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‘And Then There Were Four’ Comes To Life

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Her email came through on Saturday evening and as I went to bed, I noticed it in my inbox on my phone.  I saw the title and glanced away, scared.

What If I Hated It?

As much as I knew these were just the first versions and that everything could be changed, I wanted to love them so much it hurt.  I dare not open the email because one glance could shock me, creasing my forehead into deep canyons no botox could smooth out, leaving me muttering furiously under my breath, lying awake windmilling, wondering how things could have gone so wrong.  I wasn’t prepared to be hashtag gutted at this time of night.

What If I Loved It?

Yet what if the opposite was true?  I was optimistic – I knew she did great work, the reviews on her website were fabulous and I’d been pretty clear (I thought) about what I liked or did not like for my book cover.  Yet even tending on hopeful, I could not open the email.  For if I fell in love, then the rush of feelgood hormones would keep me awake all night, sharing it madly on every social media outlet known to woman, whilst silently wanting to poke the world awake so they could congratulate me at 1am on Sunday morning.

I Slept On It

And in the morning, once my brain was awake (about an hour after the kids had poked me awake, too early again), I opened the email and stole a glance at the three versions Tanja had created.

Oh.

There it was.  My book.  With my name on it.  I could almost reach out and pick it up (how I wanted to pick it up, to feel its weight, to fondle the cover, to stroke the words, to flick through the creamy yellow pages, to see my words in all their 3D brilliance).

And I knew then that everything was going to be okay.  Not just okay, but brilliant.

Even these first versions had my heart pounding and spread a grin over my face that took hours to wear off (well, until the kids started squealing and fighting).  One step closer to my book.

 

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Dodgy Advice On How To Get Pregnant

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‘How’s it going?’

The question that all couples who are trying for a baby love to hear.  Not.  The ‘not this month’ answer is too depressing and ‘twice last week, once this, we’re still piling pillows under my bum’ is straying dangerously into oversharing territory.

Our friends wanted to support us but what were they supposed to do?

Cheerleading

After all, they can hardly stand in our bedroom by the side of the bed with those big fluffy pompoms, chanting “Give Us a Bee, Give Us an Ay, Give Us another Bee, Give Us a Why, What Have You Got?  A BABY!!” because that’s not going to help us conceive.

But it’s hard to just sit by and watch someone’s dreams of having a child evaporate, so instead they would pass on advice that was highly unscientific and barely proven – just because you can draw a Venn Diagram with an overlap between two unrelated items does not mean that there is a causal relationship between them.  I like using purple ink in my fountain pen and am gluten-intolerant, but the that doesn’t mean that the ink causes my intolerance.  Still why let scientific principles get in the way of a pointless suggestion to help us get pregnant?

Apparently, we needed to:

Go On Holiday

Despite peering through the small print on many a holiday contract (the first few lines at least), I’ve never found travel agents warning me that ‘this holiday could result in pregnancy.’   Are there perhaps special ‘ovulation breaks’ where you get to time your holiday to your ovulation cycle and ensure that your holiday falls mid-cycle for optimum baby-making?

Perhaps our friends hoped that being away from all the stress, and having not much to do would help.  However, in the climate I yearn for on holiday (sunny for sandal-toting, coat-abandoning warmth), my husband’s skins welters into a irritatingly tickly and painful heat rash and when that happens, there’s no way I am getting anywhere near his body, not even for a few minutes of serious sexual communion.   But that wasn’t the main reason we had to reject this solution – we blew so much money on our honeymoon-of-a-lifetime, our holiday funds were as overdrawn as the British government.

Next?

Quit Our Job(s)

Apparently someone (one person, you call that cause and effect?) had had trouble conceiving, quit their job and miraculously became pregnant. By the same unrelated lack of cause-and-effect I bet someone got pregnant after signing a petition, closing their MySpace account or cleaning out the hamster’s cage.  Forgive me for my sarcasm, but I expect it was having sex that got them pregnant, not quitting their job.

Now my job was not great and my boss was an obnoxious bully who shouted at me, paid me less than half I was worth and I tried to leap at this vague equationless science, because I was really fed up with a git of a boss and felt sure I would’ve been  more amenable to Andy’s advances if I wasn’t wound as tight as an old lady who’d waited 30 minutes in a queue at the Post Office for her pension.  I’d be happier, less stressed and who knows Andy, it might just work, I reasoned one evening.  He countered that I had to find another job first.  He can be so reasonable and logical at times.  Spoil sport.

Next?

Get A Dog

Random or what?  The RSPCA/ Dog’s Trust would have serious problems re-homing dogs if their leaflet was legally obliged to mention that there was a high risk of pregnancy involved in the arrival of your pooch.  I have plenty of friends who have dogs and none of them have spontaneously grown a child within them and conversely friends who became pregnant without even petting a dachshund.  (I recall the irony of a work colleague a generation older than me, telling me categorically that I shouldn’t get a dog “because what happens when you want to go on holiday?” and in the same breath telling me to hurry up and have kids “before it’s too late.”)

I am not getting a dog.

But the psychobabble our friends were spouting showed just how much we were all running out of ideas.  That coupled with our total lack of results in two years told us we needed to go and seek professional help.

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Chapter One: Spies Like Us

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WE ARE ON A STAKEOUT

Ways in which this is like a stakeout:

1) We are two grown adults sitting in the front of this car, staring into space.
2) We are going out of our minds with the monotony of it.

Cop shows know what the viewer wants — pace, action, adventure. Not soul-sucking tedium. Which is why you only see a stakeout seconds before something interesting happens. Yet we have 23 more minutes of this; not exactly addictive viewing. We check our phones, sigh and wriggle. Many times.

Ways in which this is not like a stakeout:

1) There is no fast food in the car — not a burger, doughnut, coffee or soda in sight. To be honest, my stomach is wound so tight I couldn’t eat a single thing without barfing.
2) We can’t actually see the house we are ‘staking out.’ You might think it’s a rookie error, but it is a crucial part of the plan.
3) In the back of the car are two child seats. You don’t get that much in cop shows.

Reviewing these facts, it would be safe to say that this is nothing like a stakeout. Although it is rather cloak-and-dagger; we’re hiding out of sight until the designated time. Perhaps it’s more like a cold war spy exchange, although we have forgotten to pack a spy to give them in return. Who am I kidding? We are two adults waiting 23 minutes for something momentous to happen.

Handover is at 10am on the dot

And we have arrived somewhat early. (I say ‘somewhat’, my husband prefers ‘ridiculously’ and, as my fingers yearn to drum impatiently on the dashboard, ‘ridiculously’ seems to fit the bill). I like to be early, whereas my husband is more of an on-time (his words) or cutting it superfine if not late (my words) kind of guy. But Today is not a day to cut it fine.
The silence between us is intense. Not in the flammable way that you get between two people spoiling for a fight, when the air crackles with tension that a match would ignite. No, it’s intense because of the emotions that seep out of our rigid bodies. Powerful, extreme emotions that arise from the overwhelming importance of Today.

A day we will never forget

I feel so many conflicting things that I don’t know where to start, or what to say, or even if I dare say anything at all in case I break the magic spell we are under. I am giddy, excited, nervous, scared and more. Mostly I think I should be ready, after all the preparation we have done and courses we have attended. But I am not.
I am not ready.

I can’t silence a mantra that fills me with dread . . .
‘What have we done?’ (For of course, in blame, we stand together.)

After what seems like forever our social worker arrives.  And such is our tedium that the arrival of another car is something worth remarking upon. This simple change in our environment releases us for a few minutes from the endless checking of our phones, which we justify to ourselves in case 10am suddenly sneaks up and surprises us.

She parks near us, but not too close and walks over. I wind down my window and she leans in. The not-stakeout just got marginally more interesting again. She goes over The Plan again: The Plan we have heard and agreed to several times during multiple meetings already. I feel like the stupid kids being told how to line up for assembly for the umpteenth time.

No, we won’t go in.
Yes, we will act normal.
Yes, we will stick to The Plan, we intone in robotic response.

Because there is no way we are blowing this, not when we have come so far, invested so much already. It’s just another (insert adjective) hoop to jump through. Yet we both know that nothing about this day is normal. We normally go in. We normally say hello. We normally have a cuppa. I normally don’t feel this strange, this freaked out. Today my stomach churns with queasiness, my knees wobble, my plastered-on smile is strained and fake. So we nod our heads and promise to act normal even though The Plan is as far from normal as it could possibly be. And we return to limbo and wait some more.

As 10 o’clock approaches, my already intense emotions shift into overdrive. I wrestle them down, leaving a suitably stiff upper lip and all that emotionally restrained balderdash because my alternative is to be a blubbering wreck. I need something to distract me. So I thumb onto Facebook ‘just four minutes to go, eep.’ I post and run. I dare not wait for responses or read the messages of support, for my façade will crumble at the slightest nudge.

The clock finally changes from 09:59 to 10:00

For twenty-some minutes we’ve been stuck in time that won’t move forward. But now it has. Hundreds of seconds have crawled by and we are finally at the finishing line. This is all so strange I am having an out-of-body experience.

A shiver of blessed relief courses through my body as we coast our car down the hill and onto the drive. We get out of the car and the doors clunk closed in synchronisation. We try to act normal.

The front door swings open

There are no words today (weird), just strained smiles. We focus on the children and gently take them into our arms, on the doorstep (weird). Neither in nor out of their house, it’s a spy-like handover in neutral territory. I catch the adults’ eyes, and shy away. I focus on my little girl (for calling her my daughter makes me feel like a fraud) and carry her to our car without a backwards glance. We strap them in, chatting about the fun we are going to have at the play gym today. They seem happy, excited.
I can breathe again.

The deed is done

I want to drive out of here as fast as possible. To leave behind the tension and the anguish and the strangeness of this experience.
‘Ready?’ asks my husband as he revs the engine. Everyone’s strapped in and yes is on the top of my teeth and it stops at my molars. Suddenly I jolt alert. My spidey senses are tingling: something is wrong. What can it be? What have we forgotten?
‘STOP!’ I yell, as my brain solves the conundrum.
‘Where are Nibbles and Bubbles?’ I ask.

The engine fades…

We search frantically under car seats and then I get out, dash to the back of the car and rifle through the bags of their overnight kit in the boot. I swear silently and profusely as the realisation hits: they are not here, and if they are not here, they have to be in the house. Back in the house. The Plan didn’t plan for this.

Nibbles and Bubbles are cuddly toys: a rabbit and a dog.

But saying they are just toys is like saying today is just Thursday

They are the first things we ever gave to our children, fluffy vehicles of hope and love and expectation and joy, and they are saturated with an emotional element that elevates them to the status of Gods. My husband and I spent hours searching for the perfect toys; two different but equally loveable softness-incarnate. I slept with them next to my skin for a week, so our children would recognise our scent when they finally met us. Our daughter has not let go of Nibbles and loves her obsessively: we can’t leave without them.

My husband offers to go and I shrug him off in my frustration, a choice I would later regret. I storm quickly back to the house, deviating dangerously from The Plan and silently fuming that today of all days, we get this wrong. I stride in the front door and come face to face with things I was never meant to see.

‘Where are Nibbles and Bubbles?’ I demand abruptly, as I enter the front room. Ken turns away, wipes his face with his hand and starts to look for the toys, but I have already seen too much.

There is devastation here

As quick as my lighthouse glance was, it was too slow not to see Mary, crumpled against the wall, sobbing relentlessly, her knees buckled with the weight of this separation. Her grief, just beneath the surface these past few weeks, broke the moment that door closed.

We are not rescuing these children – they were rescued nearly a year ago.

We are ripping them from a family that loves them deeply. A family who held them when they knew not how to be held and went rigid with fear. A family who nurtured them through sleepless nights, panic, pain and tantrums. A family who cherished them as they blossomed and taught them how to love and be loved.

Mary made us promise that one day she would see the children again. We didn’t know if we could, but she made us agree, even if we were lying, she said, because she couldn’t bear to think that this was the end. So we made the pact anyway, believing it was null and void before it even left our mouths, in a vain attempt to lighten her grief and assuage our guilt.

I finally find both toys and dash out, unable and unwilling to say or do anything to help. For we are the cause of their grief. Our gain is their loss. In every way this is a happy day for us, it is a sad day for them.

I pout childishly

Annoyed that my special day has been tainted.
I slam their door behind me and I run back to the car, away from scenes I would rather forget. I hold the toys aloft, triumphantly, feeling anything but. Then my little girl sees her bunny and delight spreads across her face like a sunrise on a glorious morning — an expression of sheer joy. She grabs her bunny and hugs him to suffocation.
I’ve saved the day. Yay for me.

I don’t feel like celebrating. My husband drives off and asks if I am okay, although I suspect he knows the answer already. I stare out of the window and mumble ‘not really’. I am filled with a sorrow that I did not invite to this party. My perfect day has soured. I want to forget the image of grief that haunts me, but it is etched forever in my mind.

I shake my head and focus on the future, turning to marvel at the sheer cuteness of our new additions. Tiny perfect humans. One mass of curls with a bunny on her lap and one mischievous boy sit behind me. A girl who reminds us constantly of who we have become:

‘You’re my mummy, you’re my mummy, you’re my mummy’

Today we take these children home.
Tonight they will sleep (or not) in the beds that have been waiting for their arrival for months, in our house. Their family of two joins our family of two and we become four. It feels like we have reached the end at last.  The end of our long journey to become parents.

and then there were four

THE END

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