Page 6 of How We Loved

Her eyes started to swim. “Oh. Oh, silly me. I thought...”

F*ck’s sake. Here it came. The guilt fest.

“Mum... you’ve got to let me and Ben do this. I’m a big girl now.”

She sniffed and wiped at her nose. “Right, well, I see. I’ll get my things.”

“Mum, you don’t have to go straight away...” Silly, silly mistake.

“Oooh, okay. Quick whizz around John Lewis baby department then?”

When will I learn? Seriously, when will I learn?

I looked mournfully at the remote control I’d fully planned on using to start my afternoon Friends binge. “Sure. Why not?” I sighed.

Great. Just bloody great.

I left a note for Ben. Gone to Hell. Be back later. x

I’d won though and that was all that mattered. Sure, I knew I’d feel guilty about it later (which I totally do), but what is a bit of guilt when my sanity was on the line?

I’ve just realised that this is probably why I was so depressed when we got back from the Wedding. What should have been a happy day of moving our stuff into our new home was marred by my mother deciding she’d come to stay.

That woman… seriously.

14th September

I’m exhausted. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired. I’m not sure I’ve got the energy to write anymore, but here I am.

It’s dark and late. Ben’s fast asleep, snoring next to me. I’m also worrying and it seems I do my best obsessive worrying in the middle of the night.

We had the midwife today. The baby still hasn’t turned, whatever that means.

Probably explains why it feels like it’s tap dancing on my bladder, though. “So, is it normally more boy babies or girls that don’t turn?” I asked innocently.

Ben smirked and shot me a side-eye. We’ve agreed not to find out the baby’s gender, but not knowing is almost killing me. Literally killing me. I know we haven’t bought anything for the baby yet, but maybe that’s why. We can’t visualise who he or she might be. There’s only a certain amount of yellow and neutral jungle prints I can look at.

Anyway, Juanita, the scariest midwife in South West London, shook her head. “Doesn’t make a difference.” Out came her measuring tape. “Right, let me measure you.”

Oh, God, here we go again. There’s been a lot of this measuring recently, and I have to say, it’s a little bit demeaning. The whole world is obsessed with body positivity–unless of course you are a pregnant woman, in which case its measuring tapes all the way.

“Let me tell you, it’s massive,” I said, trying to put her off as I heaved myself onto the patient table. It gave an alarming creak which in my opinion made the need for a measuring tape obsolete.

Undeterred, she pressed the cold tape against my flesh and then frowned at the reading. “42 weeks.”

I sat up onto my elbows in alarm. “Forty-two weeks? That can’t be right; there’s only forty weeks in a pregnancy.”

She nodded, her lips pressed into a firm line. Juanita, despite her scary demeanour, has actually one of those beautiful, natural smiley Caribbean faces that looks like it should be quick to laugh. “Here, let me feel again. Maybe I made a mistake.”

Yes... and shave off at least five inches off that, please- the story of my damn life.

“Baby is very low,” she muttered. “Very low indeed.”

“Meaning?” I wasn’t going to like this, was I?

“Nothing,” she replied.

“Nothing? Nothing really. So forty-two weeks, unturned, and very low...” I left our joint observations dangling.