Babies in Waiting (5 page)

‘Oh my goodness! I couldn’t believe it when I opened the email with your amazing news! That’s just brilliant. You must be so excited. Have you decided where the baby will be born? Have you made any antenatal appointments yet? I’m really happy to come up to Leeds and go along with you. Wait till you have the first scan, it’s so amazing to see your little darling on the screen . . .’

Rachel drew breath and Louise took the opportunity and cut in.

‘Slow down! I haven’t had any appointments yet, and I’m coming down to London in four weeks, so I’ll register with a doctor and organise everything then.’

‘Oh my God, are you crying?’

‘No.’

‘Lou, I’ve been your sister for thirty-four years. I know what your voice sounds like when you’re crying. What’s happened? You’re not spotting, are you?’

‘I’m fine, just a bit tired, that’s all. Listen, Rach, this isn’t a great time . . .’

Louise felt instantly guilty. She was always busy when Rachel rang, it was never a good time, she always said she’d ring her straight back, and she almost never did. Rachel was obviously thinking of making a fuss, but she thought better of it. If Louise was pregnant and emotional, she’d go easy on her. She was clearly trying to sound smiley, easy and encouraging.

‘I know, I know . . . you’re busy. Just tell me the basics and I’ll let you go.’

‘I’m pregnant, that’s as much as I know.’

‘How many weeks?’

‘Nine, now, I think.’

‘You think? Are you not sure? When was your last period? Are you still so regular? Because it can make a difference to your due date, you know, if your cycle is shorter or longer.’

Louise felt stretched to the limit. She didn’t want to have a girly chat with her sister. She was tired and anxious and over-emotional, and she needed to absorb what she’d seen in the meeting-room doorway that morning. But
Rachel was trying so hard, and this must be so difficult for her. She shouldn’t be mean. She really shouldn’t. She’d just have to bite the bullet and answer the question she knew was coming.

‘And . . . the daddy?’

‘We’re not together, Rach.’

‘So you said in your email . . . but what does he think?’

‘About what?’

‘About being a dad? About your moving away? How will he have access? Have you made maintenance arrangements? I’ve heard the Child Support Agency is much better now at chasing deadbeat dads.’

‘Rachel . . . I . . .’ Oh boy. She really, really hadn’t wanted to get into this. But unless she was going to come up with a pack of lies that she’d have to remember, it was probably easiest just to tell the truth.

‘I haven’t made any arrangements because I’m not sure I’m going to tell him. That’s one of the reasons I’m coming down to London. We broke up, there’s no future. He probably never needs to know.’

‘Louise! You can’t do that! What about when your baby’s a teenager and wants to go looking for his or her dad. What will happen then?’

‘Well, then . . . I don’t know.’

Rachel was talking again, very fast and in a very shrill voice, but Louise couldn’t listen to her. Not any more. Not right now. She cut her off mid-flow. ‘This is very early days, Rach. I still have a lot of stuff to work out. I know that. Please stop bombarding me with questions, okay?’

‘I’m not bombarding you, I’m only trying to—’

‘I know, I know! Okay? Can you just give me a bit of time? A few days to sort my head out. And then I’ll try and have answers to some of your very valid questions.’

‘All right,’ said Rachel, slightly soothed. ‘I’m just going to ask one more question.’

Louise sighed. ‘What?’

‘Are you taking folic acid?’

‘Folic what?’

‘You need to be taking folic acid to stop your baby getting spina bifida. And at your age, you need to find out if they do the triple test in your area or if you need to go private.’

‘The what? Triple test? Stop talking medical talk at me!’

‘I have to! There’s stuff you need to know and be thinking about right now. There’s no time to waste. Your baby’s in its most critical stage of development right as we speak. Listen. I’m emailing you the address of a website. It’s got everything you need to know . . . and also a great forum section if you want to chat to other mums online.’

‘I’m not really one for online chat . . .’

‘Whatever. Don’t use that part if you don’t want to. But there’s loads of information that you might find useful. Trust me. I’m going now. Love you, okay?’

And Rachel was gone.

It was a normal Friday evening in. James watched the footie with his feet up on the coffee table. I’d sat at the dining-room table with my laptop. We didn’t chat much; we often don’t in the evening. But it was comfortable and nice. Then the match finished, and James stood up and stretched.

‘Coming to bed then?’ he said.

‘Um . . . not right now. I’ll be there in a bit.’

He came to peer over my shoulder. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh . . . just chatting,’ I said, minimising the window on my laptop.

‘Sexy chat?’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s, um . . . it’s just a work thing. I won’t be long.’

He kissed the top of my head and headed for the bedroom.

Well, I just lied to my husband on two counts. What I’m doing is definitely not for work, and in some ways, I suppose you could say it
is
sexy chat. Except on the site
I’m chatting on, it’s called BD or DTD. And for your information those aren’t acronyms for something really kinky and illegal. Confused? Me too. Let’s go back a step, shall we? To this afternoon.

This afternoon, I had to go to the gynaecologist. You see, I’ve been having some issues with my periods. I know what you’re thinking . . . three paragraphs in and already we’re in the area of Way Too Much Information. I’ve just always had really irregular periods . . . sometimes two in a month, then nothing for three months. It’s been going on for years, really, and I didn’t do anything about it for ages. But eventually I went to the doctor, who referred me for tests and scans and blah, blah, blah, all of which led to me sitting opposite this gynaecologist who looked worryingly rather like my dad.

He looked at the pages on the desk in front of him for a really long time, and then he looked up at me, over the top of his specs. ‘I’m afraid the news is not too good, Antonia,’ he said seriously. Wow . . . really like my dad after I’d had a less-than-excellent school report. He’d full-named me and everything. Everyone except my parents has always called me Toni. ‘Not good?’ I said, and my voice sounded a bit high and squeaky.

‘No, Antonia, not good at all,’ he said, and looked down at his notes again. The man was definitely a fan of the extended dramatic pause. He looked at me again.

‘You have primary ovarian insufficiency, Antonia,’ he said, and instead of hearing what he was saying, I found myself wishing he’d stop using my name in that slightly
condescending way. He paused again, and I realised I was supposed to say something. All I could manage was, ‘So?’ Not very articulate. But there you are. Not so good under pressure, me.

‘It’s not going to get any better,’ he continued. ‘You’re likely to experience menopausal symptoms within the next few years, and those may be quite severe. Your fertility is already significantly compromised, and every year that passes, that’s going to decrease.’

Whoa. My fertility? I’d come to see him because I was sick of never knowing when I was going to come on. Fertility? That was a problem for women in their forties. Not women like me. Who on earth would start going on about fertility? Well, actually Dr Dad did. And he was still talking about it and I’d missed something crucial. What was he saying?

‘ . . . would suggest you get on with it.’

Now I’d missed the important bit because I hadn’t been listening. ‘I’m sorry?’ I peeped.

He frowned at me. He’d obviously run out of time and decided to skip the pauses and cut to the chase. ‘I see from your notes that you’re married. If you’re planning on having children, I’d say you should do it sooner rather than later. Within the year, if possible. Before it’s too late.’

Well, I heard that. I thanked Dr Dad and headed back to the office. I had a busy afternoon ahead . . . a press release to write, three meetings and a conference call with Seattle. I didn’t ring James and tell him. He’d known I was going to the doctor, but I hadn’t gone into detail
about why. To be honest, I wasn’t ready to tell him what I’d just heard. I needed to get my head around it. Children within the year? Wow.

Were we planning on having children? Well, of course. Dr Dad was right, we are married, but we’re still pretty young. I’m twenty-six and James is twenty-eight. Most of our friends, the ones who are in relationships, are just starting to move in together, and none of them have kids. We’d agreed when we got engaged that we wanted a family one day . . . but that was very much the point. One day. A lot was going to happen before that. I wanted to move ahead in my career. James was aiming to be a senior designer or junior creative director within a few years. We were still toying with the idea of a year out to travel. And of course we’d have to scramble a few rungs up the property ladder from our tiny little house in a not very posh bit of Surrey before we started popping sprogs. ‘One day’ was eight, maybe ten years into the future. Not this year. Not now.

So back to this evening. James had gone to bed, and I was sat digging around on the net. Primary ovarian insufficiency. 485,000 hits on Google. Endless websites listing the symptoms and causes. Well, from the sounds of it, Dr Dad was right. It seemed I was in the minority of women with this ovarian-insufficiency thing to have any eggs at all, and they were going off as I sat there.

That morning, before I’d gone to the doctor, if you’d asked me what I really wanted, I would probably have said a skinny latte. A new handbag. A holiday in Greece. More
sleep. Slimmer ankles. Now, all I could think about was the baby I was probably never going to have. And I wanted it. So, so badly. More than anything I’ve ever wanted in the world.

I wasn’t tired. I was wide awake, and I didn’t want to go and lie in bed next to James, because I knew I’d end up waking him up and telling him the whole story and I needed to think about it a bit more on my own first. So I carried on surfing the net. I started looking for a website for women like me. Women who might be thinking about maybe getting pregnant, sometime soon, maybe. If they could.

I’d had enough medical information, so I skipped all the NHS fact-based ones, and googled ‘baby’. Not very clever, but it seemed to work. There seemed to be thousands of sites. I picked the first one that came up. There were frankly baffling numbers of articles about everything to do with making babies, being pregnant, looking after babies . . . and then a huge forum section with thousands of women talking about these things in great and lurid detail, using all sorts of confusing terms and initials.

There were hundreds of groups and threads, and I dug around a bit and settled on one called ‘TTC’. That’s trying to conceive, for the uninitiated, which is what I would have been if they hadn’t explained it in brackets after the acronym. It took me a few goes to work out that DTD means Doing the Deed, which I know is how babies are made, but BD took a bit longer. Then someone spelled it out . . . ‘Babydancing.’ Ah. Cute. Well, that made me feel
a bit sick. Then there were all kinds of complicated explanations to do with taking your temperature and working out calendars of ovulation, and then highly technical discussions about fertility drugs. It was making my head swim. It seemed as if you needed a PhD in science to do this baby-making thing. How can that be? There are billions of people in the world. They were all babies once. It just can’t be that hard to make one. And let’s face it, for at least two girls in my year at school, it wasn’t difficult at all . . . they managed to do it, even though they couldn’t do Maths or Science for toffee.

But if Dr Dad is right, it’s going to be very difficult for James and me. My dried-out, old-raisin ovaries were well on their way to their sell-by date and if we didn’t BD with all speed, we’d end up one of those old childless couples who have allotments or collect china dogs.

I turned off my laptop and crept upstairs. I peeked into our bedroom, and James was fast asleep, starfished across the whole bed. I stood and watched him for a bit. He was so handsome, even when he was asleep. Sometimes, when we meet in town, and I’m waiting for him in a station or restaurant and he walks in, I find myself thinking ‘Wow! What a foxy bloke!’ in the instant before I recognise him.

I went into the bathroom, showered quickly and brushed my teeth, then crept into bed next to James. He didn’t wake up when I got in, but instinctively turned over and curled around me in our normal sleeping position. James’ arms always make me feel safe. For the first time since I left the doctor’s office, I felt like things might just be okay.

Maybe you’re wondering about James and me. I mean . . . he really is fit, and I’m, well, I suppose I’m okay-looking, but I don’t stop traffic. I’m short and blonde, tending towards the curvy if I don’t keep an eye on my weight. I’ve been told I’m cute and bubbly, and I know I have okay skin and big green eyes. I’d much rather be statuesque and sexy, but there you are. You get what you’re given. James on the other hand, is a grade-A hunk. We’ve been married for a year and a half, together for four years.

We met at work – we’d both been hired as interns by a big advertising firm, straight out of uni. It was James, me and four other people of the same age. We were going to be working all the hours that God gave for Tube fares and lunch money, and we were supposed to count ourselves super-lucky. We all met up sitting in the all-white lobby of the agency. There were two other girls, and by the time I got there they were sitting either side of James, talking really quickly over one another, trying to impress him. He was leaning right back, his arms folded over his chest. He had curly blond hair, cut very short, and a face that looked like it had been carved out of marble. Really. I know that sounds like something out of a Mills & Boon, but it’s true. He’s stunning. But I was in my surly, intellectual, I-hate-everything-anyone-else-likes phase, so I immediately decided I wasn’t impressed by him. Urgh, I told myself. One of those vain guys who thinks he’s God’s gift.