Serenade for a Small Family

by Ingrid Laguna

  exhausting. A midwife friend came over with strudel

  from our local bakery and it made me sick, so I spent that

  afternoon in bed. The following morning I snuck out of

  bed in the darkness of 6 a.m. and pulled a t-shirt over

  my head. The f loorboards creaked as I headed for the

  bathroom, nerves building in my stomach. I rummaged

  around for the cardboard test packet in the second drawer.

  I found it and swallowed nervously. I removed the test

  stick and double-checked the instructions. ‘A single line

  indicates the test has worked, the appearance of a second

  line indicates a positive result.’ I sat the magic stick in my

  wee and stared at it closely until a single line revealed that

  the test had worked. Then a faint second line appeared,

  and my jaw dropped.

  ‘Holy fuck.’ I was pregnant.

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  When I bought that pregnancy test, I had not really

  believed that I could be pregnant, had barely allowed

  myself to consider the possibility. But the rational part of

  me recognised that I needed to eliminate the possibility so

  I could get on with feeling better. After al , I had thought,

  doing a test can’t hurt, and Ben doesn’t have to know.

  It was still dark when I climbed back into bed and lay

  staring at the ceiling. We had not done any more IVF and

  there was no reason why we should be able to conceive

  naturally now, but not in the past.

  Oh. My. God.

  When I turned to Benny and whispered his name he

  groaned. ‘I just did a home pregnancy test and I think it

  was positive.’

  Reaching over to flick on the lamp, he lifted his head

  off the pillow to look at me, irritated at being woken. I

  hadn’t told him I was doing a test—he would have thought

  it was ridiculous. It was ridiculous.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I did a home pregnancy test . . . it was positive. ’ I held

  up the stick with the faint second line. He rubbed his eyes

  and squinted, peering closer at the stick.

  ‘Couldn’t be,’ he said decisively. He switched off the lamp

  and nuzzled into his pillow to go back to sleep.

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  I got up and rang Mum, close to squealing with excite-

  ment and falling into a confused heap at the same time.

  ‘Guess what?’

  Mum’s intuitive, especially when it comes to me. When

  the phone rings, she always knows when it’s me calling.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  ‘Yes. I just did a test . . . I think it’s a girl.’

  ‘Yes . . . So do I.’

  I pressed my palm onto my forehead. ‘Mum! Oh god . . .’

  With a deep, happy laugh, she said, ‘Oh, Inky.’

  When the chemist opened, I was hovering at the doors,

  with messy hair and a full bladder, nervous and excited,

  waiting to buy another test.

  Back home, the second line appeared again and I shook

  my head slowly. Benny was scraping the bottom of a bowl

  of cereal when I held the stick in front of his nose.

  ‘I’m just not going to believe it until you’ve had a blood

  test,’ he said. ‘I mean, how can it even be possible? Those

  tests can be wrong, right?’

  ‘Well, yeah . . . they can be. You can get a false negative . . .

  but not usually a false positive.’ The thing was—I knew I was

  pregnant. By that stage, I did not have a flicker of doubt.

  Ben rinsed his bowl, walked down the hallway to his

  office and shut the door with a click. I made an appointment

  with a GP for that afternoon, then sat in the quiet with my

  news. In spite of a third positive test result from the doctor,

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  it was only when an ultrasound showed a tiny beating heart

  the following day that Benny believed I was pregnant.

  I wanted to cancel the trip. But I knew Benny needed

  to go, and that we would lose money if we cancelled. I was

  over the moon about being pregnant, but at the same time

  I felt panicky and not ready. I needed to feel as if I were in

  control of my life, and not at the mercy of my circumstances.

  I wanted to be free to travel; I wanted to get a job and be

  busy and challenged. I wanted to dress up and drink wine

  and dance to live music.

  I wasn’t ready for another pregnancy, but friends told me

  it was a gift. I felt guilty, and wanted my boys to know that

  this baby would not replace them. I still couldn’t say died.

  I feared I would deliver early again and that we would be

  back in NICU, and the mere thought made me feel as if I

  could not get enough air. I was excited, very excited, but

  at every turn my enthusiasm was equalled by fear.

  Out of the fog, I decided to go on the trip after all.

  I got a short, short spiky haircut, and Ben pulled my purple

  suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe. We wrote

  lists of what to take. I washed and ironed my prettiest

  loose clothes, and sewed a cover for my laptop. In between

  packing and preparing, I lay on the couch and groaned with

  nausea and self-pity, snacking on toast or pasta or apples

  with cheese to keep the sickness at bay. Benny spent his

  spare time working on our itinerary and budget, but my

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  ability to help was only sporadic. I lost momentum easily

  and lay on the couch, overwhelmed.

  On 26 July, two alarms went off in the dark of 4 a.m.,

  and I made tea and Promite toast with the lights low and

  my eyes half-closed. But by the time Benny loaded our

  suitcases into the boot of a taxi, we were animated. At

  the airport, we bought newspapers and magazines for the

  flight and took grinning photos of each other. Other than

  my passport and a novel, my hand luggage consisted of

  snacks—crackers, muesli bars, fruit and nuts, chocolate and

  cheese sandwiches.

  We didn’t make it to Poland, but we spent two weeks

  in Ireland, two weeks in Holland, a week in Italy and four

  days in Vietnam. I grappled with exhaustion, headaches, easy

  tears and the constant search for the right food to manage

  my nausea. I hated my own lousy company and swallowed

  my grief over the lack of privacy. I wanted to have faith

  that we really were going to have another baby, but I found

  it hard to believe. There was so much that needed to go

  right. What were the chances?

  I’m a positive person by nature, but on that trip, my

  efforts to buoy myself into good spirits for Ben’s sake were

  only fruitful some of the time. But Ben was patient, though

  probably wincing discreetly, as when I ordered tomato pasta

  at Vietnam’s Half Moon Bay, and ice cream for breakfast

  in Ho Chi Minh City.

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  In Ireland we walked along tall cliffs with only seagulls

  for company, eating green apples and letting the cold fresh

  air clear our heads and fill our lungs. In a string of pubs


  offering identical bouncy music, barmen with singsong

  accents served us puffy, soggy meals with chips. On my

  thirty-seventh birthday I woke beside Benny in a saggy

  bed covered with a crocheted red and orange blanket, and

  rang Mum from the hostel kitchen, my tears dripping onto

  dirty floorboards. I felt sorry for myself. ‘I can’t believe the

  year I’ve had!’ I grabbed a damp tea towel from the oven

  rail to dry my face.

  When we were stuck behind French tourists driving

  at forty kilometres an hour on narrow, windy Irish roads,

  I wanted to ram them (hormones). At five and six in

  the morning, I tiptoed into Irish B&B kitchens where

  sympathetic managers had left out toasters and bread, on

  my request, to help me stave off nausea until the morning.

  I wept in the corner of a music café in Doolin and wrote

  to Jordan and Leo: I’m sorry I’m sorry my darlings.

  I sat alone on a barge, travelling through narrow canals

  in Holland, rain pelting the window panes. Meanwhile, with

  the rest of our group, Benny pedalled alongside on funny

  upright Dutch bikes, fighting off an obnoxious Spanish boy

  who knocked his mum off her bicycle and beat everyone to

  the front of the food queue. When I did join the cyclists,

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  Benny towed me along with the camera strap when I was

  too tired to keep up.

  ‘Faster, faster!’ I giggled, spirits lifted, watching Benny’s

  backside—up and down, up and down—as he stood on the

  pedals to haul me up the hill.

  Over breakfast on the barge I spoke my few Dutch

  lines to our tour guide: ‘ Ik weet al es, iy weet nik (I know

  everything, you know nothing)’ and ‘ Myn moeder zegt dat

  ik altyd veel lawaai heb gemaakt maar myn moeder heeft altyd

  veel gegeten (My mother says I’ve always made a lot of noise

  but my mother’s always eaten a lot).’ At a laundromat

  in Amsterdam I sat on a washing machine with my feet

  dangling and cried after I had thrown a red shirt in with

  all my whites and dyed everything pink.

  ‘You don’t need to cry about it, darlin’,’ said Benny,

  wrapping his arms around my shoulders with a sigh.

  On a ferry ride over to the tiny Italian island of Salina,

  I stared fixedly at the horizon to stop myself from puking.

  We met up with Josie, Ben’s mum, and her partner, beloved

  Freddy, and stayed in a classic, starkly furnished apartment.

  We ate pasta on the balcony overlooking the water, and

  coconut and pistachio gelati by the town square.

  But my head rarely ceased its pounding, and the only

  time I forgot my nausea was when Benny and I flew around

  the island on scooters or clambered over rocks to dive into

  the deep blue Mediterranean. I held on to his shoulders and

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  let my body f loat as he pulled me along. Italian women

  wore bikinis under see-through shirts and lay spread-eagled

  over rocks to bake their olive skin dark brown; I, on the

  other hand, could not have felt less glamorous.

  In Ho Chi Minh City, we stood bewildered on the side

  of scooter- and bicycle-packed roads, too scared to cross,

  while whole families drank beer and ate grubby chicken

  in broken chairs and hammocks strung from lampposts.

  In local cafés, embarrassed by my own lack of adventure,

  I shamefully sought out plain rice because there was nothing

  else I could keep down.

  It took us three days to get home. We had shortened

  the trip to be home in time for a scan at thirteen weeks, so

  the return leg involved a zigzag of flights a long way from

  where any crow would have flown. We stood in countless

  queues with crumpled fellow travellers and slept across

  three chairs in airport lounges, waking up with patches of

  flattened hair and crusty eyes to squint at the time—‘One

  more hour.’ When Vietnam Airlines served bowls of gluey

  prawn soup at 6 a.m., the fishy aroma filled the cabin, and

  it was Ben who could not keep anything down. I ran down

  the aisle clutching bulging sick bags in each hand.

  ‘What do I do with these?’ The neat Vietnamese hostess

  took a step back and uncurled one perfectly manicured

  finger to point to a small container. ‘Can you get him some

  water?’ I pleaded. ‘Can you help me?’ She looked at me

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  blankly, and I turned and ran back down the aisle, furious,

  to poor Benny.

  When we finally turned the key to the door of our

  Adelaide home, we creaked down the hallway, dumped

  our suitcases and threw open the blinds. My relief was

  indescribable.

  Twenty weeks into the pregnancy, we went to the hospital

  for my regular ultrasound. My doctor was keeping an eye

  out for signs of early delivery—the last check had only

  been three days before, so we didn’t expect any surprises.

  So far everything was normal. We cooed at the tiny feet

  on the screen.

  ‘Hello, little girl!’ I said. ‘My little darling girl.’

  ‘She’s got your big Polish noggin,’ said Benny.

  ‘Look,’ I said, pointing at the screen. ‘She’s got your

  peabrain.’

  The sonographer clicked over a series of hazy ultrasound

  images. ‘Hmm,’ he said. His forehead creased.

  ‘What?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘Your cervix is measuring 1.8 centimetres.’

  ‘What? Three days ago it was nearly three centimetres!

  Oh, god! Benny!’

  Ben stared at the screen. This exact event had signalled

  impending labour in my last pregnancy. This could not

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  be happening. Tears sprung to my eyes and I reached out

  towards Benny. ‘Oh Benny . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .’

  ‘It’s not over yet,’ said the sonographer. ‘Don’t panic.

  Just wait, just wait.’

  Our obstetrician was paged and came in minutes later.

  She held my hand while she looked at the image on the

  screen, then directed Benny and me to follow her into a

  small room where she left us, the air thick with our racing

  thoughts.

  Ten minutes later, she came back into the room and

  closed the door behind her. ‘There is a five per cent chance

  that surgery to put a stitch around your cervix, to hold the

  pregnancy, could trigger immediate labour,’ she said. ‘But

  waiting to see if your cervix continues to shorten means you

  risk going into labour anyway. I’ve spoken with a colleague.

  He agrees that, with your history, you should be admitted

  straight away to have the surgery.’

  My head swam. I lay fasting in a hospital bed for six

  hours, twice breathing into a paper bag to stop me from

  hyperventilating in panic.

  Ben sat beside me during the surgery. Afterwards, the

  obstetrician stood with her hands on her slim hips. Diane

  had black hair and a square-jawed, attractive face. �
��If the

  surgery is going to trigger labour, it will happen in the next

  twenty-four hours,’ she said. We waited. Twenty-four hours

  felt like forever. I didn’t go into labour.

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  I spent most of the next twenty weeks horizontal on the

  couch again, to keep pressure off my cervix. Introspective,

  frustrated, scared, I concentrated on not moving, trying to

  stay positive, hoping. I had no head space for sorting through

  recent events or for the torrential sadness I kept swallowing

  down. I couldn’t howl with grief while tightrope-walking

  this new, fragile pregnancy. I’ve always been a reader, but

  I couldn’t focus enough to read.

  My fear of another pre-term delivery was unrelenting.

  I lay so still that my back and hips ached and my head

  thudded; I only got up to go to the toilet and to shower.

  A day was a week—long and lonely as hell, with too much

  time to think. Every twinge was impending labour and the

  threat of returning to NICU. When I could feel my baby

  moving, my excitement brought fear—as my attachment to

  her grew, my terror of losing her snowballed. At the start

  of the twenty-third week—the point at which I had gone

  into labour with my boys—I was racked with anxiety.

  Benny had started a new job and was stressed out of his

  mind—achingly sad for his lost boys while under pressure to

  make the new job work, still carrying sole responsibility for

  our income. He had headaches. At the end of each workday

  he would walk through the door and fall onto the bed,

  exhausted. He needed sleep more than ever; but he would

  be woken through the night by my tossing and turning

  and watching Parkinson at 1 a.m., eating peanut butter toast.

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  My burning desire to find a job was back on hold and

  I seethed with jealousy as Ben went off to work each day,

  wishing to god it was me at every meeting he attended,

  making challenging decisions. I wished it were me closing

  the front door behind me every morning. When I wasn’t

  gripped by fear, I was bored, bored, bored. The world was

  raging on without me in it, and I wanted to scream. Every

  day was an eternity. I leant heavily on Ben, and hankered

  for his return at the end of every interminable day.

  Mum came to stay and invented Lucky Dips to mark

  the end of each day. On the couch, I sewed three bags out