It’s not every day that you fall in love with a Scotsman who you’ve met in your home country on a wild night out.

It’s also not every day that you two quit your jobs and make plans to travel overseas together after dating for only THREE months.

And it CERTAINLY is not every day that you happen to find out 3 weeks after arriving in Scotland together that there’s a baby on the way!

It is however every day, that families are split apart by visas.

And it is also every day that all the plans that you two have together get put on hold while temporary plans are made, knowing that many months will be spent apart.

I am not complaining about this, I am simply stating facts about our little friend called “life”.  Life is weird. Life is unpredictable. It is also happy and sometimes it can be sad. Life can be fair and of course, something that the boyfriend and I are experiencing now – life can be pretty damn unfair at times. But alas, with life, we learn how to deal. Whether you’re dealing together or apart, you still just deal.

When leaving Scotland to come home to South Africa to apply for my next visa, my other half and I said our goodbyes to each other. Trying to brighten a sad moment between ourselves, we kept saying that it’s “not for long” and that “I’d be back soon”, but of course there were tears. Airports can be such happy places, but also such sad ones too.

We already knew that it was a risk for me to be flying back to South Africa because of how far along I was in my pregnancy at the time, not knowing how long my next visa could take to be approved or not. The fact that the visa that I was currently on was the incorrect one to begin with wasn’t really working in our favour either, but we were only trying to fix our visa agency’s mistake.  We had 4 weeks to get my next visa sorted. This would take us to my last week of pregnancy where I would still be allowed to fly back on the airplane. We had everything planned and I flew home with all of our visa documents.

Those 4 weeks turned into 6 months. Yes, SIX whole months – for reasons that I choose to not explain, but let’s just say that we weren’t dealing with the brightest cookie in the jar via the visa agency.

Over the next 3 months, my other half will be missing out on my growing tummy – our growing tummy. He will be missing out on feeling our baby’s kicks, and watching our baby grow. He won’t be here for our baby scans, or be able to listen to our baby’s heartbeat at the check-ups.

Over the next 6 months, there will be no more night time cuddles or Sunday morning breakfasts together. He’ll have to start making his own packed lunches for work and doing his own laundry (always a huge deal for men). I won’t be there to welcome him home after a long day at work or spend our usual nights cooking dinner together in our kitchen.

We have started our life together in Scotland. We have our own home. Our own space. Our own routine and independence.

We had it all planned that we would be having our baby in the UK. We had been going to regular midwife appointments and had met the lady who would be delivering our baby. Everything was comfortable and we had everything figured out.

It’s been a week since we have found out that we will be apart and things have settled. We have had to move forward from what we cannot change. We have had to re plan the birth of our baby, which will now be taking place in Cape Town and my other half has now planned to work plenty of over time to make up for the cost of us having to live double lives and to earn enough leave days to fly to Cape Town for the birth of our baby.

There is a silver lining to every situation. One thing that we both need to remember is that this is all temporary and will be fixed with something more permanent. What I am learning is that there is no amount of distance that will keep us apart. There are always risks with the things that we do, and while living our little friend called “life”, these risks taken can sometimes have unpredictable consequences.

In “life”, regardless of the situation, with every challenge thrown our way, we always need to try our best to be positive and look at the situation from all angles. We are handed situations for a reason, but we just haven’t quite figured this one out yet.

Not only will this make us even stronger than what we are, this will also make us appreciate the time that we do actually spend together. At the end of the day, this is also a small sacrifice for a much bigger picture of our hopes and plans for our family.

P.S We have since gone with a new visa agency who we have full confidence in helping us going forward!

Until the next life update,

Mycaila-Jade

xxx