Hospital Tour

Obviously I didn’t mean to get pregnant. The timing was all wrong, it was not part of my plan. And obviously it wasn’t meant to be to my ex, there was a reason he was an ex, and therefore a reason I didn’t want to have his baby. But the minute I saw the second blue line appear on the test, and my hand starting shaking so violently I nearly dropped the little stick with its unmistakable two blue lines into the toilet bowl, my only positive thought was that I knew it was his. I hadn’t meant for this to happen, but if it was going to happen, then I was glad it was happening with him. More than glad, overwhelmingly relieved. He wasn’t the person I was supposed to marry, but with our still undeniable attraction to each other it seemed that nature, in her ultimate wisdom, had decided we were supposed to produce offspring. And although I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to make it happen myself, nature had seen to do it for me.

But I was still in shock, because I truly hadn’t seen it coming. I mean, what kind of super fetus survives the morning-after pill? So I lived in denial for the first three months. I didn’t do anything about it, I didn’t tell anyone other than the father. I still rode the race horses every morning, I ignored the constant nausea, the throwing up, the exhaustion I felt all the time. I was kind of just hoping that if I ignored it, it would go away. And because I refused to face facts until it was obvious that it was not going to go away, by the time I called the hospital to book in I was over five months gone. The receptionist who answered the phone sounded bored, she talked like she had been asking the same questions of expectant mothers all her life.

“So when are you due?” she droned at me.

“June,” I replied.

“June!” she exclaimed, her voice shooting up about ten decibels. “But that makes you five months at least!”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“But that’s very late to be booking in! Who is your obstetrician?”

“I don’t have one.”

“You don’t have one! But who has been looking after you?” she squawked at me. She didn’t sound bored any more, she sounded like she was speaking to the worst mother in the world. A bad, slack mother who couldn’t even be bothered booking a hospital to give birth in.

“Well, no one.”

Looking after me? I usually got by just fine looking after myself. Now apparently I needed people looking after me.

“Well, you need an obstetrician, and you need to book a hospital tour ASAP.”

A hospital tour? What did I need a tour of the hospital for? Surely they would show me which bed to lie on when I arrived?

She booked me in for the tour the following week.

Jack wasn’t sure if he wanted to come on the tour with me. The father of the child was of course welcome to come along, but Jack was sulking. He was unhappy that I hadn’t immediately moved back in with him, that I insisted on “denying this child a proper family”—Oh what a bad mother I was! But the more he sulked the more certain I became that I would continue to live on my own. I was still going to do what I wanted dammit, I was not going to let this get in the way any more than it had to. In the end he decided to come, he sent me a text message five minutes before I was about to leave saying I suppose I have nothing else to do tonight, I’ll meet you there. When my reply message didn’t get through he questioned me with What don’t you want me to come now? Aaaarrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhh! I hadn’t even been ready for one baby, let alone two.

At the hospital I went in the wrong entrance. I walked back out and walked around to another door, when I entered I still couldn’t find where I was supposed to be. I walked out again, confused. I was approached by a young woman, a couple of years older than me.

“Are you lost?” she asked.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“What are you looking for?”

“The maternity wing.”

She smiled, “I’m going that way, follow me.”

I followed her gratefully. I was running late by now. We turned the corner and headed to the opposite side of the hospital from where I had parked.

“So, you visiting someone?” the woman asked casually.

I glanced down at my stomach, so it still wasn’t obvious. I was grateful for that, I didn’t want to appear distinctly bigger than the other women on the tour, women who had probably booked as soon as they had found out they were pregnant. Good mothers.

“No, I’m doing a tour.”

“Oh, that’s great, I had my baby here, it’s a fantastic hospital,” she reassured me kindly.

Like I had pored over lists of hospitals in search of the best, instead of just picking the first one I found that was close by.

“Oh … well, good.”

We entered the hospital from a secret door that I surely would have missed on my own, and the first thing I saw was Jack, slouched on a chair, waiting for me. How did he find the right entrance?

“It’s just down this way, follow me,” the woman chirruped, striding ahead.

I paused to quickly snarl at Jack, “You coming?” before hurrying along to catch up, Jack slouching behind me.

Everyone was already seated by the time we got there. All couples, all sitting together in little clumps of two, spread out over the sea of plastic chairs. Jack marched over to an empty chair by the wall and sank into it, folded his arms and glowered at everyone. I followed and sat next to him. As discreetly as I could I surveyed the other women. I was surprised at how big they all were, not really big as in pregnant, just big as in big. Were they naturally like that or had they suddenly blown out sideways as soon as they got pregnant? Everyone had told me that weight gain is an inevitable part of pregnancy. It’s natural, it’s healthy, it’s necessary. These women all looked to have embraced it with open arms … and mouths. They had willingly, happily surrendered themselves to their fate, instead of rigidly exercising, riding horses, scrutinising every new curve in front of the mirror with horror like I was. Just as they had probably shouted with delight at the sight of those two blue lines, instead of curling up on the floor in the fetal position and feeling like life was over. They were probably all busy nesting, instead of fighting the overwhelming urge to go out and get blind drunk and pick up, just to prove that life didn’t really have to change, nothing had to change, really. But it had already changed. Because I wasn’t going out and getting blind drunk and picking up total strangers, I was sitting in a hospital full of expectant mothers, and already with a sulky child sitting beside me. I took one more glance at the women. I could never be them. But I couldn’t be me any more either.

We were called up one at a time to sign papers. I went up alone while Jack continued to hunch in his chair.

“So when are you due?” the hospital co-ordinator asked me.

“Ummm, June,” I replied.

I waited for the shocked reply, but she just smiled at me and noted it down. I thought I could detect a murmuring behind me, “June!” I imagined the women whispering to their partners. “She’s due in June. What a slack mother!” I knew that nobody else was that close, I had listened carefully to their due dates.

“Are you taking the pre-natal classes?”

“No.” I was the only one not taking them. Surely things would just happen when the time came, women had been having babies forever.

“Okay, just sign here, and you’re done.”

Then the tour began. We trooped from one room to another, we looked at the beds, ensuites, spa baths with gas tanks for pain relief hooked up next to them, baby rooms with little baby beds and little baby change tables, kitchenettes to make tea and coffee. It all looked so comfortable and stylish, like a nice hotel, not a place where you go to scream in agony for hours. The co-ordinator talked about pain relief medication and tactics, about possible emergency caesareans, vaginal tearing, premature births and lots of other lovely topics, while the couples listened wide-eyed and clung to each other nervously. Jack and I stood awkwardly apart, and as we trooped from one room to the next, Jack marched ahead of me, not looking to see if I was following or not. I could see the other couples looking at us, whispering to each other, trying to figure out what was going on. I wished Jack hadn’t come. At least then I could pretend I had a loving supportive husband who was just too busy at work earning money for his family to come on the tour, instead of this grumpy older man who was obviously unhappy with the situation, and me who had obviously not exactly planned to be here.

Finally the tour ended and I flew out of the hospital, desperate to get away. Away from Jack, away from baby talk, away from loving couples. I went out an exit, remembered I had parked all the way around the other side and began power walking right around the circumference of the hospital. As I did I walked headlong into couple after couple from the tour. They had all parked in the correct parking lot and were walking towards me, still holding hands. I put my head down and marched on, keenly aware of my singleness, dreading disapproving looks, or worse, sympathetic looks. I turned the final corner and walked towards my car. I looked up and saw the hospital co-ordinator unlocking her car, which was parked just up from mine.

“If you want a job done properly, you have to do it yourself,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Oh, just my car,” she laughed. “I asked him to park it for me, and look, he’s parked so crooked I can hardly get in! Men! They are supposed to be the better drivers!”

I smiled non-committally.

She looked back at me and smiled, “Women just know how to make a good job of things.” She got in her car and drove away.

I got in my car and drove home slowly. Thinking.

The following week I had booked an ultrasound to check the baby’s organs and determine the sex.

“That is, of course, if you wish to find out the sex,” my new obstetrician had said as he typed out the referral.

I shrugged. What did it matter? It was still going to grow and develop and give me stretch marks and back ache, it was still going to come tearing out my vagina, ripping and stretching me open like a piñata, it was still going to cry and suck my breasts dry and need constant nappy changes and attention, it was still going to limit my freedom for the next eighteen years or possibly more, possibly forever.

“Sure, I’ll find out the sex,” I said.

Jack came along with me, a little more willingly this time. We walked into the clinic together and I went up to the reception. I gave them my name and the receptionist gave me a form to fill out. I handed it back to her. She glanced at it briefly, then again in surprise.

“Are you pregnant?” she asked me.

“Ummm, yeah,” I replied.

“Oh well, you booked for the wrong thing, you booked for a gynaecological exam, you needed to book for an obstetric exam.”

Of course, how stupid of me.

“Oh.”

“Well, don’t worry about filling out another one, you will have to go straight through now,” she said irritably.

We went into the little room where the sonographer instructed me to lie on the table and lift up my shirt. Jack sat in a chair opposite where he could see the screen and I had cold gloop spread on my belly before she went to work. And then, suddenly, my baby was on the screen. A complete baby, arms, legs, face, feet.

“Okay there we go, everything looks good so far,” the woman began, “oops, cheeky bugger,” as the baby turned over, just like a real baby.

“Now let me check the heartbeat.” It echoed through the room, so loud and fast, da da dum da da dum, like a galloping horse.

“Now the feet … very nice … what a cutie!” she enthused.

I didn’t say anything, I felt sure she said that about every baby.

“Are we finding out the sex?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Okay … wait a minute … there’s the sex … do you know what that is?”

“Is that … a boy?”

“That’s a boy.”

It sure was. It was unmistakable. What a boy!

“Now I want him to turn over to check his spine … oh there we go, good boy, so obedient!”

That’s my boy!

“Oh he’s a cutie,” she said again. “So photogenic!”

“But don’t they all look like this?” I asked.

“Oh no,” she said, “most woman have a lot more layers of fat to get through, the picture comes out all fuzzy and it’s really hard to check things … this is perfect … he looks perfect.”

For some reason I felt ridiculously proud of this. He was perfect, I made him perfect.

“Now see his little hand … one, two, three, four, five fingers … oh look, he’s waving.” The little ghostly fingers moved from side to side. “He’s saying bye, bye, see you soon.”

Jack and I drove home together. We felt elated, high, and insanely proud.

“Perfect!” I breathed, staring at the picture we had been given.

“Perfect,” Jack repeated.

Then we were laughing and saying it over and over again, perfect, perfect, perfect! I looked at Jack, it didn’t matter any more that our relationship hadn’t exactly worked out, we had created a perfect baby. We had made it. I put my hand on my stomach—How you doing in there, little boy? See you soon.