39 Weeks (10 page)

She carried on musing
,
oblivious to my inner turmoil.
‘Course it does make me feel really old, and I couldn’t let him or her call me Grandma or Granny, that would be just too much, I’ll have to think about that, what he or she is going to call me I mean.’

He or she? In all this time I hadn’t given much thought as to it’s being a he or she. I’d had that momentary vision of Blondie of course
, but actually considering all the implications of a small him or
a small
her running around calli
ng my mother by whatever name she
eventually came up with, I hadn’t thought about that at all. I suddenly felt faint again and without being told put my head back down between my knees.

It was only then that my Mum started acting like my real Mum, and not the critical
,
always disappointed
with me
she-devil
that she quite often portrayed. She gave me a cuddle and then put the kettle on for more tea, chuckling to herself at the thought of me drinking tea after years of telling her how disgusting it was.

We talked, or rather she talked and I listened, about what stuff she thought I’d need for a baby, like a cot and a pram, do they still even sell prams, I mean you never see them nowadays do you, it’s all these huge bulky pushchair things that take the skin off your shins if you’re unlucky enough to be in their path.
Perhaps
that
’s
why they’r
e
so aptly
called pushchairs
, so they can push everyone out of their
way?
Anyway accor
ding to Mum I was
also
going to need
bottles, and babygrows, and cot blankets, and baby pyjama’s, and baby hats and mittens,
lot’s of nappies naturally
and . . .
well
the
list was endless.

I knew I’d need things for the baby of course, but hearing Mum list it like that was a bit of a revelation. Who knew baby’s needed so much stuff? And how much was all that going to cost? And where the hell was I going to put it all, there was barely enough room for me and my stuff as it was.

Then she said she’d help me, it would be her present to me and her first grandchild, I re
ally wish she’d stop saying ‘first’ all the time
. She offered to go with me to help me choose
some things
, but then decided it sho
uld probably be me and Rob,
that is
after
I’d told him. Huh yeah
.
L
ike I was
ever
going to tell him, I wasn’
t even going to tell
what’s-his-name, never mind a
fake fantasy father.

But
it
was a bit of weight off my shoulders, the cost of it all anyway.
All I had to worry about now was how to tell Mum there was no more Rob, that he was out of the picture, not that he was ever in it
in the first place
but she didn’t know that. How
was I
going to fit a baby and a mountain of stu
ff into my compact shoebox flat? How
was
I
going to support
myself after the baby was born? How
was
I
going to deliver as in give birth to
this baby when the crunch came? And how
was
I
going to be able to manage actually looki
ng after it once it had arrived?
That was too many how’s and my mind recoiled
from them all
,
doing that ostrich thing
that
I was getting so good at lately.

Mum stayed for lunch, s
o
n
ot her usual thing.
I usually just got the inspection tour, the list of not good enough’s, the long suffering illness’s compendium, two minutes of mum and daughter
if I was lucky
, and
then
the off. But today with such momentous news she lingered and I was forced to actually cook a proper
meal, good job I had some
salad stuff in the fridge, not that you cook salad of course but you know what I mean, I still had to prepare it.

Then finally, thankfully,
after a bit of a teary eyed goodbye
,
she left.

15
th
August – week 11 + 1 Day

This
morning I was on the case
as per Mum’s edict
. I phoned the doctor early and managed to get an appointment at
nine twenty.
I’d been putting it off since this whole intensive baby nightmare began, I knew I’d have to go to the doctors at some point even without Mum saying so
,
but somehow letting the professionals in on it just mad
e it too official for my liking
and so far I’d resisted, but time was ticking on and I couldn’t reasonably put it off any longer.
I phoned work and said I’d be a bit late, doctors appointment I said
,
but I didn’t specify why. And by nine I was headed towards my doctors surgery on the outskirts of town.

The receptionist was as charming and cordial
as ever. ‘Name?’ she snapped
at me
. ‘Judy Parker’ I whispered back properly intimidated as all good patients should be. ‘Take a seat and wait to be called. You’ll be seeing Doctor Leeman today.’

‘But I thought I was booked in to see Doctor Franklyn, he’s my doctor, I always see Doctor Franklyn.’

‘Well you wanted an appointment today dear, and Doctor Franklyn’s on hospital cal
l this morning, so you’ll be
seeing Doctor Leeman, quite honestly you were lucky to get an appointment at all to see anyone.’

‘But what if it had been
an emergency?’

‘Well then you’d have gone to the hospital wouldn’t you.’ She said patronisingly
. ‘Next’ she shouted over my head, neatly if loudly dismissing me.

I went and sat do
wn in the jam packed
waiting area, squeezing in between a rather large sullen looking man, obviously there with a hurt foot that was all bandaged up and that he held awkwardly barely touching the floor with it and wincing periodically, and a skinny spotty teenager with an unspecified injury or illness that was playing on his DS.
S
itting opposite me
,
was the requisite mother and
her
two small children
,
who were clearly bored and ran around annoying everyone else while completely ignoring their mother.

We all waited in silence, except for the mother of two who kept up a non-stop tirade imploring the young Ty and Gemma to sit down and stop annoying people. After ten minutes I’d read all the notices three times and
was ready to cheerfully strangle
Ty and Gemma.
Thankfully it was Ty’s turn next to see the doctor so when his name was called the noisy trio
,
noisily departed down the corridor and away from the rest of us. Everyone breathed a silent and heartfelt sigh of relief.

At five to ten my name was finally called and I stiffly stood up trying to un-numb my derrière enough to walk down the corridor and find room two as directed.

‘Ah
. . .
Mr Greenway
?’ The doctor said looking up smiling, and then on seeing me the smile froze on his face and changed to an unspoken question mark.

‘No. I’m Judy Parker. Have I come to the wrong room? The reception told me
Doctor Leeman in room two
.’ I said pausing in the doorway.

‘Well this is room two, and I am Doctor Leeman, but you’re obviously not Mr Greenway. Sit down, sit down.’ He said agitatedly searching through the mountain of files on his desk.
I sat dow
n and he finally located mine
. ‘Now then what seems to be the trouble?’

‘I’m pregnant.’
I blurted out.

‘Ah yes.’ He said ma
tter of factly. ‘When was your
last period?’
No look of shock or outrage that I
,
a young single
female
,
should be in this predicament.

‘The twentieth of May.’ I said without hesitation, the date being burnt into my brain having checked it so many times back at the beginning of this nightmare.

‘I see . . . you’ve waited rather a long time to come and see someone haven’t you? Have you done a test yourself?’

‘Yes nine of them, I’m definitely pregnant.’
He blanched a bit when I said nine but didn’t
actually
comment.

‘Well Ms Parker we’d better get you booked in for a scan
as soon as possible
.’

‘Does it hurt?’ My inborn squeamishness being predominant at all times.

‘Hurt? No it doesn’t hurt.’ He said amused by my ignorance
, rather arrogantly I thought.
I mean
,
how
am
I supposed to know?

‘You’ll need to come for regular prenatal checkups once a month until a bit nearer the time, and then we’ll see you once a fortnight until baby’s born.’

‘Yes.’ Was all I could manage.

‘Are you alright?’

‘Yes . . . only . . ‘

‘Yes?’

‘Well what exactly do they do in these checkups?’

He laughed again.
Great, I’m so glad someone finds this amusing because I sure as hell wasn’t.

‘We’ll take your blood pressure and test your urine, and feel your tummy just to make sure baby’s in the right position but it won’t hurt I promise.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘For now, yes that’s it. Oh and we’ll need to do a blood test to find out what
blood
group you are.’

Blood test! With needles and everything
, actually take s
ome of the
blood out of my body!

Seeing my look of horror, as only the victim of a vampire can look when about to be bitten, he hastily continued. ‘It will hurt a little bit I’m afraid, but not for long, it’s all over with very quickly.’

‘Okay.’ I said feeling queasy.

‘So I’ll book you in for next week for your first prenatal,
Tuesday afternoon is when we hold the prenatal clinic, shall we say three o’clock? A
nd the hospital will be in touch about the scan.’

‘Right.’ I was just on polite autopilot now and not
really
taking in anything he said.

‘Oh and remember to bring a sample of your urine with you won’t you
.’

‘Okay.’

‘Well that’s about it for now.’

‘Okay.’ I said again
,
not moving.

‘Ms Parker?’

‘Oh
, right
that’s it? I’m finished?’

‘Yes. Unless there’s anything else?’

‘No there’s nothing else.’

In near suspended animation I left the doctors surgery and walked across the car park back to my car. I sat in the car staring blankly ahead. The enormity of the reality
of my situation
hitting me
all over again
. I was having a baby.
A real baby was growing inside me and on the
twenty-eighth
of February I would be a mother. Fat tears
coursed
down my face, but I let them fall unchecked and un-wiped, still staring blankly ahead. Eventually after what felt like a week I managed to pull myself together enough to drive to work.

15
th
August – Week 11 +
1 And A Half Days

When I got to work,
at
coming up to
lunch time
,
it had all the appearance of a war zone. A partition was being put up at the far end, and all the people who normally worked in that area
, the purchase ledger section,
had been shifted forward to allow room for the workmen, with the result that neither the workmen or the people who normally sat there
had enough space to do what they were doing
,
and
were
all
moaning like mad as a consequence.

Doreen
was trying to keep her cool
,
she
was
in charge of the purchase ledger,
and
with the help of the
other
two girls on her section
was organising
some hurried packing of files into storage boxes. George Morton who also worked for her and had
been
at Fishers since their first
greeting
card was produced back in 1965, stolidly continued tapping away at his computer as if t
his was all an everyday
occurrence
, and resolutely refused to help in any way. He always was a
curmudgeonly
old duffer at the best of times
, one of the ‘always done it that way, don’t see why I should change now’ brigade,
and Doreen was counting the days until he retired.