The Antenatal Group

by Amy Bratley

  ‘Lenny,’ Rebecca said, noticing the seagull fly away from the windowsill, ‘you’re insane.’

  Half a mile away, the same seagull landed on the roof of the hospital, where, in Labour Suite 3, Erin, after a final scan, was changing into her hospital gown and surgical stockings, ready for her caesarean.

  ‘How many more hospital staff do you think will come and talk to us?’ she asked Edward with a smile, squeezing his hand. ‘I’ve never had so much attention.’

  The consultant looking after Erin, the anaesthetist and various midwives had spoken to her and Edward, reassuring them about the impending operation. Soon, she would be in theatre.

  ‘It’s comforting, though, isn’t it?’ asked Edward. ‘Not long now, then we can get on with being parents.’

  Erin smiled and gazed out of the window. Thoughts of Josiah kept popping into her mind, but she tried to think about her new baby and what it would feel like to hold him or her against her chest.

  Everything is going to be fine, she repeated to herself. Everything is going to be fine.

  Once in theatre, with Edward dressed in scrubs, the consultant surgeon talked her through what was going to happen. Up on the bed, she felt nothing as the anaesthetist performed a spinal injection. As the midwife and Edward chatted happily, she tried to relax as the anaesthetic started to work.

  ‘Okay, Erin,’ said the surgeon, while a screen was erected across her middle. ‘In ten minutes, you will meet your baby.’

  Though the people in the room continued to talk to her, distracting her from the odd noises she could hear coming from beyond the screen, Erin said nothing at all. With all her might she willed her baby to be alive and well. This time, she thought, I will have my baby.

  ‘I can see the head,’ said the consultant calmly, and Erin held her breath. ‘And now we have your baby. You have a girl.’

  Erin broke into sobs. Edward covered her with kisses. The baby cried, a forceful cry, and was held briefly above the screen for Erin to see. Then she was quickly checked over and given to Edward, who held her right next to Erin’s face. Her sobs turned into choked laughter. She felt elated. Utterly joyous.

  ‘She’s so beautiful,’ she whispered, taking her.

  ‘Congratulations,’ said the consultant. ‘I’m very pleased for you.’

  Erin stared at her baby. Edward was grinning from ear to ear. ‘Erin,’ said Edward. ‘It’s our daughter, she’s here! I love you. I love you so much.’

  Erin recognized the elation in his voice. He had acted valiantly throughout the pregnancy, standing firm and tall, like an oak tree. He was going to be a brilliant father. She felt so happy, holding their baby, watching her breathe and blink and whimper. Erin glanced at the door, where suddenly a couple of student doctors had appeared, but they were turned away by one of the midwives.

  ‘Sorry about that, Erin,’ she said. ‘This is a teaching hospital, so students are everywhere. I explained that you needed a little privacy right now.’

  Erin nodded, not caring who else was in the room. She thought about how everyday life carried on all around you, despite what enormous events are going on in your own. On the day Josiah was born, nothing else seemed to stop but his heartbeat. She distinctly remembered how appalled she felt when someone offered her a cup of tea. How could people drink tea when her baby was dead? Staring at her baby daughter, she put the thought from her mind.

  ‘Erin,’ said the midwife, waving a hand in front of her face. ‘Everything is fine. Your baby girl is healthy.’

  Erin held her daughter and looked up at the midwife, allowing relief to wash over her.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ said the midwife, wiping a tear from her own cheek. ‘I’m so pleased for you both.’

  Edward, beaming from ear to ear, hugged the midwife and lifted her feet off the floor. She let out a little screech.

  ‘Put her down, Edward!’ Erin laughed. She’d rarely seen him so demonstrative. Her heart leapt inside her chest. ‘I’m just so happy,’ he said. ‘This is our family. This is what life is all about.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’

  Edward kissed Erin again and again, all the time holding their baby daughter. Their lips touched and stayed together for a few moments.

  ‘What will you call her?’ asked the midwife, sweetly.

  Erin and Edward looked at one another, smiling.

  ‘Hope,’ said Erin. ‘We’re going to call her Hope.’

  In between contractions, which were now one minute apart, Rebecca felt utterly disorientated. In the flat, there were two midwives and Lenny sitting with her while her labour went on and on and on. Lenny was telling a story about when he was a toddler and pointed to a bottle of whiskey and said, ‘Daddy’s milk’. His dad, apparently, liked the booze. In her mind’s eye, Rebecca was with her friend in China, walking across the Bridge of the Immortals.

  ‘Like father, like son,’ he said, taking a gulp from his glass of red wine.

  The midwives laughed and bantered with him. She was astounded at how laid-back the women were, but then reminded herself of the 130 million births each year. To midwives, this happened every day. To them, she was just another woman having a baby. But weren’t they too relaxed? Maybe it was the gas and air, but Rebecca felt detached, as if she was floating up high in the corner of the room, looking at herself from the ceiling. As her cervix dilated to ten centimetres and the baby crowned, she felt confused by her own life. How had she got into this position? Who were these people watching a baby come out of her body? Why was she not in contact with anyone she knew before she moved to Brighton? How could she be a good mother when she couldn’t maintain a civil relationship with her own mother? Did she even know Lenny well enough to have a baby with him? Agreeing to marry him was one thing, but having his baby was another. Hadn’t she, unequivocally, given herself to him? Didn’t she want, more than anything, to go travelling round the world – and not with a baby hanging off her! Oh shit, she thought, as she felt the baby’s head emerging from her body. Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea after all.

  ‘Are you still with me, babe?’ Lenny said, stroking her head. All she could do was nod. The contractions were too painful for her to be able to communicate properly and, though she was with three other people, she felt more alone than she ever had. She could only think of one thing: she was never, ever, doing this again. Whatever Lenny said to her in the future, she wasn’t even going to have sex again.

  ‘Do you want to see the baby’s head, Lenny?’ asked one of the midwives. ‘It’s crowning. Won’t be long before you meet the baby now, Rebecca.’

  Lenny looked at Rebecca and, though, in her birth plan, she’d wanted him to stay at the head end, she couldn’t care now what he saw or where he stood.

  ‘Climb in, why don’t you?’ she muttered, giving him a vague smile. Then, she closed her eyes in pain for a contraction that seemed to last for ever.

  ‘Okay,’ said Lenny doubtfully, moving down to look at the baby’s head in the water of the birthing pool. He was quiet for a while, and she glanced at him anxiously. Why wasn’t he saying anything? Was the baby okay? Lenny stood with his hand on his chest, as his eyes seemed to roll back in his head.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘I wish I hadn’t done that.’

  He fainted.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Rebecca said, wanting to kill him. Her irritation was cut short by a contraction that nearly ripped her in half. Though she remained virtually silent outwardly, inside, Rebecca let out a blood-curdling scream that delivered the baby into the water just as Lenny came round again. Panting heavily, she let out a sob. The baby was out. Lenny, white as a ghost, warbled something unworldly. Then he gave her a tight squeeze.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ said the midwife, cutting the cord then handing Rebecca the baby. ‘Congratulations. That was one big baby. Well done. We just have to deliver the placenta now.’

  As the midwife injected her with a drug to speed up the third stage of delivery, Rebecca took
the baby as if someone had just handed her a ticking bomb. She kissed his cheek and smelled him. For a moment, she thought about handing him back, grabbing her rucksack and getting a taxi to Gatwick, but as she stared at her baby, something shifted inside her heart. She melted. She fell in love. In a heartbeat, she knew for a fact that she belonged to the baby and the baby belonged to her. Nothing else mattered. This was it. This was the reason for everything. Her meaning. She thought of her own mother holding her in the same way on the day she was born, the photograph that she had framed by her bed which Rebecca had gazed at as a child, wondering what it felt like to hold a baby. Now she knew. Her baby was so soft and warm and fragile, she hardly dared to move. Rebecca lifted her head up to see Lenny coming towards her, holding two big glasses of red wine.

  ‘You did it, babe,’ he said, kissing her on the lips. He held her close and she smelled the wine on his breath. She took a sip from his glass and felt her body begin to relax, the relief sinking in. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘This is where the parenting bit starts,’ said one of the midwives. ‘You’re on your own now.’

  Rebecca and Lenny looked at one another, and Lenny mouthed, Yikes. They both burst out laughing.

  ‘I can’t believe that it’s like that,’ Rebecca said, her eyes wide. ‘It’s so painful . . . and at the end, that feeling, it’s like nothing else, it’s—’

  ‘Like doing a poo,’ said the midwife. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Not one that I’ve ever done,’ said Rebecca. ‘But I know what you mean.’

  Rebecca stared at her baby, checking his tiny features, counting his tiny fingers and toes. ‘He’s amazing,’ she said, grinning.

  Just then, Rebecca’s phone started to ring. Lenny stood to move towards it, knocking the open bottle of wine all over the patch of cream carpet the shower curtains hadn’t covered. Rebecca burst out laughing and couldn’t stop. Lenny grinned at her before answering her phone. Listening to whoever it was, his expression sobered. He held his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.

  ‘It’s your mum,’ he said. ‘She wants to talk to you. Do you want to speak to her?’

  Rebecca blinked. She looked at the baby boy in her arms and knew she had to be brave now. Not brave in the rebellious way she thought she was by not telling her family the truth about her pregnancy. Instead, brave in a way that meant she had to build bridges, forgive and ask to be forgiven. She held out her hand for the phone and nodded at Lenny, suddenly absolutely desperate to hear her mother’s voice.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, tears bulging in her eyes. ‘Yes, I do want to speak to her.’

  In the hospital ward, when Edward had gone home high as the moon with a list of relatives and friends to phone, a midwife helped lift Hope out of her cot and get her into the right position to breastfeed. Although Erin had a drip and a catheter attached, she felt more elated and more content than at any time in her life, and here, in the warm ward, with a midwife on call if Hope so much as whimpered, Erin felt incredibly safe, as if she, too, were in a kind of womb, from which she was yet to emerge. She had particularly enjoyed the rounds of check-ups the doctors and midwives had done on Hope. Yes, her eyes were fine. Yes, her hearing was fine. Yes, her joints were fine. Yes, she was feeding well. Hope was one hundred per cent perfect. ‘Hope,’ Erin said in a whisper, ‘I will love you for ever more. You are safe with me. I am devoted to you.’ She checked her over completely, memorizing every little crease in her skin, even those between her toes. The midwives told Erin to rest, but she couldn’t sleep, despite being exhausted. All she could do was stare at Hope, drinking in her tiny, perfect features, watching the rise and fall of her chest, grateful to hear her lungs working with her occasional cry. Erin couldn’t take her eyes away from her baby.

  As the night became dawn and Erin eventually slept, she understood, for the first time, what it meant to sleep with one eye open. And while she half slept, half listened for any changes in Hope’s breathing, she continued to hold her little baby against her chest, for as long as she could. She never wanted to let go. She lay holding her and loving her. Loving Hope.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Heart hammering and stomach churning, Mel felt sick. She lugged her weight up the stairs to her flat. She tucked her bob behind her ears, wiped the sweat from her brow and tried to feel calm, although that seemed like an impossible task. What the hell was she supposed to do now? Days away from giving birth, Leo had revealed something she’d never even contemplated. He had a son already – and not only that, but his ex-girlfriend and son were in town! She burst through the front door, flopped on to the sofa and burst into tears.

  ‘Was it that bad?’ Bella asked, throwing an arm around Mel’s shoulders and pulling her close. ‘What did he say?’

  Mel sniffed and sobbed, eventually managing to croak out Leo’s news. ‘He’s got a nine-year-old son!’ she said, angrily wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘He had a son when he was eighteen with a French girl he met on an exchange trip. He’s never told me, so a few weeks ago he decided he needed to find his ex and see his son, before he could have a child with me.’

  Bella gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘The bloody French girl and his son are here, in Brighton,’ said Mel, furiously blinking. ‘He wants me to meet them!’

  There was a creak as the front door was pushed open. Mel and Bella turned around to see Leo standing there, looking pale and exhausted.

  ‘Mel,’ he said. ‘They came to visit Brighton, that’s all. She wanted to meet you, so I thought, now or never. I wanted you to meet my son, too. I wanted to make everything all right before we had our child. I promise that’s the truth. I’m not involved with Coco, I swear.’

  Mel stood up, gripping her bump. She moved towards him and, just as she did so, a woman wearing sunglasses knocked on the door and walked in, cautiously, behind Leo.

  ‘He’s telling the truth,’ she said with a French accent. ‘I’m so sorry. This must be awful for you, but I came to tell you that Leo has been trying to do the right thing. He wanted to sort things out, and we thought, if we all just met up, you’d know everything and there would be no more secrets.’

  Coco floated into the room past Leo and approached Mel. Slowly, she removed her sunglasses.

  ‘Jacques is waiting with the lady downstairs,’ she said. ‘I have to apologize. We didn’t come here to upset you. We came here to meet Leo, after all these years, and to help him tell you the truth. I didn’t know until we met in Brighton that he had walked away from you. I must say I was mad with him, as you must be—’

  Mel was speechless. When Coco had removed her enormous sunglasses, like a Bond girl, she had revealed that she was more than ‘quite pretty’. She was pin-up exquisite, Olive-skinned, with dark, lustrous hair and piercing blue eyes. If Coco was ‘quite pretty’, there was no point in the rest of the female population even owning a flannel. For a few moments, nobody said a word.

  ‘Would anyone like a cup of tea?’ Bella asked, but Coco shook her head.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘I should go. I have upset you enough, Mel.’

  At this point Leo walked across the room and put his arm around Mel’s shoulders. She couldn’t find any words. She looked from Coco to Leo and found herself picturing the pair as they must have been, all those years ago. Free, wild and innocent, in her mind’s eye they were together in swimwear on a beach in the south of France, Coco’s hair flowing under a straw sunhat, chasing each other into the waves and knee-high in the foam, clinging together in an embrace. Their world seemed so different to Mel’s world now, which was frightening and confusing and out of control. She wondered if she was going to cry, but let out a laugh instead. When was she going to learn to control her emotional urges? Covering her mouth, she turned the laugh into a spluttering cough.

  ‘Leo wrote to me to say he was expecting a child with you,’ said Coco, frowning, and finally taking a seat, ‘but that he had never told you the truth about Jacques. I have never told Jacqu
es the truth about Leo either and, as things have changed in my life, I felt this was a good time to start being honest with everyone involved. We moved to London a couple of months ago, so that’s why we came here.’

  Mel stared at Leo. Why hadn’t he told her the truth before now? Did he think so little of her, he thought she wouldn’t listen and attempt to understand his past?

  ‘Up until this point I have believed it to be better that Jacques doesn’t know the truth, but now, I know I am wrong,’ Coco continued. ‘When he picks up his guitar and his stepfather cannot even sing a single note in tune and insists on rugby practice, though Jacques hates ball games, I can see that Jacques senses that something doesn’t click in their relationship. He is so like Leo. I would like to tell him about Leo and about your baby, if you approve.’

  Mel let Coco’s words sink into her head. So this woman wanted her son to be pals with Mel’s unborn baby and, it seemed, Leo.

  ‘I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,’ she said to Leo, but he just shook his head and shrugged hopelessly.

  ‘I could never find the right time,’ he said. ‘And I didn’t know what I had to tell you, because I didn’t know whether I would ever meet Jacques again. I should have done all this ages ago.’

  ‘We are only in London,’ said Coco, ‘so maybe we could all be friends.’ Coco gabbled the last sentence and smiled for the first time since they’d met.

  Mel raised her palms. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘It’s one thing to come here and tell me you have a child by my boyfriend when I’m literally about to give birth. It’s another to say you want to move in and play happy families.’

  Coco shook her head and blew out gently.

  ‘She didn’t say they were moving in, Mel,’ said Bella, chipping in, with her head cocked to one side and an expression of forced calm on her face that Mel knew well. ‘London is a good distance away. I think you’re going to have to be really mature about this situation and try to keep yourself calm. It’s not great timing, Leo, I have to say.’