad as a reporter in Gambia, in March 2019, when I realized my period was late. Even though my boobs felt tender and I’d been feeling nauseous, it never crossed my mind I might be pregnant. My colleague persuaded me to get a pregnancy test, and I was shocked when that faint blue line appeared. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I whispered, sheepishly. I’d only been with my partner, Ollie, for a few months. What would people say?

We’d not even met each other’s parents, plus, like many pregnant women, I feared something going wrong in those first few months. So I decided to keep my big news secret.