Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 (5 page)

Instead she nurses a cup of sweet tea - because that’s what you do when you’ve had a shock: drink sweet tea. Quite how a sugar rush and caffeine injection is supposed to calm your nerves is beyond me, but what do I know? I can’t even screw my missus without putting a baby in her belly.

‘What are we going to do Jamie?’ Laura asks, staring at the television - where Sky News reporter Joey Jones is standing outside Number Ten, telling us all about the new tax breaks for working families. The coincidence is eye watering.

‘I don’t know, baby. I really don’t.’

Now, there is
one
suggestion I could put forward…

But it is a
horrible
suggestion. The kind of suggestion you hope to never make in all the days of your life.

Sometimes though, necessity trumps all other considerations – and this is one of those times.

‘Do you… do you want to have it?’ I ask. ‘Because, you know, you don’t have to.’ The words are like ashes in my mouth. I can’t believe I even said it.

‘Do you mean a… a… ’

‘Yes,’ I say, cutting her off. ‘It is an option.’ An awful,
awful
option.

‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

The logical, sensible part of me says:
‘Yes, oh God yes. We don’t have enough money, or time, or money to have a baby right now.
’ But looking at Laura, her beautiful blue eyes glistening with tears, I just can’t imagine ever putting her through that kind of…
procedure
.

This is the woman I love.

The reason why she’s now pregnant is because I love her. Because I
made
love to her. This baby is a product of that love.

Alright, it wasn’t the most romantic bunk-up in history, but it wasn’t
a casual
, meaningless shag either.

‘No,’ I say emphatically. ‘I don’t want that.’ I take her hand. ‘I love you baby, no matter what, and if you’re going to have my baby, then you
are
going to have my baby.’ I sit back a bit. ‘Unless you don’t want to have it of course.’

She laughs.

It’s a short, brittle sound, but a laugh none-the-less. ‘I hadn’t even thought about not having it, to be honest. All I’ve been thinking about is how big my arse is going to get.’

‘Don’t forget your tits,’ I say, smiling for the first time in what feels like a century. ‘They’re going to be
massive.
’ I waggle my eyebrows at my tired wife and make obscene grabbing gestures with my hands, making her giggle.

She wipes her eyes and sniffs. ‘It’s going to be bloody hard, honey,’ she says. ‘Me without a job, I mean. The money from the sell-off isn’t going to last long.’

I put my arm around her. ‘We’ll be alright. I can grab some extra freelance stuff. Maybe you could find some too.’

She gives me a withering look. ‘What? Like a freelance chocolate maker?’

‘Yeah! Why not? That kind of thing exists, yeah?’

Of course things like that don’t bloody exist. I’m clutching at straws, but I’ll say anything right now to keep the mood away from abject misery.

‘Maybe,’ she replies, and giggles again. ‘I could go to people’s houses and cook a shit load of chocolate for them.’

‘There you go then! I could do the marketing for you.’ I put a hand out. ‘Laura Newman: She’ll cook you a shit load of chocolate.’

This makes her collapse with laughter, which makes me laugh too.

I guess if you can get the shock of your life and be laughing your arse off an hour later, it must mean the situation can’t be all
that
bad.

…right?

Laura’s Diary

Wednesday, May 22nd

Dear Mum,

Looking at one’s insides via the medium of a television screen is disconcerting to say the least.

What’s going on in your body is about as private a matter as you can think of. Having it splashed across a screen – even in the shape of an ultrasound scan – leaves you feeling strangely vulnerable, even if the only people watching are your husband and the sonographer.

It was with some trepidation that I booked the ultrasound at the local hospital.

I mean… there are so many questions aren’t there?

What if there’s something wrong with the baby? What if it doesn’t move? What if we can’t hear the heartbeat? What if it’s got two heads? What if it bursts from my stomach like that thing from Alien?

Ah,
Alien
.

A movie I saw once in the early nineties and have never dared to go back to since.

At the time I was mortally terrified - and remained so for weeks afterwards. But little did I know that the memory of it would rear its ugly, acid-spitting head again when I fell pregnant.

There’s nothing quite like a movie about a parasitical alien organism that grows inside a human body - before it bursts through the chest cavity in a gory, fatal birth sequence - to really make you feel good about having a tiny human living inside you…

With visions of John Hurt eating Chinese food and Sigourney Weaver being probed by a disturbingly phallic tail, Jamie and I jumped in the car and made our way to
Queen
Alexandra
Hospital
for our appointment.

Our first shock was being told the doctor wouldn’t actually be the one administering the scan.

Instead it would be carried out by someone called a ‘sonographer'.

This sounded to Jamie and I like a position on a Naval submarine, and we were both slightly disappointed when a dumpy Asian woman walked in and introduced herself.

We were rather hoping for a bespectacled young man in a navy blue sweater and glasses, wearing a pair of those enormous World War 2 earphones, and speaking in a broad
Brooklyn
accent.

Narinda the sonographer took us through to a room in the x-ray department.

‘Do you know how a sonogram works, Mrs Newman?’

I used to run a chocolate shop Narinda, I wouldn’t know a sonogram from a Sony Playstation.

‘No, sorry.’

‘And how about you Mr Newman?’

‘Well, I guess it’s an x-ray analysis of the inside of the human body…’

This is where I generally zone out - when Jamie takes on
that
tone of voice.

For some reason, he – like a majority of the male species – finds it impossible to admit that he knows little to nothing about a given topic.

Instead of merely admitting ignorance, he’ll try to sound like he knows what he’s talking about, by piecing together random bits of information floating around his head that may, or may not, have something to do with the subject in question.

‘…and you hold a thing that looks like a bar code scanner at Tesco, and you run it over Laura’s belly. In fact, it’s a similar technology to the bar code scanner isn’t it?’

Oh good God, now he’s comparing the method by which we can study our unborn baby with the way you buy a tin of beans and a fruit cake.

What does he expect is going to happen?

Narinda here runs the scanner over me, it beeps and the price of the baby pops up on the flaming screen?

Narinda gives Jamie a look that one usually aims at the mentally challenged. ‘Um… no Mr Newman, it’s not like a bar code scanner. A sonogram is based on sound waves. High frequency sound waves that pass harmlessly through Laura’s body, producing an image of the baby on the screen.’

‘Ah,’ Jamie replies, effecting a look of studied intelligence, ‘so much like the sonar systems found on a submarine? They use it to detect enemy ships and large animals in the water. Like whales.’

Oh fabulous, now he’s equating me with a bloody humpback.

‘Well… let’s get started shall we?’ Narinda says chirpily, completely ignoring my moronic husband. ‘Sit down Mrs Newman, while I check the machine.’

I sit down on a chair that looks uncomfortably like it should live at the dentist. This does not help to alleviate my sense of unease.

Narinda presses a few switches on a rather antiquated looking machine next to the chair (it’s got a white plastic surround. White plastic surrounds were unfashionable even in the late eighties) and looks back at me with the same chirpy smile. She obviously practises it in front of the mirror every morning. It’s a smile that says:
‘relax, nervous first time mother. I’ve done this a million times and while it may be a big deal to you, I’m already thinking about the tuna pasta salad I’m going to buy from the cafeteria for my lunch’
.

‘Just lift your shirt for me, Mrs Newman.’

Unbelievably, Jamie giggles at this.

I know what’s happening.

He’s nervous about the scan as well, and whenever my husband feels uptight he reverts to childhood sensibilities.

I shoot him a look filled with sharp daggers. He shifts in his seat to cover his embarrassment.

‘This is the transducer,’ Narinda tells us.

I thought that was the movie where the robots change into cars, but I keep my mouth shut because that’s obviously not right.

‘I’m going to run this over your belly and we’ll see what pops up,’ Narinda exclaims cheerfully.

I don’t know what’s going to ‘pop up’ Narinda, but if it even
slightly
resembles an Alien face hugger you’re going to have to get out of the way of an exploding Laura Newman as quickly as you can.

Narinda then squirts cold lubricant over my stomach. The tube makes a dispirited farting noise as it empties itself. I deliberately don’t look at my husband beside me, as there’s every chance he’s trying to suppress a look of childish glee.

‘Off we go then,’ Narinda says, as if we’re all going on a jolly outing to the seaside, rather than examining the alien life form currently taking up residence in my uterus.

For a while there’s not a lot to see on the screen. Just a static cloud of white against a dark background.

Narinda runs the transducer across my belly again, this time a bit slower. This is obviously taking longer than usual as she’s starting to look like one of those lunatics you see on the beach with a metal detector.

A few more seconds go by and she still can’t seem to find the pot of gold she’s looking for.

Jamie’s hand tightens on mine. We’re both feeling the tension now. Either my baby has developed superhuman powers of invisibility – which will bode well for him or her in later life – or there’s a problem.