39 Weeks (4 page)

I hadn’t been brave enough to
attempt
read
ing
the chapters on the actual giving birth bit, because to tell the tru
th I was absolutely terrified at
even the thought of
it, and the unremitting doom of exactly what
was going to happen to my body
just in the first three months
already had a certain Tim Burton quality to it
,
without reading about t
he Stephen King en
ding
.

I pushed the books away from me, and feeling slightly sick after all that chocolate pushed the rest of that away as well. Two big fat tears rolled down my cheek as I thought about the nightmare I’d unwittingly blundered into, and before I knew it I was crying my eyes out and wailing like a banshee at the
awfulness and
injustice of it all.

I couldn’t do it. I quite simply could not, would not, do it. I wasn’t ready to have a baby, I was at a point in my life where I was just beginning to enjoy myself and get a grip on taking care of me, never mind a small helpless baby. I’d have to get rid of the baby
, no other choice really
. Lots of women do it
and I’d be one of them.

I padded barefoot and still sniffing out to the kitchen and switched the kettle on. At least now I could have a cup of coffee.

I took my decadent cup of coffee and a streamers length of kitchen towel
,
grabbed en route, back to the living room and opened up my laptop. I blew my nose and moped up the last of my tears determined to be
aloof and as detached as possible from the whole thing. If I could just think about it as some kind of illness to be treated, and not think about the baby side of it I could do this, I had to do this. I logged on to the internet and resolutely typed abortion into the search engine.

I sort of knew, from God knows where, that you could quite legitimately go to your own doctor and demand a termination. Termination yes, I liked
how that sounded
,
much better than abortion. From now on I’d refer to it as a termination.

I was mildly surprised to see there were about a thousand different websites to choose from. Okay all I need to know is can you really just demand an abortion, I mean termination, from your own doctor, and how pregnant do you have to be before they tell you they can’t do it.
I clicked on the first listed website
to be confronted with all the reasons why you shouldn’t have an abortion,
I mean
termination, and a chronological list of a baby’s development from the time of conception. I clicked the back button as quickly as I could but not before reading that the baby’s heart starts beating at around
21 days. Twenty one days, not weeks, DAYS
.

I paused and tried to erase this information from my mind. Aloof, detached remember. This is an illness, nothing more than something gone a bit wrong with my body that needs fixing.

I clicked on the next website, and there it all was again
. Different layout, but pretty much the same thing. I clicked on a few
different
pages, trying to read everything to find the information I needed
,
while not reading it because I didn’t want to know
what it was telling me
. It was too real, much too real.

I tentatively clicked on ‘Facts You Need To Know’ hoping against hope
that
it was the facts I needed
to know. A
list of explicit details
on exactly what happens when they perform an abortion appeared. I read in fascinated horror
,
unable to turn away or click on anything else
until
I literally
was not able to read anymore.

Oh why did I have to read all that? Why didn’t I just look for clinics that would do the job, inst
ead of reading the medical procedure of
exactly how they did it.
Did I mention that I was exceptionally squeamish
?
I couldn’t have an abortion, or a termination
now, not now I knew
. No matter how dreadful the alternat
ive of having a
baby was, I
knew I was
never
going to
be able to have an abortion.

I turned off the computer and sat curled up o
n the settee, ironically in
a
foetus position, cradling my coffee. My brain had a certain numbness to it and I could almost feel the cells jumping
lemming like off the edge of the cliff of sanity.
Like it or not in approximately eight months time I was going to have a baby.

I put down my coffee and started counting off months on my fin
gers. It would be born on the 28
th
of February. Nine months to the day since my
official up the duffness was incurred
by what’s-his-name
.

After I’d sat motionless for an eon or two, and mourned the passing of freedom, size 10 dresses,
sleep, alcohol,
and general good times to be had, I eventually crawled back to bed and slept as
they say like a new born baby. Although I strongly suspect that a real new born baby doesn’t actually do much sleeping, but anyway I slept like the hypothetical ones and didn’t stir for several hours.

3
rd
July -
Week
5

It had been a week since P day, as in the day I found out I was pregnant, maybe that should be S for stick day, or even O for ostrich day as since I’d done all that research I had become decidedly ostrich like and was burying my head in the sand, subconsciously reasoning that if I didn’t think about it, it wasn’t happening
and
I could cling
on to normality
.  Stupid eh? I know
,
but the enormity of it
all
was just too great
and my brain had a
numb quality
to
it
that I just couldn’t seem to resuscitate
. The rationality brain cells were obviously the first to go.

After going home from work
last Monday
,
when I was
supposedly coming down with the flu, I took the Tuesday off as well. I was still in shock for one thing, and hey if everyone thought I was ill anyway I might as well milk it and have the next day off as well
, if not a whole week
. But I didn’t relish my day off the way you’d normally relish a day’s skive
, and I just moped about all day feeling sorry for myself, to the point where I couldn’t stand my own company, not to mention my own thoughts any longer, and ended up going back to work on Wednesday, where thankfully I was too preoccupied
with month end
to think about
much
else.
Which was great until the weekend
,
when it was back to just me and thinking about my dismal unavoidable future again.

I did my
Saturday morning weekly shop yesterday
as usual, fighting my way through the
three ring circus
they call town as usual, and then as not so usual I wandered around the shops looking at clothes and shoes
,
that
I knew
would be pointless buying as who knew how long I’d be able to wear them
for
, but looking all the same. Anything to avoid having to go home to me and my thoughts
again
.

Mum came round
this
morning
for her monthly
Sunday
duty visit. I didn’t tell her of course, and was dreading the day when I’d have to, but hopefully that wouldn’t be for at least a couple of months
yet
. Even though I was
edging toward
thirty and just about supporting myself,
good job she didn’t know Dad was helping me out now and then when my bank balance didn’t quite
stay in
the black,
she still treated me as if I was about eight and needed her help, advice, and guidance
on
everything, which she offered
freely
and
at
any
and
every
opportunity. I loved her, she was my mum, and I knew she was only trying to look after me, but stil
l she
drove me bonkers whenever I had to spend more than half an hour with her.

Then this
afternoon I went to see Shelley, the giver of the raunchy calendar and my best friend.
I had been supposed to b
e going out with her last
night,
as we did most Saturdays,
her and a couple of girlfriends, for a drink and a laugh, but I’d
cried off at the last minute. I
didn’t feel up to a girls night out and the way I was feeling would definitely have put a dampener on everyone else’s night out, so I didn’t go.
But I was still curious as to what sort of
a night out they’d
all
had
without me
.

Evidently it had been a good night, and I was sorry
then
that I’d missed it, maybe it would have cheered me up and taken my mind off it all, but then again maybe it would have just rubbed it in about all the things I was going to be missing out on. Shelley had met a new
bloke called Mark, twenty nine
and gorgeous
was her definition
, and he was supposed to be going to phone her to
arrange going out for a meal
on
Friday. Sh
e was very excited and all week-
knee’d
at the prospect. I didn’t say so of course, not wishing to burst her bubble, but I thought
yeah right and how many times have I heard that, and how many times have they actually phoned? Um
have you got a
calculator
handy?

I didn’t plan to tell her about P day. It was too soon, too new, and altogether too monumentally life changing to be able to talk to anyone about it yet, even a close friend like Shelley, and I’d resolved to keep it to myself for as long as I could. I had a sort o
f feeling that once people knew
they’d treat me differently, and right now what I needed most was to be as un-different as possible for as long as possible. Plenty of time yet before in their eyes anyway, and mine come to that, I turned into the stupid one, the mumsy one, the shunned one.   

We chit chatted for a while, and I told her about what a supercilious cow Gill had turned into since coming back off her honeymoon, and she told me a
gain about how much of a bitch K
atherine was, that’s her boss at work and evidently a dedicated first class bitch at all times that had nothing to do with honeymoons or marital status
, and more to do with an inbuilt superiority complex she felt she had to inflict on everyone else, especially those unfortunate enough to have to work for her.

And then I told Shelley
I was pregnant. The keeping it to myself plan failing miserably.

‘You’re what? Are you sure?’

‘Of course I’m sure, would I be telling you if I wasn’t sure?’

‘Well you could just be a bit late, couldn’t you?’

So I told her
I was never late and
how nine pregnancy test kits had all come up positive.

‘Oh my God. What are you going to do?’

‘Nothing I can do. Have the baby I suppose.’

‘You could . . .’

‘No I couldn’t, I looked into it and I definitely couldn’t.’

‘I’d help you. Come with you if you’d like.’

‘I appreciate the offer, but I couldn’t. Honestly Shell much as I really don’t want to have this baby, I couldn’t have an abortion. If you knew what happens you wouldn’t suggest it. I looked it up on the internet and they . . .’

Putting her fingers in her ears, Shelley said
‘n
o don’t tell me, who knows I might need one, one
of these
day
s
, and I’d rather not know
too much about it’
.

‘Yeah I wish I didn’t know.’

‘You thought about it then?’

‘Yes I thought about it, but after I found out . . . okay I won’t say what I found out, but anyway after, I knew I wouldn’t be able to
go through with it
.’

‘Oh Judy. No wonder you didn’t feel like coming out last night. How far . . . I mean when d’you think it’s due?’

‘February the twenty-eighth
, nine months to the day I
slept
. . .’