OMG Baby! (16 page)

‘Don’t you think killing her is a tad harsh? Couldn’t she just have niggling discomfort, like get a nasty yeast infection?’ I ask, leading up to the big speech.

‘OK,’ he says. ‘I can go along with that, or how about she has to have extensive root-canal work involving a lot of wiring?’

‘Become allergic to mascara? Develop a bald patch maybe?’

‘I suppose it could be OK if she got all of those things and underwear blisters and . . . anal fissures,’ he says with a gleeful look in his eyes.

‘Though we mean her no real harm.’ I frown, checking.

He laughs and so do I, and I end up having half a Guinness with him for the iron content and to celebrate him selling a painting. He’s really happy. We’re having fun. And somehow I don’t get round to telling him about Rainey staying for as long as she likes.

I
feel a pulling sensation
, and there’s a sound like straining timber. My limbs are stretched unnaturally; things are cracking. A bitter wind blows through my bones, and when I look down, my lower half is made of Lego and I have an enormous hole between my plastic legs.

‘Her pelvic floor’s gone,’ tuts a hooded nurse-type figure, handing me an armful of screaming Beany Babies.

‘Can we rebuild her?’ asks a doctor who looks a lot like my granddad, although he sold vending machines when he was alive.

‘No. Not ever. Never, ever will she be the same again,’ wails the nurse, and her face shrivels in on itself like an old peach.

I wake up in a sweat on the sofa bed, clawing at my own legs.

I’m alone, cocooned in the quilt. I turn onto my back and try to reassure myself. I still have a pelvic floor and I’m clenching it for all I’m worth.

‘Clench, hold, release, repeat,’ I say to myself.

Then without warning I start to feel incredibly horny. Now, this is a new thing. The women at the yoga class last week were discussing it and they said it’s to do with having more blood in your body than normal. This must be what men feel like all the time. How brilliant. Sadly I can’t do anything about it. Max left early for work, and anyway, my mother is already banging about in the kitchen. I can hear her singing in Spanish. Today is the day of my twenty-week scan and the beginning of my pregnant know-it-all phase. After the scan, Max and I are looking at baby equipment, researching what we need and then seeing if we can find it cheap second hand. I found out about the NCT – it stands for ‘National Childbirth Trust’ – and I booked Max and me on to a class next week. Even though the group is halfway through the course, the woman on the phone said we could sit in. I reach into my bag and fish out a list I wrote on the bus after seeing Lucy the other day, smoothing out the paper of the old receipt it’s written on.

B
irth plan
? Bob Dylan/water/massage?

Hypnotist!

Doula

NCT – to make friends!!!! Will be lonely after baby and know no one!

Pelvic-sling thing?

Epidural/gas and air

Baby pouch

Buggy – research

I
cross
out the NCT part and add ‘maternity clothes’ to the bottom of the list and cross that out as well to give myself a sense of achievement. Then I nip off to the bathroom to get ready.

I meet Max at the hospital and we sit with another couple and their little boy waiting for our scan. I smile at the pregnant woman and she slides her eyes away from my wizard sleeves. The boy is wearing a little baseball cap, which he keeps flinging to the floor. I try not to look at him because two hideous green candles of snot are hanging precariously from each of his nostrils.

‘Mackenzie!’ the woman says. ‘Mackenzie, pick that up now!’

The man she’s with is super thin and nervous as a whippet. Every time he swallows, his Adam’s apple trembles like he’s crying inside. His eyes are pleading something like, ‘I’m no more than a boy myself. Release me from this hell.’

Max reads the newspaper, occasionally patting my leg reassuringly until Mackenzie climbs on top of the magazine table next to Max’s chair and starts to jump up and down, knocking into Max’s sports section and getting his attention.

‘Mackenzie!’ the woman starts up again. ‘Come here. You’re getting a belt in a minute. You won’t have no telly!’

The boy continues to jump, flicking magazines and papers over the floor with his feet.

Max puts a hand on the boy’s shoulder, pressing him down mid-jump. ‘Hey, your mammy wants you,’ says Max.

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ sings the boy, flinging his hat. It lands in Max’s lap and Max picks it up.

‘This is a really nice hat. Thomas the Tank Engine. I’ve been looking for one like this.’

‘Mine!’ squeals Mackenzie.

‘Go to your mammy,’ says Max, and hands her the hat.

She smiles a smile that says, ‘Thank you. I love you. I need a father for this child and would give you lots of filthy sex.’

‘You big poo,’ says Mackenzie, getting down from the table.

‘You’re a bigger poo, and you have a poo hat,’ says Max, squinting menacingly and pointing, and at that moment the woman’s partner turns and takes a good long unfriendly look at Max. I feel Max squaring up his shoulders next to me, so I take his hand and place it on my tummy.

‘Can you feel something there?’ I ask. ‘I feel a little flutter.’

Then thankfully the other couple are called in for their scan. The woman ignores my smile as she passes.

‘Bye, Mr Poo Head,’ says Mackenzie, as he disappears round the corner and Max waves his fist.

After they’re gone, I stare at Max.

‘What?’ shrugs Max.

‘Can we not even wait for a scan without you starting a brawl?’

‘He was asking for it. He’d better not show his weaselly little face around here again.’

‘He was about four.’

Max leans back in the hospital chair, staring straight ahead, and then he yawns massively.

‘And in other news, Mr Poo Head . . . I’m undergoing a transformation that is nothing short of miraculous here.’ I indicate my belly with the backs of my hands.

He bear-hugs me. ‘I adore you, my precious jewel!’ he shouts. ‘And you,’ he says to the bump, and then I definitely feel a kick like a soft wingbeat inside.

L
ater we leave
the scan room clutching each other in excitement, our eyes brimming with tears, not able to believe what we just saw. First the screen was black, and then there was a grey swirling blizzard, and then there was a baby! It was like spying. The baby was relaxing on her back, sucking her thumb, doing her own thing, and we watched her and measured her and talked about her. I say ‘her’ because we’re certain it’s a girl, even though we decided not to find out the baby’s gender. We heard her little heart beating, we counted her toes, and we now even have a picture of her.

We leave the hospital high as balloons and go straight into the first department store we can find that has a baby section. There’s a whole floor of stuff and still more stuff hanging from the ceiling. We stare around at this strange, colourful new world in amazement.

‘You don’t know this yet, but we need a Doodle Baby playmat with interactive mobile, mirrors and squeakers,’ I say, checking the price and putting it back.

‘Oh, one of those. Yeah, that’s a must,’ says Max, and it’s a moment before I realise he’s being sarcastic. ‘And look – a baby nest. We need one of those to trap her in. No, no, even better look at this!’ He’s found an activity centre on wheels and starts pressing buttons. ‘We can shove her in that and watch as she becomes enraged by these high-pitched nursery rhymes on repeat mode and tortured by these flashing lights coupled with her inability to move . . .’

‘He’s a cheerful man.’ I smile to a woman shopper who’s backing away.

‘And it vibrates,’ he continues, switching on the vibrating seat and making the beads on the tray rattle. ‘Jesus on acid.’

I turn my back on him and head over to the gift section. Here there are Peter Rabbit moneyboxes and solid silver rattles, my-first-year photo frames and baby sock bouquets, but there’s nothing like one of our congratulations crackers. Our ‘New Baby’ cracker could come in hot pink or blue stripe and contain useful stuff like a special dummy that makes the baby sleep on demand or bath oil for mothers that transforms you to fully made up, with good hair and dressed in leggings and a chic tunic. Something like that, anyway.

I put down a silver-plated hairbrush and wander off to the buggy section, where there are carriages of every conceivable style and colour. A young salesman approaches as soon as I touch the handle of a Biggedy Buggidy and asks about my perfect buggy criteria. Never before have I been required to consider this. I have a think while stroking the spotted canopy of a Ladybird City Bug.

‘Erm, I’d like to be able to see the baby as I go along?’ I ask apologetically, and he immediately wheels out three contraptions with clip-on bits and runs through their features. Max saunters over.

‘This model, sir, is the four-wheel drive of the buggy world. It’s a deluxe off-roader with suspension, and it folds down at the touch of a button to the size of a laptop – great for popping into the car boot or on a train or in a restaurant. Its aluminium frame makes it super lightweight, so your wife can lift this easily in and out of the car.’

‘Ah, don’t worry about that. She can lift a hell of a lot more than she looks like she can,’ Max says, pointing up and down with his finger at me. Then he yawns.

I listen carefully and occasionally take notes as the sales guy talks me through an egg-shaped capsule on a wheeled tripod, designed to keep the baby out of the way of traffic fumes, and a pram-type affair that flips over and becomes a pushchair as the baby grows.

‘And does that one keep the baby out of traffic fumes?’ I ask.

‘It suspends your tiny mewling newborn at just about exhaust-pipe height, I’d say,’ Max interrupts with a pleasant smile.

Eventually bewildered, the sales guy wanders away, leaving us to have a think.

I punch Max on the arm. ‘You weren’t even listening to any of that, were you?’

‘Neither were you,’ says Max, snatching the notebook out of my hands and reading the list. ‘“Traffic fumes, laptop, eight hundred and fifty pounds”?’

‘Look, it’s our duty to know about this stuff. One day, in some class or something, I know I’m going to feel rubbish for not knowing about the parasol function of the Caterpillar Off-Road Sprint.’

‘I’ll bet you a hundred quid you won’t,’ he says.

‘Aren’t you interested in the Days Away Travel System With Car Seat?’

‘Well, now, let’s see. “Interested” is too strong a word, I think,’ he says, rubbing his beard.

‘You’re not excited by one-finger manoeuvrability, then?’

‘Well, I’d rather have a blow job.’

I shake my head and walk off tutting, and Max follows, calling out, ‘I’m here, though! I’m with you.’

‘And how I wish you weren’t,’ I mutter, and he laughs.

In the end we decide our first purchases should be a Moses basket and a sling baby carrier. We jot down the names of the leading brands so we can search eBay later, and I insist on buying a pack of tiny white sleepsuits with matching hat and a book called
Forty Weeks and Counting Down
. Then, boosted by that small purchase, we drift into the department store’s café and moon over the first pictures of our baby.

Max takes out a scan photo. It’s a close-up of the baby in profile, and he holds it up next to his own head and tries to make the same pose, and then I’m extremely worried. As I look from him to her picture, I realise our baby definitely has Max’s nose. I try to tell myself things might change over the next few months – she might lay down some cartilage or something, but flicking through
Forty Weeks and Counting Down
, it seems this might be her actual nose. At twenty weeks, she’s fully formed, poor love. Shall I tell Max he might have made our daughter ugly? I’m just about to when my phone rings and flashes up ‘Lucy’, and when I answer, she’s crying.

I get up, walking out of the noisy café to hear her better, and stand with one finger in my ear frowning out of the window. She’s so upset I can’t hear what she’s saying.

‘What’s happened?’ I manage to ask as she takes a breath.

All I hear is her rhythmic breathing as she sobs.

‘Is it Reuben?’

‘I’m bleeding,’ she whispers. ‘I’m bleeding loads, Viv.’

L
ucy is
pale as the moon and red-eyed when I let myself into her flat. She’s sitting with her legs wrapped in a towel on the floor, leaning against the wall and staring into space.

I put down my bag and slip out of my coat, not taking my eyes off her. I get on the floor, sitting in front of her, and she slides her gaze to me.

‘I just read in a pregnancy book that sometimes you can get bleeding and nothing is wrong with the baby,’ I say gravely, smoothing her hair.

‘It’s out,’ she says. She looks stricken and confused. I notice her hands are covered with dried blood. ‘Um, there was this lump of purple skin in my pants.’

I move to sit beside her. ‘But bleeding can be normal,’ I say, my certainty wavering.

‘It’s in the toilet,’ she says, and swallows slowly. ‘It just slid out.’

‘The . . . the blood?’

‘And . . . something else. I felt it slip out,’ she says, and she looks at me with wild eyes. Then her face contorts and her shoulders start to heave.

We hold on to each other. Her fingers press into my forearm and she cries like I’ve never seen her cry. She keeps lifting her head and gulping for air.

‘Hey, Lucy. Hey, babe,’ I try to console her, rubbing her back as I look around the flat. There’s a rusty smell of blood, and Lucy’s work trousers and pants lie by the bathroom door, next to a red footprint. I wonder how long she has been bleeding and how much blood she’s lost.

‘Lucy, Luce, listen to me. Did you ring Reuben?’

‘He’s on a business trip.’

‘Okay so did you ring the doctor?’

‘I can’t get through,’ she wails, and shows me where her phone lies next to her.

‘I’ll try, or do you think we should get you to hospital?’

She lets her head fall back against the wall again. ‘I don’t know,’ she says miserably.

I really don’t like the colour of her now, so pale, almost blue. I pick up the phone and press ‘redial’. I get up and walk past the open bathroom door. The bathmat is red, and the toilet bowl is streaked, like a horror-film scene. I dare not look into the bowl. I walk back to Lucy, listening to the recorded messages, pressing options, and then I get to speak to a doctor, who puts me through to the hospital, and they ask how many sanitary towels she has needed to use within the last hour. I hand the phone to Lucy, who answers questions quietly with a yes or a no. Then she hangs up.

‘They want me to go in for a scan,’ she says in a flat, dull voice.

I don’t know what to say. It seems likely with all this blood that she’s lost the baby, but what do I know? I feel my stomach turn. If they want her to have a scan, does that mean there’s some hope? It’s just a relief she’s not dying. I look at her and nod.

‘Will you come with me?’ she asks.

‘Of course I’m coming. What do you need . . . ? I’ll get us a taxi.’

‘They want me to bring the . . . whatever came out of me,’ she says, and her eye sockets seem to turn darker. I glance towards the bathroom. ‘They want to do tests.’

‘But how will you get it and take it? How?’ I jabber, trying to stop myself from openly shuddering.

She gets to her feet and pads to the open-plan kitchen, leaving me staring at her bare blood-streaked legs beneath the towel. She reaches into a cupboard and takes down a large plastic box. She opens a drawer and fishes about among utensils, eventually bringing out chopsticks. She places them on the counter next to the plastic box and looks at me, her face deathly white.

‘Mate, I don’t think chopsticks . . .’ I shake my head.

She reaches into the drawer again, this time bringing out a slotted spoon, and places it solemnly down on the counter. We look at each other, our eyes snagging on each other’s.

She walks towards the bathroom holding the box and the spoon in her bloodied hands. Then she stops at the door.

‘I’m not doing it,’ she tells me, and for a sickening moment I think she might hand the equipment to me, but she places it down on the counter. She leans on the counter and rests her head in the crook of her arm. Her foot smears a fresh new drop of red on the tiled floor.

‘Shall I just flush it?’ I ask, but she doesn’t answer.

I take her to the bedroom and make her lie down on a towel trying not to look at the chair in the corner where her maternity top and matching sleepsuit are draped, the little flat, empty striped sleepsuit waiting there for nothing. I feel a lump in my throat. She closes her eyes while I pull a cover over her.

‘I’m going to clean up the bathroom, OK?’ I say, and she nods. ‘And then the taxi will be here and we’ll go to the hospital.’ I stroke her hand as a tear slides down into her hair. ‘It’s going to be OK, Lucy. You’re OK,’ I tell her.

She opens her eyes and looks at me. ‘But my baby, Viv,’ she wails, and her face crumples.