All my friends are talking about having babies; it must be the age we’re at, and also the fact that Geraldine got pregnant within about a week of getting married, last spring. She was the first of our group to do either, although I suspect that Mel might have been pregnant once; she’s always very secretive about her love life. But that’s a digression, another story.
When Gerry got knocked up, we were all thrilled. She’s been with her boyfriend for nine years already, and she was convinced he would never marry her. Then, all of a sudden, she’s obsessed with folic acid and baby names, and we all realised that we had grown up, without noticing it.
Personally, I’ve always said I didn’t want to get married or have children; I liked to think of myself as an independent type of girl, although I have actually been living with Charlie for a few years, and my stepmum tells me that motherhood is a defining experience that I shouldn’t miss out on. I don’t think he wants children, particularly; and I’m not sure he would be a very good dad. This is a horrid thing to think, and please don’t despise me for saying it, but he was abused as a child and I just don’t know how he would be around his own children. I guess I don’t entirely trust him. I don’t mean that I think he would be an abusive parent, but just that his own experience of family life wasn’t exactly normal. I don’t know how he would manage to create a stable and loving environment, when he never had one himself.
Ten days ago, Gerry was rushed into hospital. Actually, that’s gratuitous use of a cliché, and there’s no excuse for it. She wasn’t rushed, she got decorously into Mel’s car, and Mel drove her to the maternity unit in the nearest big town for her pre-booked appointment for a caesarean delivery. Gerry’s husband, Jack, was unavoidably out of the country, but he said there wasn’t much he could do anyway; Mel was there to hold her hand, and it wasn’t like there would be much of the pushing and breathing business going on. Apparently he turned up shortly after the baby was all cleaned up and put to sleep, kissed Gerry, and went off to the pub with Charlie.
Gerry was kept in for a few days; apparently the op takes it out of you a bit, and she was a bit distressed. I didn’t go to see her in hospital, but as soon as she and the baby came home, I called in to her house after work. I was shocked by how awful she looked. She was still in bed, because her stitches were not healing very quickly, and it looked like she hadn’t washed her hair since she went to the hospital. The baby cried the whole time I was there, and Gerry looked like she wanted to cry as well. She put a brave face on, but she must have known how untidy and disorganised everything was. I offered to tidy up a bit, and Gerry looked even more upset than she had when I asked her where Jack was.
Apparently, Jack had hardly been home since the baby was born, and he was sleeping in the spare room. Gerry told me, trying to sound like she was justifying and defending him, that he needed his sleep, and the baby disturbed him. She admitted that it was difficult for her to wash and care for herself, never mind the baby, because of the painful wound across her stomach. The baby kept crying, a thin little wail, all the time. Gerry tried to jiggle him a bit, but I think every movement hurt her. I can get out of bed, she said, but I’m so tired.
While I was there, Jack came home. He called hello up the stairs, but he didn’t bother to come up.
I didn’t really want to leave her or the baby in that dirty, hungry state. She said that her mum lived too far away to come and help, and Mel was doing a lot but she had a job too. We don’t have room in our house for the two of them; I felt so helpless.
And still, the girls are talking about having babies. They’re assuming that, in this day and age, it’s just a matter of blooming for nine months, squirting the thing out under the protection of Modern Science, and reclining on a couch for a few weeks while their significant others run around after them. Their equation doesn’t include sedation or caesareans, wrinkled little walnuts of children who cry all the time, or partners with no interest in child-rearing. I realise now that I shall never have a child, because Charlie’s idea of the role of the father goes no further than wetting the baby’s head; the chores just don’t get done around here if I don’t do them, so it’s not really feasible, is it?