Finance secretary Kate Forbes delivered key Scottish budget speech in throes of morning sickness

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Finance secretary Kate Forbes has revealed she was in the throes of morning sickness when she delivered a key Scottish budget speech last week.At sixteen weeks pregnant, Forbes says she feared she may have to flee the parliamentary chamber on live TV to be sick in the nearest toilet.She said: “That was one of the worst weeks I had, where I just couldn’t keep anything down.

Budget morning I was just sitting eating a cornflake every few minutes to try and build up my strength for the day.“I was really nervous I would feel sick.

Obviously you do get caught up in the moment and I was able to focus but I was watching the clock until the end.“Amazingly, I managed to hold everything down and do the speech.”Nausea, akin to car sickness, has piggy-backed her pregnancy so far and, until she announced the news last week, she struggled to hide it.On Zoom to fellow ministers, she would switch off the camera and make full use of mute because “retching doesn’t look or sound pretty”.She laughs about it now and is not complaining, just reflecting a common reality for pregnant women.Forbes will become the first cabinet minister to take maternity leave from the Scottish Parliament.But it’s a “first” she hadn’t predicted, having been told a medical condition would likely preclude her from ever becoming pregnant.When she married widower Ali Maclennan last summer, she became stepmother to his three teenage daughters and thought her family was complete.Forbes, 31, had two positive pregnancy tests but was in such disbelief she assumed they were false readings.She said: “At the time, it felt completely surreal.

In the past, I always felt torn as to whether I wanted a family or to pursue a career but there is nothing like finding out you are