Our BABY JOY!
The burns survivor reveals her next big challenge—motherhood!
Like everything she takes on, Turia Pitt put her all into preparing for an 18-day trek last month to Everest Base Camp. Last November, she was already doing “lots of stairs,” she told WHO. “Plus lots of leg work— squats, lunges, carrying a bag— and a bit of altitude training.” Why was she tackling the first step of the world’s highest mountain? “I love adventures,” she said. “Challenging myself.” Pitt’s challenges just got a whole lot bigger. In the lead-up to her trek, she wasn’t about to let a bout of sickness stop her from the quest, until three days before her May 10 departure she discovered the cause of her illness was pregnancy. “I was like, ‘F--k,’ ” she told Nine’s 60 Minutes on June 11. “OK, stay calm. Go fold your clothes and put them away.” The Everest trip was cancelled, she said, because she had more baggage than just her backpack: “I wanted to do the walk,” she told the TV current-affairs show, but “it’s not just myself I have to think about.” The life-changing news for Pitt, 29, comes nearly two years after her builder fiancé, Michael Hoskin, proposed during a July 2015 Maldives getaway, with a ring
that the motivational speaker wears on a chain around her neck because of damage to her hands. Now 15 weeks into her pregnancy, Pitt—she suffered burns to 65 per cent of her body when she was trapped in a bushfire during a 2011 WA ultramarathon—is the happiest she has ever been, said Hoskin. She confirms it: “Michael and I are totally stoked,” she tells WHO.
Becoming first-time parents in December may throw up fresh hurdles for the pair, who met at a 2009 party, but the irrepressible Pitt has said during her recovery that you have to “wear your challenges like a boss.” To that end, she finished her debut Hawaiian Ironman triathlon in October in 14 hours, 37 minutes, months after triumphing over the Kokoda Track. Before that event, she mused about finishing. Right after that, “I will probably start getting itchy feet” she told WHO, “and start thinking about what is next.”
Turns out, that’s motherhood, which Pitt, whose says her injuries were all external and shouldn’t affect her ability to carry or deliver the baby, believes will suit her fighting spirit and Hoskin’s unswerving devotion. “To be honest, I thought Michael and I would end up having children before we got married,” she wrote in her 2017 memoir, Unmasked. “Would we like a big family? I don’t know. Three or four kids would be nice. But we’ll just wait and see.”
As for how the family dynamic will work, Pitt—she will first tick off another milestone, her 30th birthday in July—said in April that she will bring up her kids according to her father’s two rules: no whingeing, and “no bloody whingeing.” She told Stellar magazine, “That’s the reason I’m so resilient. Kids need a bit of toughness to become mentally strong. I’ll be the disciplinarian and Michael will be the favourite parent. We’ll be a great team.”