Unexpected

It nestled in her, rising and falling with each exhalation. For her, pregnancy and fear went hand in hand. The minutes waiting for the result to show on the test. Peering this way and that, is it a line or a shadow. Then holding on, holding on so tightly, hoping each one will stick. The baby. Foetus. Either way, praying and wishing for the bump to grow.

She held herself together when she felt the wetness between her legs. When she wiped and saw blood. Normal in early pregnancy. She kept going when it wasn’t normal. Better luck next time. She found the courage to try again.

***

Since she had her children so much had changed. No one wanted to go back to the queueing ambulances, the forty hour waits and the headlines screaming about the health service dying. Two elections had been won with the promise of fixing it all. At first, the new policies seemed to be working, the choice, the access. Then the other changes came.

***

Her brow felt hot to the touch and a silent prayer rose in her. Forty-three years old and pregnant. Ten years since she had completed her family. The hormonal coil was over ninety-nine percent effective they said. Winning odds. Expensive too, coils were no longer covered by the work’s health insurance. There was a meeting about it in her office, something to do with conception and implantation. It was hard to understand it all. But at her age the pill wasn’t recommended.

‘What do you mean pregnant?’

‘What do you think I mean?’ She could already feel it building up inside her. His bewildered face made her want to scream.

‘You can’t be.’

She wanted to slap him, could feel her hands twitch. ‘Well I am. The coil must’ve failed. Nothing is perfect, except for not having sex.’

‘But you keep going on about being pre-menopausal?’ His face. His stupid face.

‘It’s perimenopausal. And I am.’ She bit her tongue.

***

Later that week they attended the doctor’s office together. Her husband sat cringing to the side as the doctor inserted the long transducer wand into her vagina, pressing against her cervix. Each time she relaxed down her knees, the button on the doctor’s shirt sleeve caught and scraped against her inner thigh.

‘You can see here – that is the intrauterine device.’

She glanced at the dark screen – the coil was an unmistakable white, traitorous T.

‘Over here now, this shadow.’ The doctor gestured to a fuzzy patch. ‘And, it’s early days, but that flicker there, you see, just there?’ He prodded the screen with his rounded fingertip. She nodded. ‘That’s the heartbeat.’ She felt her tears well, her husband squeezed her hand and she closed her eyes. The doctor cleared his throat.

‘Previously. Uh. Before. We would’ve removed the coil. But we don’t anymore.’

‘What do you mean? It has to stay there?’

‘I’m afraid so. It should be perfectly ok. But removing it is seen as an intervention.’

She sighed. The doctor gazed at the screen.

‘And I must caution you against any sort of attempt to remove it yourself. That would be reportable.’ She stared at him. He looked away and wiped the lubricant jelly off the transducer wand with a cheap paper towel, then balled it up and threw it into the yellow medical waste bin. ‘It has been known.’ The lid of the bin snapped shut.

***

When she got home she had squatted over the toilet and slipped two fingers inside herself. The familiar tightness pressed back against her and she pushed upwards until her fingertips brushed the soft roundness of her cervix. Her vagina still felt slippery from the doctor’s lubricant. She reached but she couldn’t feel the strings from the coil. Later that night she remembered a book she had read and giggled over as a teenager. Written in the 1970s, it was already decades out of date when she read it, but was delightfully playful in its tales of the female sexual revolution. What had stayed with her most though was a story about babies being born with their mama’s coil clenched firmly in their chubby little fists. She was sure that image would visit her in her sleep, but in the end she dreamed of nothing.

***

She held onto that nothing over the early weeks. It was easier to empty herself of all the thoughts that itched inside her brain and just lean into the numbness. The exhaustion and nausea were helpful, diminishing her to dully trudge through each week until the next appointment.

‘Well, of course, this is a high risk pregnancy. Multiple risk factors.’ The doctor clicked through her notes on a screen as he spoke. Click, click. Tap tap.

‘Such as?’ Her husband asked. She glanced at him.

‘Well, uh, the coil in situ can cause issues. Late term miscarriage, sepsis. Rare, but we’ll need to monitor you carefully.’

‘Issues because you wouldn’t remove it?’ She asked. Her husband squeezed her hand tightly.

The doctor ignored her. A different doctor from last time. Perhaps the previous doctor was early pregnancy and this one was the twelve week specialist. Or maybe they just worked different days.

‘There’s also your age. And the spontaneous premature rupture of the membrane with your last pregnancy.’ His voice lifted into a question, so she nodded. Her last pregnancy had been complicated and the baby had been born early. She had felt torn in two, stretched too thin between the newborn in special care and her toddler at home. Whenever she was with one, she failed the other.

‘So this one is likely to be premature too?’

‘There is an increased probability, yes. And indeed the coil being in place can also add to that risk factor.’

***

Her husband wanted to start telling people. As soon as they walked across the car park from the doctor’s office he started up again.

‘They’ll be able to tell soon anyway.’ He gestured to her middle. She said nothing. As it was, she had lost weight with the nausea, her skin starting to tighten to her bones.

He tried again, ‘I do think we should share our news. Make it feel real. I don’t like it just being us knowing.’

‘I’m not ready yet.’ She walked on, trying to catch the sound of her shoes as her heels struck the ground.

‘We’re past the twelve weeks, there’s nothing to worry about now.’

She stopped and turned to him. ‘Did you not hear what the doctor said about the risks? This isn’t like before, even with the ones we lost.’ At this, her husband pulled her into a hug. She slumped into it.

‘My work, the Hendricks project – that’s an eighteen month programme. With the new maternity law – a full year off. Ridiculous’ Her voice started to crack.

‘It will all be there waiting, afterwards. It’ll be ok, you’ll see.’

She bit back a retort. Paternity leave was still optional. Maternity leave was not. She had grown tired of the online debates, protests and think pieces. She had no energy to rail against rules that she didn’t think would be part of her life again. She had switched off.

‘And the children? A teenager and a ten year old. Eleven when the baby is here. What will they think?’

‘They’re good kids, they’ll love it. Right, there’s the car.’ He beeped the keys and the car lit up in reply.

***

After they got home, she changed for bed, smoothing her pink nightdress over her body. There had been some spotting, same as with her other pregnancies. Her face was flushed in the bathroom cabinet mirror as she scrubbed off her makeup. Hormonal acne again too. She laid her hand against her cheek. Definitely warm.

With the pregnancies she’d lost, she’d known. Deep down inside she had known. Travelling to the hospital for the scans to check whether the blood was normal or the start of the loss, she would stare out the window, watching the day unfold. The deliveries and cyclists and buses blurred past. And she always knew when she travelled back the same way later, on the other side of the road, she would be changed. A route on the twisting map of her life would become a dead end. But she always held onto something, a tiny shard of light, a whisper – it’s ok until they say it’s not. She made desperate deals with the voice in her head. Called on any powers that be. God. Guardian angels. Made promises – please just make this right. She made that plea again, now. Her world was on fire. She couldn’t bear to read the news. All the rules and the new policies, they scared her. It was like an old-fashioned fairytale come to life. Her husband had voted for them the first time. They had the mother of all rows. He insisted he had his reasons. He kept quoting the price of fuel, the groceries, of a meal out. What a price. He didn’t vote for them the second time. But by then it really didn’t matter anymore.

Her hand still on her cheek, she locked eyes with herself in the mirror. The lines on her face were like scribbles on her papery skin. She was tired. Definitely a fever. Perhaps this time it wouldn’t stick.

 

Photo by Pauline Moss