‘I won £1 million – and went into labour the next day!’
Natalie Metcalf, 38, and fiancé Andrew Symes, 41, won the Euromillions in February. They live in Bristol with children Noah, two, and Poppy, nine months.
‘Iwas dancing around the living room celebrating selling our pushchair for a couple of hundred pounds. I was pregnant and with our son Noah, just two, I needed to buy a double buggy.
“I’m rich, I’m rich!” I sang, laughing. Suddenly, Andy beckoned me over to where he was sitting with his laptop, saying, “No, I think we really are rich!”
Andy had bought a Euromillions ticket when he’d stopped off for bread and milk on the way home from work. He only ever bought one if it was a double rollover.
He’d left the ticket propped up on the mantelpiece and we completely forgot about it until the day after the draw. Andy logged on to the
National Lottery website and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Our numbers matched one of the UK Millionaire Maker nine-digit codes.
We’d won exactly £1 million.
We were in complete shock. Andy went straight to the local Tesco where he’d bought the ticket and the sales assistant ran the ticket through the machine. She gave him a number to call and Camelot confirmed we had a winning ticket. We were living in Andy’s mum’s bungalow at the time, desperately trying to get enough money together for a deposit on a house, but just a day after our big win, we went to look at some beautiful new-build homes near us in Thornbury, Bristol. I’d started to despair of ever
being able to afford a place of our own, but now we were putting down a deposit on our dream home.
It felt unbelievable that we could be so lucky.
Yet, looking round the show home, I started to feel unwell. The next morning I was worried enough about the baby to contact the hospital, especially as she wasn’t due for another four weeks. The nurse advised me to come in and, after an examination,
I was told I needed a caesarean.
DOUBLE SURPRISE
Thoughts of the lottery immediately flew out of our minds as we focused on the baby. I prayed she’d be okay, and, on 5 February, Poppy was born weighing a healthy 7lbs 1oz.
We were thrilled with our beautiful baby daughter, and Noah was excited about having a little sister. It was only after we got back home that we started to think about the lottery win again and what it would mean for us.
Camelot advises all new winners to go on a holiday straight away to get used to the idea of being rich, but we just didn’t have the time for that.
So, after Andy’s paternity leave, he went back to work and I’m going back to my job as an office manager after my maternity leave, which has surprised some people!
We’ve bought a new Hyundai Santa Fe family car and moved into our new home but, boring as it may sound, the rest of the money has been invested for the future. We’ll use it for the kids’ education and help them with a house deposit. It’s a real comfort to know we have some money should we need it.
One thing we are splashing out on is a wedding. When we got engaged, we looked at a lovely country house venue, but had to rule it out in favour of saving for a house deposit. I thought we might never get around to getting married, but we’re having a wedding next year at the country house we fell in love with three years ago. This has been quite a year, and we’ve certainly got plenty to celebrate.’