Confessions of a Bad Mother

by Stephanie Calman

  ‘Yeah, well actually—’

  It’s no good; he’s warming to his theme.

  ‘Or perhaps you’d prefer the DIY experience? We send you the instructions and some components, and you put the whole thing together in your very own garage! You might rip some of your skin off with the wrench, but it’s character forming!’

  ‘I don’t want to be pathetic, I just—’

  ‘You’re not pathetic. Look: imagine you’re choosing a holiday. Camp on primitive site with basic facilities, or recline in five-star hotel?’

  He knows I hate camping.

  ‘Do you feel that without the feel of the ground next to your skin, the queue for the showers – you won’t really have travelled?’

  ‘It’s not the same thing at all.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You’re prepared to spend more in the interests of comfort, right? You’d rather have a Jaguar than a Vectra.’

  ‘Sure. If I’m going to crash, I like to do it on leather seats.’

  I feel that, as we both love talking about cars, we have rather got away from the point.

  He gestures at an article about elective Caesareans, at which the paper just happens to have fallen open.

  ‘So there you go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Queen Thingy’s.’

  It’s true. I have been reading about an obstetrician at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital who is quoted as being Pro-Choice.

  ‘So ring him up.’

  ‘What would I say? I’m not sure—’

  ‘Start with: “How much?”’

  So I do.

  A helpful nurse answers and says:

  ‘Well, with the surgeon … anaesthetist … and depending on, let’s say, five nights’ stay: four thousand pounds.’

  ‘Right …’

  ‘That’s without any extras, of course, like—’

  ‘Bandages.’

  ‘Ha-ha! No – meals.’

  I get off the phone.

  ‘You’re right. It is like buying a car.’

  After a few fruitless discussions about how we might obtain £4,000, Peter says, ‘Why don’t you talk to that doctor you like? See if she’s got any ideas?’

  ‘What, like: “If you’re so phobic, try not getting pregnant in the first place”?’

  ‘Negativity: that always helps.’

  I go back to the Margaret Pyke Centre to see Doctor Green. She has a slow, laconic delivery and slightly spacey smile, a bit like the Mona Lisa on Valium. But the content varies considerably from the presentation. She is shockingly candid, with that brutal humour you look for in a medic. Her idea of small talk is to chat about large-scale outbreaks of death. We open with that day’s headlines: the women who have recently been found to have cervical cancer, despite getting negative smear test results. She says: ‘Well, it’s very boring reading cytology slides all day long. One’s bound to make mistakes.’ She admits she may also have said this to Breakfast News.

  ‘Christ! You didn’t, did you?’

  ‘It was very early in the morning.’

  ‘I need to ask you about, um, having a baby,’ I say.

  ‘Ah!’ she says, the smile widening. ‘You want to get pregnant?’

  ‘I already am,’ I say. ‘It only took five weeks.’

  ‘Goodness! So much for the polycystic ovaries!’

  ‘So much indeed. They told me here I probably couldn’t get pregnant.’

  ‘Oh, what do they know? Well, you know you can’t come and see me any more? I’m only Family Planning.’

  ‘And I’ve Planned. But I need your help. What do you do …’ I say, ‘if you sort of do want to have a baby – but are too scared to actually have one?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I’m petrified. What am I going to do?!’

  ‘Do you want to know,’ she says soothingly, ‘who all my doctor friends go to?’

  Do I ?

  ‘Mr Silverstone. Like the racetrack. He’s The One.’

  ‘Is it – is he – you know, really expensive?’

  ‘NHS. Get your GP to refer you. You won’t get a free Caesarean out of him, though.’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll save up. Thank you! How many children do you have, by the way? I’ve never asked.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t have children,’ she says. ‘I have cats.’ And she does that smile again.

  To celebrate our last few months of Freedom, we book a holiday in Tobago. While I’m combing through my wardrobe for something to pose in on the beach, Peter is doing research amongst his female acquaintance.

  ‘Hey, look, I’ve finally got a reason not to wear a bikini. I’ve always had a wobbly tummy and now it’s OK!’

  ‘Excellent. Definitely worth getting pregnant for.’

  ‘Yeah! Isn’t it great? Look at this.’ I try to swan across the room, but tie my sarong too tight, so that I walk like a bad imitation of a penguin.

  ‘Marie says we have to get a Nuchal Fold Scan.’ Marie is his deputy at work, mother of two girls.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Very useful.’

  ‘Hang on, I’ve got something else here, from Julia.’

  Julia, one of his old school friends, is about to have baby number four. She combines immense efficiency with a kind of vague breeziness, a cross between Joyce Grenfell and Annie Hall.

  ‘She says go to Kypros Nicolaides.’

  ‘And that would be where?’

  ‘I dunno. Wait, yes I do.’ He fiddles around with his yellow stickies. ‘The Fetal Medicine Centre.’

  From being completely in the dark – the obstetric equivalent of a remote tribe who’ve never seen a camera – we suddenly become experts.

  The Nuchal Fold Scan is £80. Apparently there are two types of test: the scary, needle-in-the tummy kind which include CVS and amniocentesis, and the easy-peasy, blood test plus ultrasound scan, which this one is. The blood tests have funny names: the Double Test, The Barts, the Leeds, the Triple. And they offer odds: 1 in 1000; 1 in 200; 1 in 10.

  ‘They sound like horse races,’ says Peter. ‘What does it all mean?’

  ‘It means your risk factor of having a Down’s syndrome baby,’ explains the rational but friendly female doctor at the Centre. ‘We measure the fold of skin at the back of the baby’s neck; it’s the best indicator we’ve yet found for Down’s.’

  ‘But it’s not an absolute Yes or No?’

  ‘No, but the blood test is very accurate, and we don’t do one without the other. You’ll know a lot more than with the NHS tests, and far sooner.’

  ‘So we could be out of the woods, as it were, by—’

  ‘Thirteen weeks.’

  ‘What, no amnio? No potentially bad news at twenty weeks?’

  ‘Hopefully not. If you do get a high risk factor, we can offer you the CVS, or Chorionic Villus Sampling which, unlike the amnio, tests the actual cells in the placenta, as opposed to the fluid.’

  ‘So if you do terminate—’

  ‘It’s much earlier.’

  ‘And therefore much less horrible. So why don’t all the hospitals offer this?’

  ‘It’s quite specialized. You can’t just bung in a machine and let them get on with it.’

  ‘And when can we do this?’

  ‘Eleven weeks. Obviously, we discuss it with you at all stages.’

  ‘Eighty quid for peace of mind?’ says Peter. ‘A bargain.’

  At ten weeks we go and see my GP, who says he’s never heard of the CVS and anyway there’s no point asking him anything because the real expert is the community midwife. Can we book an ultrasound scan? No. Would he like to take my blood pressure? No. Shall we – play Scrabble? His lack of interest is slightly embarrassing, as if this is a car showroom and not a surgery at all. But we have to be friends with him because we need the referral.

  At eleven weeks the community midwife waves away questions about such triv
ia as the baby to concentrate on something really important: geography. Apparently we live on a fault line between catchment areas so I have to change midwife teams after the birth.

  ‘You live in Islington South, but after the birth you’d have to be cared for by a team from Islington North.’ Clearly this is a Big Deal. Are Islington North and South at war? I’ve been so preoccupied, there’s probably a lot I don’t know. We try to drag the conversation back to the pregnancy.

  ‘I really want to arrange a scan. I am thirty-six, after all, and well – I really want to see the baby. It could be a hysterical pregnancy – or wind!’ I’m sending up my own anxiety here: give me a break! She doesn’t smile.

  ‘OK, what about this CVS?’ says Peter. ‘Should we be thinking about that?’

  ‘Oh, you’re too late for that.’ (This is not true.)

  Eventually – with forceps – we extract a leaflet from her about tests for Down’s syndrome and other conditions.

  ‘Can we at least arrange the scan? We’re going on holiday at the end of the week.’

  ‘Plenty of time. You’ll get a hospital appointment in – ooh, two or three weeks.’

  In other words, when it’s too late. We are dealing with parallel universes. We don’t have strong views about NHS or private; we just want them to recognize that to us, this banal little event is important.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ says Peter, deploying the phrase that over the coming months, will make me want to hit him with a pan.

  In Tobago we watch families playing in the sea together, and crocodiles of beautifully turned out schoolchildren who say, ‘Good morning!’ to the ladies who sit outside their shops.

  ‘Look! Look!’ I say. ‘Listen!’

  ‘You sound like an Early Reading Book.’

  ‘I like the school uniform.’

  ‘Yeah. Just one thing. We don’t actually live here.’

  ‘Be nice, though.’

  ‘Yeah … everyone’s so polite.’

  ‘Can we have polite children in blue pinafores?’

  ‘Don’t they still use the cane? Isn’t that why they’re so well behaved?’

  ‘Well, they look good anyway.’

  On the second night, the hotel has ‘2 for 1’ at the bar.

  ‘I think you can have one,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, thanks! Is it going to be like this from now on?’

  ‘Like what? You’re pregnant, for God’s sake.’

  ‘One pina colada, please.’

  The bar lady puts down two foamy white glasses.

  ‘Oh thanks, but I only wanted one.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s 2 for 1, you see?’

  It goes down amazingly fast.

  ‘Actually, they’re not that strong, are they? Mostly pineapple and coconut.’

  ‘Well, bars always do that, water them down. They’re hardly going to use double measures of rum in a promotion.’

  We have four each.

  In the night I wake up and remember that just before Christmas, I went out with two girls from work and had a lot of wine. And of course I was already pregnant by about three or four weeks. So the damage is done anyway, but it’s not my fault because I didn’t know. This is a huge relief, and I go back to sleep.

  At thirteen weeks we’re back. I ring the hospital to check that the GP has done the referral, and they’ve never heard of me.

  ‘What are we going to do? I’m supposed to be in the system!’

  Peter says: ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘But they said I don’t exist!’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Go away before I hurt you.’

  Meanwhile we go to the Fetal Medicine Centre for the Nuchal Fold Scan. As on the phone, we pepper the doctor with questions, and again she stands up to the pressure rather well.

  She puts the cold jelly on my stomach and turns the monitor to show us a grainy black and white film. It reminds me a bit of when I was eight, and we stayed up to watch man’s first step on the moon.

  ‘That bean-shaped thing, floating there in space …’

  ‘Is your baby inside you, yes.’

  My God: it’s really there.

  ‘It just seems so – unlikely!’

  I so wasn’t going to have children that for a moment I wonder if this is a video they keep for fantasists. I’m glad Peter is in the room; people won’t be able to say I’ve imagined it – except they won’t say that anyway, because to everyone else this is completely normal, whereas for me it’s like Galileo telling the Vatican that the earth went round the sun. Are you saying there is a Live Person inside my Body? Whom I haven’t even met? It must be witchcraft.

  We take our scan photo, and go for coffee.

  ‘There’s a person inside your tummy,’ says Peter.

  ‘Oh my God!’ I say. ‘Bloody Hell!!!’

  ‘Give it a nice shot of caffeine, there you go. Help it bounce around a bit more. And have a cake. You’re eating for two now.’

  I have an éclair, and some toast, and finish his strudel as well.

  ‘I said eating for two, not six.’

  I kiss him goodbye and go for a swim. When I get there, it’s Special Needs Day, and everyone in the changing room has Down’s syndrome. What are the odds on that?

  Afterwards I get back on the phone to University College Hospital. Have they got my referral from the surgery?

  ‘No. Sorry,’ says the woman.

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Well … we don’t normally tell people this, but you can self-refer.’ Bastards! I knew they were concealing something.

  I get the surgery to fax the letter they should have sent in the first place, and I’m in.

  The receptionist in the UCH antenatal department is a glamorous black girl who looks as though she should be processing nightclub tickets, not patient notes. Her stylishness lifts the ambience of the whole place. She memorizes my name on this first occasion, and remembers it ever afterwards. How do people do that? Probably by not drinking four pina coladas.

  After all the questions about family illnesses, and taking my blood pressure, and after I’ve weed all over one of those tiny little pots, the midwife asks me how much alcohol I drink. People always lie about this, I bet. I’ll be really honest, that’ll impress her.

  ‘Ooh, about … twenty-eight units a week. Three to four glasses a day.’

  ‘Let’s just put down one glass of wine a day, shall we?’

  She looks at me as if to say: ‘I’m doing you a big favour, you alcoholic old tart.’ Why don’t you just come out with it? ‘Poisons fetus with entire contents of Oddbins.’ Put that on your bloody form. I decide not to mention the 2 for 1 pina coladas.

  Anyhow, you have to drink loads to give them Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. My friend Kirsty’s sister, who’s a midwife, says you can tell the ones who’ve got it – whose mothers drank a lot when they were pregnant – because their heads are sort of oval. And in fact I have seen one quite recently, walking past Somerfield. She was really weird-looking, a grown-up, about thirty. Her face was sort of pointy; eyes almost round the side instead of the front. Either that, or Somerfield is being used a landing base for aliens. Yep, I thought: that’s a bit more than four pina coladas. Which were mostly pineapple and coconut, by the way – did I mention that?

  Leaving the house one evening, I am accosted – there is no other word for it – by the American woman renting the house next door. She looks at my tummy, and at the bottle of wine I’m taking to a dinner party, and gasps melodramatically.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Look!’ she says. ‘You can’t – take THAT!’

  ‘What, the wine?’ Is she serious? She is. ‘It’s all right,’ I explain slowly. ‘In England we can do this.’ And in my head I add the three little words: Now fuck off.

  It goes with all the other things I’m not supposed to do any more, including eating curry and soft cheese, not eating
, running, climbing, arguing, going on escalators, slapping people, shouting, looking at pictures of George Clooney and getting stressed.

  But I’ve got an important matter to attend to. It’s daunting, but once you’re pregnant it simply has to be done. And it’s no good putting it off, either: my breasts are about to get Bigger. How Much Bigger, my friends warn me, I can’t possibly imagine. They also tell me that their dimensions, like the value of all endowments, can go down as well as up; I could end up, after breastfeeding, with less than I started with. Well, I can’t help that. For the present I need something that will (a) make sure they don’t sag, even for a second, and (b) in four months’ time prevent them from knocking people over in lifts. The last piece of underwear I had professional involvement in, was my black lace wedding basque. I went to Selfridge’s and had to bend over to ‘fill the cups correctly’. But I didn’t mind because it looked fantastic. I took it home, lay on the bed and pretended to be Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, only not married to a homosexual alcoholic.

  ‘I have to get a bra fitted,’ I tell Peter. As the co-perp, he has to be informed of everything I do, think or feel for the next six months. ‘But I don’t much fancy the thought of a stranger, you know, seeing my tits.’

  ‘Can’t you just buy one? Go in like the SAS? Grab a couple and run.’ This is his solution to the agony of shopping. He has to return quite a lot of things. ‘You mean deploy the ancient Navajo method of screwing up the eyes and guessing?’

  ‘The label on this says you’re a ninety-six. Blimey, I didn’t know you were that big. I quite fancy you now.’

  ‘That’s centimetres, you fuckwit.’

  ‘Oh.’ He looks crestfallen, then brightens. ‘If I’d known bras would play such a key role, I’d have got someone pregnant before.’

  Shortly afterwards I get down to the lingerie department of a well-known department store. The normal underwear looks even tinier than usual, which must be the Alice in Wonderland effect; I have eaten the cake of conception and am about to become Huge. Nonetheless the flimsy strings of lace on the racks do not depress me; I have been assured by everyone that breastfeeding will ping my figure back to its previous tautness, the only problem being that I haven’t actually been taut since I was about ten. By fourteen I already had a stomach that when I ran, jogged up and down like a chicken in a carrier bag. And every pound I’ve ever put on since has gone straight to it. Now it’s three chickens. Still! At least now I’ve got an excuse. And there does seem to be a good choice of the ‘fuller’ models on show.