Ever since she was a child, Kiwi cooking star Nadia Lim has been happiest in the kitchen. But lately the culinary queen’s been searching for excuses to stay away from the stove. It’s a bit of an inconvenience for someone whose bread and butter is, well, bread and butter, but finally Nadia is able to lift the lid on her little secret – she’s pregnant!
“I’ve felt so queasy and for weeks I just couldn’t stand any food smells at all,” she laughs as she and husband Carlos Bagrie share their happy news with Woman’s Day.
“My workmates must have wondered what was going on because I’d suddenly disappear whenever there was recipe testing to be done. I went for three weeks straight without cooking anything at all. It was quite bizarre.”
At 17 weeks pregnant, Nadia is beaming as she shows off her cute baby bump. She and Carlos – co-founders of mega-successful meal-delivery company My Food Bag – are at their Sydney apartment, where they’re spending half their time as they launch the business in Australia. With her morning sickness finally behind her, Nadia’s back to her bubbly self and thrilled to celebrate
her baby news.
See more from our photo shoot with the parents-to-be here!
Nadia calls the pregnancy a “blessing”. “It’s exciting and really nice to have something positive for my family to focus on,” she told us.
She’s referring to the devastating loss of her dad Ken in August last year, after an 18-month battle with cancer. “It was quite sudden in the end,” Nadia explains sadly. “It’s been really hard.”
But it was a trip to Cambodia with mum Julie earlier this year that led to Nadia’s decision to start a family. They were on a mission to honour Malaysian-born Ken’s wish to help the underprivileged, visiting schools with the Cambodia Charitable Trust to donate money her father had left for the cause.
“It was an amazing trip for me and Mum because it showed us that something good can come from something awful. But it was also quite an emotional time and it made it clear how important family is. As soon as I got home, I said to Carlos that it was time we started thinking about having a baby,” Nadia reveals.
Just two weeks later, they discovered there was a little one on the way!
“We found out on August 6, which was two days before the first anniversary of my dad dying. It helps to think some things happen for a reason,” Nadia says.
Keeping mum hasn’t been easy, especially as she spent much of the first trimester on the road for a New Zealand-wide tour for her Fresh Start Cookbook. While she might look as trim as ever, she swears her tummy expanded just weeks into her pregnancy.
“At one point, my publicist said she could see I couldn’t do up my jeans any more. I had to come clean, so she took me shopping for maternity clothes in Palmerston North!”
On the evening Nadia found out she was pregnant, she and Carlos were heading out for dinner with a client. When she mentioned there was a vague chance it might have happened, Carlos insisted she take a test – despite it being just 10 minutes before they were due at the restaurant!
“We were totally shocked when it came back positive, but we had to rush out. I’m pretty calm and collected, but poor Carlos just sat there all night like a possum in the headlights. It was hilarious!”
He explains, “I’ll never forget seeing the little positive sign on the pregnancy test. It was bloody exciting – a crazy rush, disbelief and a little panic. It felt surreal for the next couple of weeks.”
Nadia’s planning to take a month off after the wee one arrives, then she’ll slowly ease back into things, with her mum just around the corner to help with babysitting. “I might be dreaming, but I am really hoping for a good sleeper because I’m someone who really needs eight hours!”
