‘Yes, he did, and I have drunk the water. I’m about to burst there’s so much water inside me,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
She sighed. ‘Well, you obviously didn’t drink enough. It’s no use. We’ll have to do an internal. Go and empty your bladder and come back straight away.’
Joy … freedom. I leaped off the bed and hurled myself into the toilet. The relief was wonderful. Why the hell hadn’t they told me I could have an internal examination? I would have opted for that any day.
I went back in, climbed on to the bed and assumed the position. The sour-faced radiologist came towards me holding a large stick with a round head that looked remarkably like a giant vibrator. I had a sneaking suspicion, however, that this monster would provide none of the pleasure of its smaller cousin. It was unceremoniously shoved in, where she proceeded to swish it about roughly from right to left staring at a screen and muttering under her breath. She kept clicking on the mouse and dragging lines across from one side to the other. I’m one of those people who like to be informed about what’s going on, particularly when someone is staring at my innards on a TV screen.
‘So, what do you see? Does it look normal?’ I asked, squirming with discomfort as she shoved the camera to the far left of my womb.
‘Dunno, hard to say,’ she mumbled, as she continued to click and measure lines across the black fuzzy screen.
‘Well, does anything look really abnormal?’ I tried, desperate for reassurance.
‘I can’t say until I’ve studied the printouts. Dr Philips will explain it all to you.’
‘Well, can you tell me if you see anything that looks like it could be a big problem?’
‘Nothing stands out, but as I said, I’ll have to study the results,’ said the witch in the white coat, as she yanked the camera out. ‘You can get dressed now.’
I wanted to grab her by the hair and scream at her. I wanted to beat her over the head with the vibrator-like camera, but I was putting all my energy into not crying. Why was she being such a bitch? Didn’t she realize how awful and humiliating this was? Why the hell had she become a radiologist if she hated people so much? She should have gone into research. She was only fit to deal with lab rats. I was furious and upset. I stormed out of the room and when I got to the safety of my car I bawled. I was sore, and feeling very sorry for myself.
When I went to see Dr Philips – three weeks and one further blood test later – my upset had turned into fury. I told him I thought his choice of radiologist extremely poor and I was raging at the way in which I had been treated. He checked the name on the report and said it must have been a temp as the radiologist he normally used was charming. He apologized profusely and said he would make sure I never had to deal with a stand-in again.
He then told me that everything looked normal. The blood tests taken on day four of my cycle had shown that my hormone levels were normal.
‘We checked your FSH to confirm that sufficient quantities are being produced to trigger the follicles within your ovaries to begin preparing an egg for release. High levels of FSH are often taken to be an indicator that egg reserves are running low. We also checked your LH, which controls the development of the egg. Levels surge to trigger release at ovulation. However, consistently high levels can prevent such a spurt, and can be an indicator of PCOS, but your levels are normal. Also, your prolactin levels were normal. Prolactin is a stress hormone released by the pituitary. High levels can inhibit the release of FSH and LH. It is also the hormone that will eventually stimulate breast milk.’
Normal stress levels? Was he trying to wind me up? I was totally strung-out. The way things were going, if the stress hormones were the ones that stimulated the breast milk my baby would be sucking on empty. I’d be a basket case by the time I got pregnant.
‘And finally the blood test we did on day twenty-one of your cycle was to check your progesterone levels. The body increases its production of this hormone after releasing an egg, so the test confirms ovulation is taking place. It would appear that you’re a very healthy young lady who ovulates regularly,’ said Dr Philips.
I knew FSH was Follicle Stimulating Hormone and I recognized LH as the Luteinizing Hormone from my ovulation-stick instructions, but he had lost me on the PCOS. Still, I got the gist of it – I was producing eggs. I appeared to be normal.
‘So, what do I do now?’ I asked.
‘Go home, my dear, and lead a normal life. Try to be healthy and, most importantly, try to relax and enjoy a normal sex life. Regular sex around the mid-stage of your cycle is advisable, but don’t get too tied down with dates and times. The more relaxed you are, the more likely it is that you will fall pregnant. I have no doubt you will succeed in the very near future. The best of luck to you,’ said Dr Philips, shaking my hand.
I wanted to hug him and thank him for being so nice, but I was feeling too emotional so I just mumbled, ‘Thank you for your help,’ and went home to tell James the good news. Along with his healthy sperm, I had healthy eggs. We were good to go.
14
Leinster lost the semi-final – 21 – 14 – and James was gutted. They played really well, but the team from Toulouse outplayed them with their superior scrummaging (well, that’s what Gary Brown of the Irish Times wrote anyway). All the papers praised James for having taken Leinster all the way to the semi-final and predicted that he had a great career as a coach ahead of him.
I reminded him of this as he sat staring gloomily out the window a week later, stirring his coffee. ‘I really thought we were going to win it. I really did,’ he said, for the zillionth time that week.
‘Look, James, no one’s dead. I know you’re upset, but everyone thinks you’re a hero for getting so far. Look at the positives. You’re being hailed as the best coach Leinster has ever had, you’ve just been given a big pay-rise and a three-year contract. Come on, it’s not the end of the world.’
James sighed and looked at me. ‘It is to me.’
I was losing patience with the dramatics. He had been moping around the house for a week, watching a video of the match over and over again. He needed to snap out of it.
‘For goodness’ sake, it’s not as if you were fired. You lost a game, next year you’ll win the league.’
‘It’s a cup, Emma. It’s the European Cup,’ he snapped. ‘Is it too much to ask for a little sympathy after I’ve lost the most important game of my career?’
‘I’ve given you buckets of sympathy. I’ve spent the last week dancing around telling you how great you are and trying to cheer you up. Come on, James, it’s not that dramatic. Look on the bright side – at least you have healthy sperm.’
‘Emma, can you please, just for once, not bring sperm, babies or reproduction into the conversation? It’s doing my head in. This is about my career and has nothing whatsoever to do with baby-making. It may come as a shock to you to know that not everything in the world revolves around fertility. Now I’m going to have a long, hot shower and I would really appreciate it if you refrained from following me into the bathroom to check if I’m masturbating,’ he said, and stormed out the door.
While James was in the shower, Donal rang. ‘Howrya, is he there?’
‘No, he’s having a shower.’
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Jesus, you’d swear he’d just had his leg amputated. He’s so touchy and grumpy.’
‘Ah, but we came so close.’
‘Oh, God, not you too. Look, take him out and get him drunk or something. I’ve tried everything but he won’t cheer up.’
‘The lads have organized a surprise for him tonight. We’ll cheer him up for you.’
‘Good.’
‘OK, well, just tell him I called and I’ll see him down at the club at seven.’
‘Will do. Oh, by the way, Donal, I hear you’re a liberated man.’
‘What?’
‘Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt,’ I said, laughing, as I hung up.
I left James a note on the kitchen table:
/>
Donal called. You are to be in the clubhouse at seven.
PS You can shake it till it falls off for all I care.
At three o’clock that morning, James staggered into the bedroom wearing a Superman outfit – red knickers and all. He leaped on top of me and kissed me. ‘Darling, I jusht wanna say that you’re the besht wife in whole world and I’m shorry for shouting at you. Alsho, if I shay sho myshelf, I am the besht coach in Europe. The lads shaid I was top bloke and they promished to win the Cup for me nexsht near. Now come on, let’sh make babiesh,’ he said, pulling off his cape. But his feet got tangled in the red knickers and he ended up falling off the bed and passing out on the floor.
I pulled him back on to the bed and covered him with the duvet. My very own superhero …
With James having regained his positive outlook on life, I decided I should do something to make me feel better about myself. I needed to be distracted and to stop wallowing in my pregnancy obsession and driving my husband insane. I reasoned that it was time for me to give something back to society. I was also secretly hoping that if I did some good work I’d get a break on the pregnancy front. ‘What goes around comes around’ and all that. I narrowed it down to three options – Amnesty International, prison visits or the Samaritans.
First I went to an Amnesty meeting. Of the four people there, I was the only one not wearing a poncho and Moses sandals. My dressing down had consisted of Miss Sixty jeans and a D&G T-shirt. Suffice it to say that I didn’t exactly blend.
I sat down beside Simon, an earnest young man with long, dirty-looking dreadlocks and an apparent aversion to personal hygiene. Suzanne, the Amnesty representative – wearing the ‘must-have’ poncho, jeans and a pair of open-toe Birkenstocks – explained what Amnesty was about and pointed out that they had no time for do-gooders who joined for three months, then drifted away. They needed passionate people, active members, who would go on marches, write protest letters, participate in night vigils outside embassies and be available twenty-four/seven as committed members of the organization. At this stage the poncho-clad recruits were nodding vigorously and clapping.
Then Suzanne asked us all to explain why we had come to Amnesty and what we felt we could contribute. Simon gave an impassioned speech about having spent a month on the West Bank, seeing first hand the Israeli brutality towards the Palestinians. ‘They are living like dogs, in sub-human conditions. We have to increase the pressure on the government to do something. We need to hit the streets.’
Christ, what the hell was I going to say? By the time my turn came, I’d decided honesty was the best policy. I told Suzanne that I knew Amnesty had a shop, as it was quite near where I lived, and perhaps I could work there for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons … Thus ended my blink-and-you’ll-miss-it career with Amnesty.
I met up with Lucy after the Amnesty fiasco to discuss my options. She said I’d be mad even to consider prison visits. She pointed out that you could get landed with a serial-killer type inmate who, on his release, would hunt you down and murder you. I pointed out that serial killers were probably not first in line for friendly prison visits. Still and all, better safe than sorry, said Lucy. After all, that Harold Shipman had seemed like a nice old family doctor and look what he’d got up to. She said the Samaritans sounded like a much better option. Better to be on the end of a telephone with a suicidal teenager than face-to-face in prison with a murderer. She had a point and I was very fond of the phone, so I’d probably be a natural.
The Samaritans it was. I had seen endless ads crying out for recruits, so they were obviously desperate. I spent a long time deciding what to wear to the initial meeting and finally opted for dungarees, a pair of sandals that I bought in Scholl (luckily I didn’t bump into anyone I knew in there – I’d never live that one down) and tied a red bandanna round my head in the manner of Leroy in Fame.
When I arrived to my local Samaritan centre, the place was heaving with men and women dressed in smart suits, including the lady from the Samaritans. I felt like a complete plonker – I looked like a caricature lesbian, not a married do-gooder. The meeting went quite well as, thankfully, we didn’t have to ‘care and share’ or give impassioned presentations on what talents we had to offer. I decided to sign up for the training. It couldn’t be that bad – could it? After all, I spent hours listening to my friends moaning, so I was quite confident I’d be a whiz on the phones.
The training – which took place over a six-week period, every Wednesday night and all day Sundays (I’d better have twins at this rate of do-gooderness) – proved intense. The team leaders kept asking us how we felt about death and losing people close to us. Everyone was nodding and staring at their feet, remembering lost loved ones. Well, I’ve never lost someone close to me except Garfield – if you can count a cat. I tried to remember how sad I was when he got run over by a car, but it was so long ago that I couldn’t even picture what he looked like and kept imagining the cartoon cat, which made me want to laugh.
Then we had to discuss topics like abortion, euthanasia, crime and anorexia. It was all a bit stressful. None of my group seemed to have a sense of humour. When I said that my father prayed for euthanasia to be legalized, so he could suffocate my granny in her sleep and save the rest of us from her constant moaning, there was a deathly silence.
Later, when we discussed abortion, I got a bit hot under the collar. I said I thought it was very selfish of women to abort their babies when there were so many couples having trouble getting pregnant. Why couldn’t they just have the babies and give them up for adoption? That way everyone would be happy. It was only when I stopped talking that I realized I’d gone bright red and was shaking my fist in the air like some fanatical pro-lifer. The other volunteers were all staring at me in horror. I quickly added that, of course, it was each woman’s prerogative to make her own choice. But it was too little too late. I had been black-marked.
The team leader took me aside and asked me if I really thought the Samaritans was for me, and explained – as if to a three-year-old child – that while it was great to have a sense of humour in life euthanasia was no laughing matter, and that the Samaritans were not there to judge people’s choices so I’d need to consider my feelings on abortion very carefully.
After tea-break we did our first role-play where you had to pretend to be a Samaritan and deal with the caller’s problem. Darryl, a very intense middle-aged volunteer from Belfast, was playing my caller. He was pretending to be a woman who was a victim of physical abuse.
‘Samaritans, can I help you?’ I said, in my most sympathetic voice. I decided to imitate Marilyn Monroe’s nice soft voice so I sounded a bit American.
Darryl looked at me strangely. ‘Yes, hello. I’m in a terrible state. I don’t know what to do. You see, my husband …’
‘Mmm, I see, so you’re married, then?’
‘Em, yes, I am, actually. Anyway, my husband …’
‘Where did you two meet?’
‘Well, in university. Anyway, the thing is he beats me and I just don’t—’
‘Do you mean to say he’s beaten you more than once?’
‘Well, yes, that’s why I’m calling,’ hissed Darryl, glaring at me. ‘I’m a victim of abuse and I’m feeling so depressed. I think I just want to end it all.’
‘Well, I don’t blame you, that’s dreadful. But you should never have let him thump you twice. Next time he does it, get out a baseball bat and give that son-of-a-bitch a belt over the head with it that he’ll never forget,’ I said, now sounding a lot more Rocky Balboa than Marilyn.
Darryl glared at me, mumbled, ‘Pathetic,’ under his breath and stomped out of the room. The team leader took me aside and reminded me of the Samaritans’ golden rules, most of which I had broken: never give advice, never interrupt, never judge … Then she asked me to go home and have a nice long think about why I wanted to be a Samaritan and maybe to look at other forms of community service.
After much reflection on the short journ
ey home, I decided not to continue with the Samaritans but to use the listening skills I had learned during the training in my everyday life. I would become an excellent, non-judgemental listener, so that all my friends and family would come to me first with their problems and, hopefully, that would be do-gooderish enough.
15
A few weeks later Henry called us to say that Imogen had given birth to healthy twin girls. He was over the moon, as were James’s parents. I forced myself to be enthusiastic, congratulated Henry, told him how wonderful it was to have two beautiful daughters and how I couldn’t wait to see them. James then spoke to Henry again and all I could hear was, ‘Of course we’ll come, we wouldn’t dream of not being there … We’ll come for a long weekend … It’ll be great to see everyone … What’s that? … Oh, wow, Henry, that’s really nice of you, she’ll be thrilled. Hold on, I’ll put Emma back on now.’ He handed me the phone. ‘Henry wants to ask you something,’ he said, smiling at me.
‘Emma,’ said Henry, sounding all formal, ‘Imogen and I would like you to be godmother to little Sophie.’
My heart sank. I felt sick. The last thing in the world I wanted was to be godmother to Imogen’s kid. Besides, I knew they were only asking me because we had no kids and they felt sorry for me. ‘Oh, Henry, that is so nice, but I’m sure Imogen has friends she’d much rather ask.’
James poked me and mouthed, ‘What are you doing?’ I slapped his hand away.
‘Not at all, Emma, it’s you we want,’ said Henry.
‘OK, then, I’d be delighted. Thanks for asking me. It’s really sweet of you.’
‘Excellent. We’ll see you in a few weeks’ time for the christening.’
‘Super.’
I hung up and sat down on the couch. I thought I was going to throw up. The last place in the world I wanted to be was at a christening.
The Baby Trail Page 11
