Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 (16 page)

My new born baby daughter is fast asleep in a cot at the bottom of the bed. She looks serene and at peace, which gives me a warm, content feeling in my heart.

All is currently well in Laura Newman’s life.

I am in the calm after the storm, and am taking great pleasure in noticing all the little details of my placid state, making sure to soak it up while I can.

I guess it’s time I told you about the storm though, isn’t it?

It begins with Christmas shopping…

Take the worst shopping trip you’ve ever experienced, and imagine it with a six pound bag of potatoes strapped to your stomach. This will give you a fair idea of the misery I was forced to endure on Saturday afternoon. Finish by pissing yourself in front of a crowd of people, and you’ve pretty much provided yourself with the same experience I went through.

I didn’t choose a Saturday afternoon to go Christmas shopping.

I’m on maternity leave after all, and could have gone on any week day, when the entire population of the south coast of
England
wouldn’t be doing the same thing.

It was the only day Jamie had to spare though, and I needed him with me to nail down exactly what we were going to buy his parents. It’s only been a few months since I called Jane a bitch, so I figured I’d best make an effort to purchase something big and apologetic.

To be honest I was glad to get out of the house, because it distracted me from the fact that any time soon I was going to have to give birth to a baby.

The closer you get to your due date, the more it invades all of your waking thoughts – and your dreams too for that matter. My mind is pretty much constantly in a whirl over what’s going to happen - particularly the amount of pain I’m going to suffer.

Whether I like it or not, there is
nothing
I can do about the fact a baby is going to push its way out of my body sometime very soon. The absolute certainty of it is brain-freezing.

Still, I’m not due until the eighth, and that’s over a week away, so I should be fine right?

Yeah, right…

Most women are fortunate enough to have their waters break in the confines of their own home.

Me, I choose to do it in front of hundreds of people, with a husband flapping like an injured crow.

We’d been wandering around the gigantic shopping centre for half an hour and I was already starting to flag. Even the rather cute red cardigan I’d just picked up in Monsoon for half price wasn’t keeping my mood buoyant.

My head ached, my piles were itching like mad, my ankles were throbbing, and my enormous floppy tits felt red raw.

HUGE floppy tits they are.

Engorged with more milk than the dairy aisle at Tesco.

I feel like somebody should string a cow bell around my neck and herd me into the nearest pasture.

I waddle through the shopping centre like a great barge drifting down river, surrounded by faster, more agile yachts.

I see teenage girls prancing around in tiny jean shorts and leggings, and I hate them. Hate them and their young, thin healthy bodies. I’m only in my early thirties but being pregnant makes me feel like a fifty year old fat man on the brink of a heart attack.

There’s something exquisitely frustrating about only being able to move at a slow pace. I can understand why obese people always have red faces now. It’s not because they’re out of breath, it’s just because they’re pissed off they can’t get to the donut stand any quicker.

Jamie is doing what all men do in situations like this: trying his hardest to contain his impatience, and failing miserably.

‘Where do you want to go now?’ he says, circling me like a small moon. ‘Dixons? Primark? John Lewis?’

‘I don’t know! Why do you keep giving me choices? You bloody choose.’

‘I don’t know. Wherever you want really,’ he tells me, jiggling up and down on the spot and obviously chaffing at my stately pace.

This is one habit of my husband’s I could cheerfully beat out of him.

He always leaves it to me to make the decisions about this sort of thing. I came into his life purely so he could abstain from any decision making - thus leaving more room in his brain for Playstation 3 games and Top Gear.

‘I guess we could look round John Lewis,’ I sigh and begin to change direction. I’m like one of those oil tankers that need five miles just to turn around.

‘Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Maybe we could get mum and dad a coffee machi – Oh! The Apple shop’s over there!’

…and there goes any chance of us finding a present in the next hour.

‘Go on,’ I groan like a parent with an over-excited seven year old. ‘You go in and I’ll catch up.’

Jamie grins, kisses me on the cheek and is lost in the never-ending crowd in an instant. I rub my back for the millionth time that day, and once again change trajectory to bring my bulk on a close entry orbit with the clean, white edifice that is the Apple store.

Inside, Jamie is stroking an iPad like it’s his first born.

His soon to be real first born is moving around to get into a more comfy position, causing her mother to wince with discomfort as she wobbles her way past the Genius Bar.

I hate going into this shop for the plain and simple reason I don’t like being around objects that have been fondled by thousands of people.

The build up of bacteria and germs on each and every iPad, iPhone and iPod in here would be enough to knock out several invading armies of Martians.

If the influenza virus was going to throw a party it would do it in the nearest Apple shop.

I look at Jamie rubbing his fingers over the iPad and resolve to not let him get near me until he’s submerged his hands in neat Domestos for ten minutes.

I try not to imagine the microscopic creatures crawling all over me, so instead I concentrate on his happy little face.

It doesn’t take much to keep Jamie amused. Just give him a ten inch screen and a copy of Plants Vs Zombies and he’s as happy as a pig in –

Oh Christ.

I suddenly feel very,
very
damp downstairs.

Oh shit, I’ve wet myself
, is my first thought. It’s swiftly followed by a sensation of ‘release’ that doesn’t usually come with emptying your bladder.

Oh God no! Not here. I’m not due for days!

But God is not listening. He’s in Heaven trying to get three stars on the last Angry Birds level, while Steve Jobs sits next to him offering hints.

‘Jamie…’

‘Look Laura, the zombie’s wearing a traffic cone!’

‘Jamie…’

‘Where do I put this walnut?’

‘Jamie…’

‘Oh no! That one’s already at the house!’

‘JAMIE!’

‘What’s the matter?!’

‘My water’s have broken,’ I hiss under my breath, trying to move as little as possible.

Jamie goes white. ‘They can’t have. We’re in the Apple shop,’ he says, as if embarrassing incidents were prevented from happening in here by some magical aura given off by a thousand touch screens.

Now I can feel liquid dripping down my leg. If we don’t get out of here soon I’m going to completely ruin the lovely clean white aesthetic the shop’s got going on.

‘Ah… er… ah… eh…’ goes Jamie, dancing a fraught jig on the spot.

Several of the surrounding crowd of Apple fans are now looking at us, wondering what the hell is happening.

I supply them with the angriest look I can muster. ‘Nothing to see here people! Go back to your sodding iTunes!’ I turn back to my incapacitated husband. ‘We have to leave Jamie,
right now
!’

I grab his arm and start pulling him towards the door. Unfortunately the idiot hasn’t let go of the iPad he’s holding and we’re both jerked backwards by the security cable as it reaches its length. The security alarm goes off and a chubby lad of indeterminate age trots over. He’s wearing a blue t-shirt indicating he’s one of the laughably named ‘Geniuses’ who work in the shop. He has a look of mild panic on his face. This is one situation there definitely isn’t an app for.

‘What’s going on?’ he says.

I grab his arm as well, so now I’m propped up between husband and Genius. ‘What’s going on,’ I tell him, trying to keep the dread out of my voice, ‘is that I’m a heavily pregnant woman whose waters have just broken.’

‘Is that an excuse for trying to steal an iPad?’ the Genius says suspiciously.

I point to the small puddle forming around my feet. ‘If it is, you bloody idiot, I’m really going to town on it, aren’t I?’

The Genius goes as white as Jamie. I roll my eyes. ‘Where’s your staff toilet?’ I demand.

‘Members of the public are not allowed to use our toilet facilities,’ he states, as if he’s reading from some internal autocue.

‘Really? Are members of the public encouraged to give birth next to the iShuffle stand? Because that’s what’s going to happen, you cretin.’ This doesn’t appear to spur him into action, so I try another tack. ‘My husband here may look like one of the mentally challenged at the moment, but when he isn’t panicking over his wife giving birth he is a journalist. Can you imagine how bad the PR will be if he writes a story about this?’

That does the trick. ‘Come this way!’ the Genius wails and creates a space in the crowd through to the rear of the store.

I go to move, but this just makes the flow of liquid from my nether regions speed up. I have to slow it down to even reach the toilet.

Thus arrives the final crowning indignity of the day.

Having your waters break in public is bad enough, but having to stem the tide with the cute thirty quid cardigan you were planning on wearing to the work Christmas lunch next week is just
too fucking much
.

What happens in the Apple toilets is unpleasant in the extreme.

Let’s just say the cardigan goes in the nearest bin and the cleaner will really earn her money in the morning, and leave it at that.

The Genius, whose name is Dan, actually proves to be rather helpful in the end.

…partially because he shows Jamie where he can park the car at the rear of the shop so I can leave with the minimum of further embarrassment, but also because he fields the tremulous whining of his store manager. This officious little berk has the bloody cheek to moan at me for using the facilities - as if I had a choice about where my baby decided it was time to enter the world.

‘This type of thing happens in hospital doesn’t it?’ he squeals as Jamie leads me to the car.

‘Shut your mouth before
you
end up in hospital, pal,’ Jamie tells him. My husband may take a while to get in the game sometimes, but once he’s there you can usually count on him for support.

In the car, my heart starts hammering.

This is it. I’m going to have my baby.