Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012

by Nick Spalding

  All is well though it appears, and the baby is making up for lost time.

  Laura makes a face again. ‘Fantastic for you, pal. You’re not the one who’s got somebody practising kung fu in your uterus.’

  That was over two weeks ago now and the baby has fallen into the habit of smacking her mother around like a nightclub bouncer every evening - and sometimes through a large portion of the night as well.

  Thankfully for Laura, she’s a deep sleeper. Even baby Newman’s high kicking exploits can’t keep her awake.

  The same can’t be said for her father, who has always been a light sleeper.

  While Laura is asleep, any sudden movement the baby makes translates its way into my wife’s sleeping form. When the baby jerks about, so does Laura - sometimes violently so.

  I’ve been slapped awake on more than one occasion recently. Similarly, my testicles have made friends with Laura’s knee three times, and my shoulder blades now know what it’s like to have a pointy female elbow smacked into them at three in the morning.

  I’ve taken to sleeping on the couch when these episodes occur.

  It’s either that, or have everyone think I’m suffering severe spousal abuse.

  I’m going to curl up on the couch now and try to get some sleep.

  I don’t know whether I’ll be successful, but at least I can be one hundred percent sure I won’t wake up with a bruised scrotum.

  Laura’s Diary

  Saturday, August 17th

  Dear Mum,

  I still have the fashion sense of a demented chimpanzee. Only now I’m a fat demented chimpanzee.

  The girls suggested we all go on a night out, which is great, only now I have to come up with something to wear that will accommodate the rapidly increasing size of my belly.

  I’m starting to resemble the world’s skinniest Buddha.

  Until now I would have happily described my belly as being pot-like. Now it’s more like a tureen – and it’s not going to get smaller any time soon.

  Nothing I have in my wardrobe fits anymore.

  Useless are my tight little black dresses.

  I tried to squeeze one over the baby to see if I could get away with it, but just ended up looking like a black snake that had swallowed a football.

  Jeans are right out for obvious reasons - and as a duvet cover won’t cut much of a glamorous figure on the dance floor, I’m going to have to bite the bullet and wear maternity clothing.

  Melina, knowing this day would come, handed over some of her more stylish maternity clothes from when she was pregnant with Hayley. ‘I kept them because Travis and I want another one in the next couple of years. But your need is more immediate than mine!’

  I thanked her for the bag of clothes, put them in the cupboard and tried very hard to forget about them.

  …successfully, until tonight.

  Now the bag is open, the clothes are laid out on the bed and my heart has sunk to the depths.

  Don’t get me wrong, the maternity clothing companies try hard.

  Every effort has been made to accommodate the distended belly into the cut and line of their products. They try their best to make you still feel feminine and sexy.

  They fail utterly of course, but we should give them marks for making an effort.

  I can’t escape the mental image of a squeezed sausage as I yank on a pink and black number that’s gathered below the breasts, before flaring out over little Miss Newman in a cascade of material.

  Without the additional cloth it would be a lovely little dress, but as it is, I just feel like a big fat cow trying to fit into an outfit that would be far too small for her were it not for the additional yard or so of cotton.

  Still, it fits.

  …which is more than can be said for my LBDs. I may never wear them again - curse Jamie and his overactive penis!

  The crying fit only lasts five minutes this time.

  I’m very pleased they’re getting shorter now. My hormones must be settling down at last.

  With the dress on I sit down to put on some make-up.

  I look like a haggard witch at the moment, so it’s going to be a difficult and time-consuming operation to bring me up to muster.

  Thanks to my unborn child I haven’t been sleeping well at all. I don’t have eye bags, I have eye hammocks.

  Still, that’s what concealer was invented for.

  …and foundation.

  Lots and lots of foundation.

  It’ll make me look like a cheap Eastern European prostitute, but that’s still better than Princess Panda Face in my book.

  So there we have it.

  Bump on display to the world and covered in slap, I’m ready for my first night out on the town in months!

  It’s seven thirty, I’m knackered already and won’t even be able to drink my cares away - thanks to my body’s stupid inability to consume alcohol and give birth to a healthy child at the same time.

  A sober fat git I shall remain all evening.

  Woo hoo.

  I can barely contain my excitement.

  ***

  At least I could contain the contents of my stomach, which is more than can be said for Rachel, Melina’s ditzy friend from work.

  I have never been on a night out with the girls and not been falling down drunk by the end of it, therefore this evening has been a real eye-opener for me.

  It comes as a great shock to discover that people, when they have consumed a large amount of alcohol, turn into what can only be described as utter twats.

  Not drinking meant I became the taxi service for the evening. I picked up Melina and Rachel at Mel’s house, then went over to grab Shelley from work.

  Shelley shares the manager’s position at Thorntons with me and we’ve become firm friends in the past few weeks. A mutual hatred of Thorntons has been the cornerstone of our relationship.

  She’s worked for them for eight years, while I was forced into the job share thanks to Jamie’s lack of penis control.

  I had hoped Hotel Chocolat might see past my vomitous exploits at the interview and offer me a job, but so far – de nada.

  ‘Bleed the bastards for every penny,’ Shelley said to me a while back, when I confided in her that I was pregnant and would need to tell our bosses sooner or later. ‘I’d get myself knocked up too if I wasn’t thirty eight and a chain smoker.’

  Back to tonight. Shelley puts out her cigarette before getting into the car and we’re off towards town for what will be a night I’d happily consign to the dustbin of my memory if I could.

  Things start off okay…

  They always tend to, as nobody is shit-faced at eight thirty - unless you’re in Ireland, of course.

  We start proceedings at The Bog and Trellis in the high street.

  I have no idea why anyone would wilfully give a pub a name like that, but it’s one of the national chains, so there’s every chance a computer somewhere is spitting out random words that get combined with one another, before being slapped up on the front of what used to be a bank.

  I look forward to one day visiting The Fetlock and Nazi, or The Vomit and Biggins.

  The pub is packed and I have to manoeuvre my bump through the throng awkwardly.

  I’m not all that comfortable carrying it around in front of me yet. Even though the baby’s still got a lot of growing to do, she’s already started to put my centre of gravity off.

  I think this is the real reason why they tell you not to drink while pregnant.

  The combination of alcohol and centrifugal force would be enough to throw you on your arse every thirty seconds.

  Also, it transpires a pregnancy bump has hitherto unforeseen magical powers. It makes you completely invisible to members of the opposite sex!

  I’d like to think I scrub up pretty well when I make an effort, and I’ve always attracted the appreciative stares of many a man when out clubbing in the past - particularly if I’m wearing a ridiculously short dress and heels that show off my long legs.
/>
  This evening though, I could have been wandering around in a see-through PVC jumpsuit, wearing a hat with the words ‘I’ll fuck you for a jelly shot’ written across it in neon letters and I’m still convinced not one man would have so much as glanced at me.

  It’s a depressing realisation.

  The bump is like a brand. It means I’m definitely off the market.

  …not that I’m on the pull or anything, but a woman likes to think she can turn heads even when she’s happily married.

  I’d have to sexually molest the fruit machine in the corner to get anyone’s attention in my present state.

  What makes it worse is that Melina, a woman I’d cheerfully have sex with if I leant that way, is getting all the attention I’m not.

  Never mind though! I can drown my sorrows in –

  …oh no, wait a minute. I can’t even do that, can I?

  I just love being pregnant!

  We leave The Bog And Trellis at nine forty five. I’m stone cold sober thanks to my three diet Cokes, but Melina and the girls are already in a warm, happy haze of light drunkenness following several glasses of wine.

  As we walk towards the nightclubs, I get my first inkling of what being drunk involves - when viewed from an objective standpoint.

  For some reason the other three girls have all gone deaf.

  I assume this is the case, as they’ve all started shouting.

  Consumption of alcohol squares with volume it appears.

  ‘What club you wanna go to?’ Melina says loudly, only a few inches from my face.

  ‘I’m not bothered, to tell the truth,’ I reply.

  ‘Let’s go to Mother Kelly’s!’ shouts Rachel.

  ‘Yeah. Mother Kelly’s is great!’ agrees Shelley.

  Mother Kelly’s is not great. Mother Kelly’s is a shit hole with a sticky floor and stickier toilets. The road behind it is affectionately known as ‘stab alley’.

  ‘Off to Mother Kelly’s we go then!’ screams Mel.

  I sigh, knowing they’ll brook no argument from the pregnant, sober one, and consign myself to a night of having my shoes sucked off my feet.

  Once past the leering bouncers (not leering at me though - I could have started performing oral sex on one of them and he probably wouldn’t have noticed) we enter the night club and make our sticky way over to the bar.

  The girls order a round of shots. I have a lime and soda water. I can’t have another Diet Coke as the caffeine will keep me up all night, and I frankly need a decent night’s sleep.

  I just love being pregnant!

  The others knock back their drinks with gusto and proceed to order another round. I suck on my straw and begin to think of ways I can take this out on Jamie’s penis. It’s to blame for my current displeasure and it will pay for its crimes.

  I spend most of the next hour sat in a booth at the side of the dance floor. I get up and have a half-hearted go at dancing, but I can feel the baby kicking every time I do so much as a sideways shimmy, and my legs are as heavy as lead weights after five minutes.

  My friends are way past the legal limit now and are having no such problems.

  There they are: three otherwise sensible, professional ladies, whirling round on a sparkly dance floor like a trio of over-excited baboons with electrodes up their arses.

  Consumption of alcohol also takes away your ability to dance, it would seem.

  Mel is hopping around with her arms stuck out in front of her, resembling a confused Dalek.

  Shelley is doing some kind of grinding thing that’s making me wish my eyes would spontaneously cease to function, and Rachel has found one of the dancing poles near the stage. I rather wish she hadn’t, as any minute now I’m likely to get a really good look at her vagina.

  To her, I’m sure she looks like a professional stripper, sexually arousing every man in the night club with her sexy, energetic dance moves. To me (and anyone else not drinking) she looks like a mental patient trying to fuck a lamp post.

  Her legs flail in every direction, her head whips round like a prize fighter about to go down in the tenth.

  I’m thinking of going over to pull her away from the bloody thing before she hurts herself, when the inevitable happens.

  Trying the old ‘legs clamped round the pole and back arched seductively’ pose, Rachel loses her footing and goes crashing to the dance floor with an audible screech.

  We now discover yet more interesting aspects of the drunken state: The inability to feel either pain or embarrassment.

  Rachel is up in seconds, laughing like a loon. She’s going to have an enormous bruise on her backside tomorrow, but for now she brushes off the accident as if it never happened.

  Amazingly, many of the men on the dance floor are still regarding her with animal curiosity.

  Great… so you can gyrate around a pole like a rutting hyena before falling on your arse in a heap - and still get more attention from the male species than if you’re just a tiny bit pregnant.

  Fantastic.

  I sigh and get up to go for my seventeenth wee of the evening.

  Mother Kelly’s is just the place you want to be when your bladder is weaker than the British economy.

  How truly delightful it is to repeatedly hold a graffiti-covered door closed with my hand while squatting over half a toilet seat to go about my business.

  What really caps off the experience this time round is the two people having ugly sex in the stall next to me.

  ‘Give it to me!’ she growls. Given the state of the place, I can only assume she means dysentery, as the chances of achieving orgasm through the miasma of piss and cheap perfume are small to say the least.

  I hope he gets her pregnant, I mutter under my breath.

  It’s only when I look round to see there’s no toilet paper that I decide the evening is well and truly over.

  ‘I’m going,’ I shout at Melina, who is still bouncing around looking for the Doctor so she can exterminate him.

  ‘It’s only midnight!’ she wails back.

  ‘I’ve got a headache and the baby’s giving me hell!’

  Mel looks understandably disappointed.

  This is her first night out without her own child for a long time and I guess she wants to make the most of it.

  I would feel guilty, but I already need another wee and if I drink any more lime and soda water I’m going to be sick in a very green manner.

  Mel tells Shelley the bad news and we all troop off to find Rachel.

  We eventually find her locked in a death struggle with an Arsenal fan. At least it looks like a death struggle initially. As we get closer it becomes apparent they are kissing.

  …and touching.

  Oh good God, there is so much touching.

  If we don’t do something soon, touching is likely to move on to insertion and then we’re in real trouble.

  I pull the two love-birds apart.

  The Arsenal fan looks angry for a second, then utterly non-plussed.

  Somebody completely invisible has just broken up the advanced necking session, so his confusion is entirely understandable.

  Rachel isn’t any happier, but she can see me just fine, so is a lot clearer on what just happened.

  My face is like thunder, so she doesn’t put up much of a fight when I tell her we’re evacuating the premises.

  ‘I’ll just get Gavin’s number,’ she says.

  ‘Fuck Gavin,’ I tell her. ‘You’ll thank me in the morning,’ I add, dragging her away by a reluctant arm.

  We’re nearly at the car when Rachel goes three different shades of green and runs behind a row of wheelie bins.

  Melina staggers over to help hold her hair back, while Shelley deposits herself on the nearest car bonnet and sparks up a fag.

  For my part, I ignore the fact I need the toilet and prop myself up next to her.

  As Rachel strains behind me and Shelley hacks up a lung, I reflect that being sober and healthy due to pregnancy might not be such a bad thing
after all…

  ‘Good night?’ Jamie asks sleepily from the couch when I get in the door.

  ‘Let’s put it this way. If I’m going to throw up a lot, have no centre of balance and look deeply unattractive, I’d rather have a baby at the end to show for it.’

  He gives me a confused look.

  I wave it off, smile to myself… and go for another sodding wee.

  Love you and miss you, Mum.

  Your stone cold sober daughter, Laura.

  xxx

  Jamie’s Blog

  Tuesday 10 September

  ‘I want bacon,’ the monster growls at me from her duvet cocoon in the centre of our bed. ‘Get me bacon.’

  ‘Yes mistress,’ I say humbly, tugging my forelock as I back out of the room in fear for my life.

  ‘Bacon and chocolate. I want bacon and chocolate,’ it tells me, cold, hard eyes boring their way into my mortal soul. ‘Together!’

  I must serve the creature.

  I must do as it says.

  I stumble down the stairs, the sound of its ragged breathing following me to the ground floor.

  In the kitchen, I get out the frying pan and place three rashers of bacon into it.

  ‘Make sure it’s fucking crispy!’ it screeches, and I quail over the hob, praying that one day soon sweet death will take me in its warm embrace and spirit me away from my hideous servitude.

  I fry the bacon until it is as crispy as I can make it.

  Placing the dead pig flesh on a plate, I remove the chocolate from the fridge and begin to grate it over the bacon.

  I don’t know why!

  Why? Why would anyone want bacon and chocolate together?

  It’s a culinary travesty!

  But… I must not say anything to the creature. Must not let it know my thoughts. It will eat me alive if it knows…

  The chocolate melts over the bacon. The smell is horrible, a combination of pig meat and Dairy Milk that makes my stomach revolve like a hotel door.