We base ourselves at the home of Caroline, Dicken’s mother, in Suffolk. Caroline owns holiday rentals and a health clinic, all part of an old thatched barn and outbuildings she and her sister have restored. The property overlooks the sea and borders a lovely forest and fern-covered heath.
Normally, I would be quick to settle into the lovely existence we have over here, but this time I have uncharacteristically miserable jet lag. I’m up for hours during the night, with a maddening mixture of extreme tiredness and boiling agitation that makes reading or any other relaxing activity impossible. Once I finally drift off, usually as the sun is coming up, I sleep so heavily it feels like a Herculean effort to rouse myself before the afternoon. Soon I feel exhausted and irritable, trapped in a cycle that leaves me unable to function. I write distressed e-mails to my friends back home, blaming PMS for my state.
On our second day, we’re out in the back garden, about to eat lunch. I’ve just dragged myself out of bed. I squint in the sun.
“What a lovely lunch,” I say, trying to sound convincing. “Thank you, Caroline.”
My stomach feels sour; I’m not hungry at all. The boys, who seem entirely unaffected by jet lag, are famished after a morning of running around on the lawn. They’re watching the food with eager eyes.
“Can I say grace?” Kevin asks.
This is surprising, especially considering how hungry Kevin looks and how grace will delay eating a few moments more. He’s never asked this before. We rarely say grace, but have nothing against it, so we tell him to go ahead.
“Dear God,” he begins in his heavily accented English, “please bring me a baby brother.”
I am stunned. He’s never mentioned babies or wanting more siblings, and we certainly haven’t discussed any such possibility with or in front of the kids. I know I might be pregnant, but no one else has a clue, not even Dicken. I glance at Dicken to see if he’s as struck by Kevin’s words as I am, but he’s looking at the potatoes. I smile to myself and don’t say anything.
*
Dicken heads to London for a series of meetings and seminars. My jet lag eases, and I begin to feel more human. My period doesn’t come; I get excited as the days tick by with no sign of blood. I also get nervous, wondering what months of morning sickness and starting all over again with a new baby will mean to our recently expanded family. Life feels a bit too full, with Jasper’s larger-than-life personality, Kevin getting adjusted to everything, and Dicken’s exciting but ever-growing and fast-paced businesses. Maybe a newborn will tip the scales into major overload.
The boys and I spend a night at Becca and Giles’s house just before Dicken returns from his business trip. The next afternoon, Becca and I have an hour of free time in town while the boys join their cousins Olivia and Fergus, Becca and Giles’s daughter and son, at after-school soccer, and she suggests having coffee.
“You do drink coffee, don’t you?” Becca asks.
“Well, normally I love it, but these days I shouldn’t …” I falter a little, not wanting to tell her. But she’s a sharp cookie.
“Why not? Are you pregnant?”
“Well, I think—I mean, yes, I might be.”
“I knew you’d changed shape! Was it a mistake?”
“No,” I say, feeling prickly and defensive.
She has coffee, I have strawberry-flavored herbal tea. I explain about wanting to give Dicken another baby.
“Yes, he’s such a superb dad. You’re incredibly lucky.”
She goes on to say that she mentioned to Giles the night before that I’d put on weight. I tell her it’s too early to see pregnancy weight gain; it’s just middle-aged fat she’s noticing. My face must show my dismay, because she gives me a disapproving look and says, “Oh no, don’t get anorexic on me. Anyway, the extra weight suits you. I always did think you were too scrawny.”
As often happens, I am not sure how to respond to Becca’s directness. It doesn’t help that she’s hit a nerve. Though I’m built a little more like my tall, slim father, I had periods of chubbiness in childhood and adolescence, which I seized on to emulate my frequently dieting mother, and boy, did I enjoy the masochistic struggle of controlling and guarding my weight. In my pregnancy with Jasper, I only gained twenty pounds, mainly because of morning sickness, but also because I was careful. Lately, I’ve gained a little, as Becca has noticed. I’m worried that another pregnancy will be the breaking point, when I transition out of my slender youth for good. I can feel the vigilant weight-obsessed part of me mobilizing.
“Hey, there’s a chemist round the corner,” Becca says, smiling broadly. “Let’s go get you a test so we can find out for certain.”
Like sisters, we head out arm in arm, and soon we’re looking at rows of pregnancy tests. One brand comes in either blue or pink boxes, which I find strange. Are you expected to have a preference this early on? And even if you do have a preference, like I secretly do, isn’t it tempting fate to pick that color, to openly declare your position?
I buy a pregnancy test in a beige box and plan to save it until Dicken returns from his trip and joins us at Becca and Giles’s home. When we get back to the house, I keep an eye out for Becca, wary that she’ll corner me and convince me to take the test right away, but she quickly gets caught up with the demands of her busy family life. I steal a quick lie-down and try to concentrate on a novel, keeping an ear out for Dicken’s arrival. At this point I’m more than a week late and convinced I’m pregnant.
I hear a car on the gravel driveway and head outside. Dicken gets out of the car and grins broadly at me, opening his arms as I run toward him.
“You two are pathetic!” Becca calls from the garden, where she’s weeding a flowerbed. “You’ve only been separated for three days!”
That night, after the boys are asleep, I tell Dicken to check under his pillow.
“A present for me?” he says, moving the pillow aside and picking up the package. He looks inside and pulls out the unopened pregnancy test.
“Wow! You mean you haven’t had your period?”
We head to the bathroom together, trying to be quiet, and I pee on the stick. Less than thirty seconds later, the jury is in.
“Oh my,” Dicken says. “Here we go!”
CHAPTER 9
Inside my uterus, the embryo has implanted successfully in the endometrium, or uterine lining, and is beginning to produce a hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is what makes over-the-counter pregnancy tests turn out positive. The placenta is beginning to form, along with early versions of the heart and brain and spinal cord. Every cell, and therefore every organ, including the placenta, is being influenced by the faulty thirteenth chromosome. Chances are, one or more systems will be affected enough to prevent a viable embryo from developing, or my body will recognize that something is wrong. In either of these scenarios, a miscarriage will result.
*
In the guest room at Becca and Giles’s house, where we stay through the weekend, there are twin beds. Dicken and I hug goodnight, then get under the covers across the room from one another.
Lying in the dark, with the confirmed pregnancy presenting an unknown road ahead, I can’t sleep. I’m on the edge of panic, like the bottom of the world has dropped out and everything around me is spinning. I almost wake Dicken a couple of times but decide he needs a good night’s sleep, especially after the news I’ve sprung on him. The last thing I want is for both of us to be tired and grouchy and looking at the future through bleak lenses. I wish we were in the same bed so I could at least feel the reassurance of his warm body next to mine.
We wake early and take Becca and Giles’s dogs for a walk around the nearby fields. I feel much better out in the fresh air, the sunbeams beginning to spread across the quiet, green landscape. We don’t say much, but hold hands, a sense of new adventure upon us.
Back at the house, I go online, find a pregnancy information site, and type the date of my last menstrual period, April 17, into the due-date calculat
or. I’ve never stopped to think about what month or even what season we’ll be looking at for the baby’s arrival.
“Dicken!” I whisper, since no one else is awake yet. “You’re not going to believe this. The baby is due on Jasper’s birthday!”
We confirm the news with Becca, and tell Giles at breakfast. The whole scene seems surreal, with no one expressing the jubilation that usually follows the announcement of a planned pregnancy. Somehow, it all feels muted. There we are in the kitchen, with me trying to eat healthy food and Giles making his nasty-tasting cancer-fighting concoctions with the herbs Dicken has carted over with him in his suitcase.
“Maybe you won’t feel so sick this time,” Dicken says to me, as we watch Giles gag on one of his herbal shakes. My first trimester of pregnancy with Jasper was miserable. I actually lost a few pounds and ended up on an intravenous drip to boost my fluid and mineral levels. But by the second trimester, I felt much better, my only complaints from then on being occasional heartburn and backaches. My mother reported feeling dreadful during her first trimester with my brother, her first baby, but not with me or my two sisters, so I hypothesize that in our line, either firstborns or males cause morning sickness. Maybe this time I’ll get a reprieve.
*
But within a week, the unmistakable sensation returns after an eight-year hiatus. I begin to feel queasy most of the time, especially on an empty stomach. When I do manage to find something I can eat without gagging, my belly burns for hours afterward, until the burning gives way to nausea again.
Though many parents we know wait until the second trimester to tell siblings about a pregnancy, we decide to tell the boys now, knowing they’re both smart enough to figure it out soon enough anyway.
“We’re going to have a baby,” I say.
Kevin beams, his eyes full of wonder. I think about but don’t mention his prophesy the week before.
Jasper makes a sour face and says, “What if it’s a girl?”
“A girl probably won’t break your toys as much as a boy,” I say.
“Good point, Mom.”
After lunch, Dicken loads the dishwasher and then disappears into the study to do some work. I settle the boys into a game of Monopoly before heading to the forest for a walk. I can only go about a mile before tiring, but I know a little exercise will do me good, and being in the fresh air and greenery is soothing. The bluebells are out, blanketing the forest floor in dazzling electric indigo. It’s so beautiful I want to cry.
That night, Dicken puts the boys down to sleep while I sit in bed, writing in my journal.
“It’s good to see you writing,” Dicken says, coming in and starting to undress. “Seems like it’s been awhile.”
“I’ve been dried up lately,” I say.
“Well, no wonder, you’re tired and sick.”
“Anne Lindbergh only ever missed her journal entries during the first trimesters of her pregnancies.”
Dicken blows his nose and sighs. “I can’t stand these allergies. I always forget that I get them so badly in England. I’m wondering if coming here for so long wasn’t such a great idea.”
“Oh, honey,” I say, “if I weren’t so sick I could keep up with the boys and everything would be better. Maybe it’s this pregnancy that wasn’t such a good idea.”
“It isn’t the greatest timing, is it?”
This is crushing. I was fishing for reassurance, not confirmation of my doubt. Tears sting my eyes.
Dicken sees my expression. “Oh, Cinda,” he says, sharp disapproval in his voice. “Don’t take me so seriously! I’m just tired.”
Instead of engaging with him, talking it out, I follow my usual pattern of turning inward when I sense conflict. I avoid his eyes and look at the white walls of the guest room. I focus on how the bed annoys me; it’s lumpy and lopsided, not supporting my weight evenly. Everything feels wrong right now. I try not to get swept into the swarm of negative thoughts clamoring for air space in my head, but the tide is relentless. Why did I do this? I’m way too old.
I fight this downward spiral by breathing in deeply and recalling Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which I’ve been reading bits of lately. It’s the sort of New Age book my mother reads avidly, accepting its teachings at face value. I read it as a kind of spiritual self-help, taking from it only what resonates. Tolle asserts that expecting anything other than the present moment to make us happy is pointless, even insane. Stay in this moment: that’s your only job, Cinda, just take care of now. There is no problem in the now. There is no better place to get to, no greater happiness than this very moment.
I look around at the white walls again, feel the horrid sensation of nausea in my mouth and stomach and the accompanying panic, and wonder how this could possibly be the best there is.
June 2005
“What do you feel like for breakfast?” Dicken asks.
“The usual.”
Minutes later, he carries in a tray of scrambled eggs and toast.
“When did I start feeling better with Jasper?” I ask, swallowing the first bite without chewing so I taste as little as possible.
“I can’t remember. It was second trimester, I think.”
“I know it was second trimester,” I snap. “I want to know exactly when.”
“I’m sorry, it seems so long ago.”
“If I had my old journals here, I could look it up. I’m afraid it wasn’t until thirteen or fourteen weeks, which would mean seven more weeks of misery.”
Dicken looks at me with sad, earnest eyes. “Thank you for going through this.”
My eyes tear up. “I hate being a whiner, but this is hellish.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“You could be pregnant instead of me. You’d sail through this.”
“I would if I could,” he says, and I know he means it.
“You’re already doing more than your share,” I say, thinking of how he’s been taking the boys so I can rest, and cooking for me, and very rarely complaining.
Unlike me, Dicken is generally cheerful and upbeat, and only occasionally gets sucked into one of my moods. He kisses me on the cheek and leaves the room. I’m left with my dark thoughts. This pregnancy was a terrible idea. Maybe I’ll get lucky and miscarry.
I get through another night and another plate of scrambled eggs and am on the sofa in front of the TV by noon the next day. I’ve been watching hours and hours of tennis lately. It takes my mind off my waking nausea better than anything. So far this month we’ve had the Queen’s tournament followed by Wimbledon, and to my great fortune the matches are aired pretty much all day long, with no commercials. When the boys aren’t outside jumping on the trampoline or building forts or kicking a ball around, they join me.
“Mom,” Jasper says, “who are we voting for?”
Like me, he needs to pick a player to root for; otherwise the match is less exciting. I often choose the underdog, players who aren’t seeded or who have faced some adversity in their lives. This year it’s seventeen-year-old Scottish newcomer Andy Murray and the raised-on-public-court prodigies, the Williams sisters.
I watch the spectators with a mixture of intrigue and envy. They look relaxed and yet wholly engaged in what’s happening around them, in a way I can’t relate to at all right now. It’s impossible for me to imagine feeling well enough to sit in a crowd and watch a sporting event, though attending Wimbledon in person has always been a dream of mine. It seems far-fetched in my state of exhausted sickness, but I tell myself maybe one day I’ll feel well enough to enjoy life’s pleasures again. In the meantime, I’m only using tennis as a weak but appreciated distraction.
“Mom,” Jasper says, “when I grow up, I’m either going to be a tennis player or a ball boy.”
This comment pierces my malaise. I smile broadly for the first time in a while, warmed by this example of the entirely original, off-the-cuff things kids say. The simple wisdom of his words—that being a ball boy is just as acceptable as being a star player�
��is exactly what I need to hear right now.
That night I write in my journal, Today I had this strong sense that I have no idea the gift this will be to me—that under all my worries and second-guessing myself there’s such a perfection to this.
*
The next afternoon, I feel a gush between my legs and dash to the bathroom. When I wipe, there is a glob of brownish red discharge. It suprises but doesn’t scare me. Mostly, I’m curious.
I find Dicken at his computer and tell him about my discovery. He looks pensive, but like me, not upset. “Is there any more bleeding?” he asks.
“No, just that one gush so far.”
“Maybe you should lie down for a while.”
“Okay.”
As I leave the room, Dicken calls out after me, “Hey, I’m curious. If you are miscarrying, do you think you’ll want to keep trying?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. What about you?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to think of you having to go through all this again.”
Lying in bed, I think more about this. In all honesty, I’d probably want to close this chapter of childbearing for good. I feel too old and delicate to go through this much longer.
*
Experts say that somewhere between 30 and 50 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, many of them so early they go undetected. While there are many reasons for miscarriages, the vast majority (up to 75 percent) result from chromosomal abnormalities in the embryo. Error in the process of cell division can add or take away chromosomes, creating a gamete with faulty genes. When genetic instructions contain errors, building a healthy human being is often impossible. In most cases, the embryo will stop developing, and hCG will stop being released, shutting off the hormonal signal to continue building and retaining the endometrial lining that would have nourished a growing fetus. In most such cases, without the hormones to sustain the lining, blood begins to flow from the uterus, by far the most common way a mother learns she is miscarrying.
*
I decide to ring my mom. She’s been calling every other day or so, highly attentive to me and this pregnancy. When I told her the news on the phone a couple of weeks before, she cried with joy, displaying by far the happiest reaction of anyone. Today, I tell her about the discharge.
Five Hours Page 7