Our Pregnancy Gainst The Odds

Burns survivor Turia Pitt always imagined that one day she would become a mother. Now, despite years of struggle and rehabilitation, that dream has finally become a reality.

- Michael Sheather

It doesn’t matter how many times you might have discussed it, or how long you might have wished it to be true – becoming pregnant is always tinged with surprise and excitement, and perhaps even a little shock.

For Turia Pitt, the young woman who survived devastating burns to 64 per cent of her body, that element of shock came just over three months ago, as she was preparing for a demanding three-week hike to base camp on Mt Everest in Nepal.

“We had all these commitments, things we just had to do, places we had to be,” says Turia, 29 , who suffered horri c burns during a erce bush re while running an ultra-marathon in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in 2011.

“So, it wasn’t something that we were expecting. I was packing to go to base camp. I had a thousand different things on my mind, but falling pregnant was not one of them. I started to feel sick, which is something that hardly ever happens to me. I don’t know why – just a feeling, I guess – but I sensed something was very different.”

That difference, it turned out, was the rst irresistible spark of life. Turia bought a pregnancy test kit. It was positive. “I thought, well, that can’t be right,” she recalls, sitting at home with her ancé, former police of cer Michael Hoskin, 32, the childhood sweetheart whose unceasing love helped reignite her will to survive in the months after the re.

“Michael and I have always talked about having children. The plan was to start trying at the end of the year after all our commitments. Then, it just happened a lot earlier ... to my surprise. You certainly don’t think you are going to be pregnant straight away.”