She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  The biggest ‘what if?’ was the worst one. The one I didn’t even want to admit to myself, let alone anyone else. What if … what if I had the baby but I couldn’t love it? I’d heard of women who wanted babies very, very badly but when they came, attempted to smother their faces with pillows or drop them from the sides of buildings because they were consumed by depression. I didn’t have the faintest whether I wanted this baby or not, so what hope did I have of not leaving it in the back of a car on a summer’s day?

  ‘I don’t want to stick my nose in where it’s not wanted,’ Ellie would start, in the exact tone people used when they knew they were absolutely doing just that, ‘but I actually think you would be such a good mum.’

  Then I would raise my eyebrows and say, ‘Really, El? Why do you think that?’ I was a thirty-four-year-old woman trained in a dying industry who had found herself accidentally knocked up to her ex-boyfriend while she was supposed to be helping her best friend have a baby. What, exactly, about that bio gave Ellie the impression I was fit for motherhood?

  Then she would sigh and say, ‘You don’t know what you’re capable of until you’re in the situation. Nobody is ever really ready for a baby. It just happens and then you get ready.’

  Then I would shake my head and say, ‘But what if it happens and I’m actually not ready? What if I can’t cope? If I do this, El, I’m going to do it alone. So if I can’t cope, there won’t be anyone to hand the baby to when I need a break. There won’t be breaks.’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘You can ask me to help you. I’ll help you.’

  And bizarrely, during one of these exchanges, faced with the thought of Ellie helping to raise my hypothetical child, I had a breakthrough moment.

  No.

  No, I didn’t want Ellie telling me how to look after my baby.

  The exact second I framed the statement in my mind, I knew I had an answer. Ellie kept talking but I couldn’t hear her anymore. I just sat there, still with my thoughts, knowing that my mind was made up and being totally, completely freaked out by it.

  I didn’t want Ellie sticking her nose in with my baby because it was my baby.

  Later that night, my biology finally caught up with me and, if you believe in such things (and hormonally-driven or not, I was starting to), gave me the sign I’d wanted all along.

  I was shaving my legs when I felt the unmistakable swell of liquid in my mouth.

  Oh god. I was going to vomit. Oh god.

  I threw away the razor and bent over just in time for a gush of dinner to exit me.

  I closed my eyes and willed myself to keep them that way until the shower and drain had had a chance to do their thing.

  ‘George? Are you OK? I thought I heard something.’ I could hear Ellie on the other side of the door. She was probably pissed that I might have woken Lucas.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, eyes still closed.

  ‘No you’re not,’ she said, and I realised she was in the room.

  I opened my eyes. ‘El, I’m in the shower!’

  ‘Oh, stop being so dramatic. Nothing I didn’t see on your twenty-ninth birthday. What happened?’

  ‘What do you think?’ She looked down at the shower floor and gave a little grimace.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah. It came out of nowhere. I’m fine now.’

  Ellie turned off the taps and wrapped me in a towel. ‘You must have eaten something funny.’

  ‘Like a baby?’

  ‘Har, har.’

  ‘I didn’t eat anything weird. I’m just pregnant, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s strange to have morning sickness this late.’

  I tried not to roll my eyes. Since being pregnant exactly once, Ellie thought she knew everything about reproduction. She had been particularly fond of committing to heart every detail of the IVF process and then telling Nina what was going to happen to her.

  But in that moment, I finally felt pregnant. And I didn’t want Ellie telling me what I was going through or giving me reams of baseless, unsolicited advice. If I was going to do this – and I finally felt like I might be able to – I would have to do it my way. And I suddenly felt like that might be possible.

  Covered in carroty vomit or not, it was an epiphany. Of sorts.

  Grace had been right. My change-room fairy godmother had been right.

  If I hadn’t wanted a baby I would have had an abortion by now. I was only hesitating because I didn’t want to wind up like Ellie.

  Like my mum.

  I’d made my decision weeks ago. I was having the baby.

  I was having a baby. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

  ‘Maybe we should go see a doctor. Something might be wrong. I could call the late-night GP,’ Ellie was saying.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine now.’

  19

  Week 22

  To: Georgie Henderson

  From: Lucy Fitzgerald

  Subject: Dating baggage shoot

  Hi George,

  I’m having trouble finding a baby for the dating baggage shoot (for the ‘guy with a kid’ type of baggage). Thing is, none of my friends have kids. Do you know anyone with a baby?

  Lucy

  Babies. I couldn’t even escape them at work, it seemed. But the last thing I wanted was to invite any more baby-related drama into my relationship with Ellie, especially after The Supermarket Incident a few days ago. I could just imagine her reaction.

  ‘You want Lucas to be in a Jolie shoot? Oh god, of course! What’s it for? Like a “baby’s got style” kind of thing?’

  ‘Uh, no. It’s for a story on relationship baggage. You know, cos if you’re a young woman dating an older guy with a kid, well … that’s baggage.’

  ‘Really? Having a baby is baggage?’ she’d say, as if what I really meant was that babies were human garbage.

  Tumbleweeds.

  ‘Uh, yes? For some people …’

  ‘Sorry, we really don’t like exposing Lucas to harsh lighting.’

  And it wasn’t just at work that babies kept cropping up. If they weren’t on the bus, they were waiting for me in the cafe next to the office or on my way to lunch. I half expected a gaggle of runny-nosed toddlers in business suit onesies (mental note: great idea) to turn up to our features meeting. I saw the swollen bellies of pregnant women multiple times a day and now I realised what it must have been like for Nina to see them so frequently. Every television ad seemed to be promoting formula or baby aspirin or pillows shaped like human hands that were meant to mirror ‘a mother’s loving touch as baby sleeps’.

  Then, of course, there was Lucas at home. Although, despite myself, I was starting to actually enjoy Lucas’s company. It was surprisingly fun to play with Lego and crayons and watch Despicable Me until I could recite every word. Plus, Lucas had started giving me kisses goodnight, which was the cutest thing I’d experienced since seeing David Beckham sit front row with Harper at VB’s first NYFW show.

  But I hadn’t exactly proven custom-made for this mothering stuff. Ellie was furious with me because I had ‘lost’ Lucas in the supermarket a couple of days ago.

  Technically, I hadn’t lost him – I’d misplaced him, at worst. Temporarily. And he ran away from me. There was a very big difference, I argued. As it turns out, it’s not generally advisable to argue with mothers of children you’ve misplaced. Even temporarily.

  It had all been going well – really well, actually – until Lucas decided he needed some ‘bikkets’ (‘biscuits’: I was starting to speak fluent Lucas). I nodded and continued to load the trolley with all the things I had decided I needed, like lemonade and potato chips and caramel popcorn. When I looked down again, he was gone. Fucketty fuck fuck.

  Truth be told, he was only gone a few minutes, and he’d only ventured two aisles south, but when I told Ellie (which, in hindsight, was the bigger error), she fumed. ‘You lost my child?’ she’d said, between
sobs (which were entirely unnecessary, in my opinion).

  ‘No, not at all. He’s right here. He’s fine. He was just eating the biscuits in the aisle when I got there.’

  Ellie’s mouth dropped. ‘He was eating biscuits?’

  I shrugged. ‘Yeah. It’s not that big a deal, El.’ It was exactly the worst thing I could have said.

  ‘It is, actually, George. It’s up to us – ugh, not us, me – to teach him the right thing to do. Honestly, George, do I really have to tell you this stuff?’

  I didn’t tell her that when I’d found Lucas he’d offered the biscuits to me and we’d sat there in the supermarket aisle, eating our chocolate-chip biscuits, telling stories about the minions in Despicable Me. It was one of the cooler moments of the last few months. Lucas had this way of being so completely in the moment, which I really envied. Our readers, it had crossed my mind, paid thousands of dollars to go to week-long yoga retreats for pretty much exactly the same centred feeling.

  Between the utter mess I’d made of my personal life and the fact that, apparently, I wasn’t qualified to edit Jolie anymore because I only had 150 followers on Instagram, I wasn’t exactly killing it … anywhere. I looked like shit, I could barely think straight, and I had nobody to confide in.

  And even though Meg wasn’t saying so, I had an unshakable feeling that something bad was about to happen at Jolie. I felt like the company’s change of direction wasn’t so much about ‘ushering Jolie into the digital age’ as it was a way to cut costs indefinitely – like, until there were no more costs to cut. Her reaction to my fortieth anniversary party idea was lukewarm, at best.

  ‘We don’t really have the money for that kind of thing, George. I just don’t see it happening.’

  ‘We’ll get it sponsored. We can get an alcohol sponsor, that’ll be easy. We’ll get the venue comped – maybe we can do it at that new bar on Crown Street, you know, the one Sam Worthington was kicked out of the other night? It’s nice. We’ll invite all the big advertisers and get them really excited about Jolie again. We could sell tickets to readers – or run a comp. We have to do something, Meg.’

  She nodded but I knew we weren’t on the same page.

  ‘Meg, I’ll raise the money myself if I have to. We can have a bake sale. Or a car wash,’ I said, only half-joking. ‘Look, the party will be great. Like old times. We’ll get a big celebrity to come. All the old faithfuls, of course, but we’ll need one big star to get us in the papers and get everyone talking about us. Maybe Jessica?’

  Meg smirked. ‘George, by the time the party makes the papers on Sunday, everyone will have forgotten about it.’

  ‘We used to get our parties in the papers all the time.’

  Meg nodded again, and this time she was agreeing with me. ‘Yes, George. We used to. I don’t want to hear an idea that I would have come up with when I was editor. That was years ago. Things have changed. A party? It’s not going to work. We have to step it up. We don’t have the money for it now, and even if we did, it would be a waste. It would be better to spend it on having a guest celebrity blogger on the website.’

  I tried to hide my disgust, but I knew Meg could see straight through me.

  ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘We’ve got the idea nailed. It’s Lucy’s social media issue – perfect. Why haven’t you started working on it?’

  Why, indeed? Because I still thought it was a lousy idea and that readers would hate it, that’s why.

  Still, despite all the drama, work was my favourite place to be, as it always had been. Now that I’d decided I was down with this pregnancy, I was, predictably, utterly freaked out by it. And so I dealt with it the best way I knew how: by completely ignoring it. Work was the perfect distraction. I found myself more excited than ever to be studying layouts on the wall, because it was ten minutes in which I wouldn’t be wondering how the hell I was going to tell Jase and Nina.

  I’d even volunteered to do the flat plan, the most universally hated magazine job of all time, because I’d rather fill my brain with pagination problems and tricky ad placements than constantly think, ‘You are going to have a baby, and you can’t hand it over to Nina at the end.’

  ‘Georgie?’ Fran knocked on my door ever so gently, like a mouse tiptoeing on a piece of felt. I was glad for the interruption. I couldn’t handle one more thought about babies today. Or tomorrow. Actually, if I didn’t have to think about babies for the rest of the week, or even year, that would be ideal.

  ‘Yes?’

  I had one eye on my screen, checking the latest bad news email from Meg.

  Christy’s manager said no to cover. Let’s run Jennifer again.

  I rolled my eyes. We had run Jennifer twice in the past year already. She had nothing to promote but bottled water, which I assumed we’d have to feature heavily in the interview. I longed for the days when celebrities actually wanted to be in magazines, before they decided they’d rather promote their latest film with an Instagram post than an in-depth interview by an intelligent journalist in a well-respected magazine.

  ‘Have you seen Game of Thrones?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Game of Thrones. Have you seen it?’

  ‘Uh, no. Isn’t that the one with the dragons? I’m not really into fantasy.’

  ‘Oh, George, you’ve got to watch it. Even my dad loves it and he wouldn’t even watch The Hobbit.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I think you would really love it, George. It’s really about politics, not dragons or magic. And, um, you know …’ Fran giggled. ‘Sex.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  I looked at Fran. Sweet, dorky Fran who I’d assumed would be eaten alive by the rest of the office, but who, against all odds, had become beloved and respected. Sometimes I felt like she was the only person in the office who was on my side.

  I typed back to Meg.

  Jen has nothing to promote. What about Jessica Moran?

  Even as I typed, I knew Meg would never go for it. Jessica Moran was too much of a risk. An Australian comedian who was genuinely funny, Moran had just started getting roles in Hollywood films. By the time Meg did want to run her, when she was popular enough to be on a Jolie cover, she’d be too famous for us and would never agree to a shoot. It happened all the time. But we didn’t have enough subscribers to cushion the blow if a star didn’t sell on newsstands, so we relied on our old staples, like the Jennifers of the world.

  ‘I’ll call in a copy for you.’

  I looked up. ‘Fran, I’m busy. Did you come in here to talk to me about dragons or was there something else?’

  ‘I came in to remind you about the Twitter Q&A. It’s in ten minutes.’

  ‘Right. Thanks, Fran.’

  Argh. The freaking Twitter Q&A. Before Meg had come in to my office to tell me I was doing my job all wrong, I wasn’t even on Twitter: a) I didn’t quite get it, and b) it seemed like a disaster in the making. I was used to writing with time, research and a bit of distance from my subject. On Twitter, the subject was, well, me … and I only had 140 characters and … look, it just all seemed like too much hard work.

  But in this new digital frontier, I (begrudgingly) accepted that I’d have to do it. Lucy had set up an account for me and I now had 14,000 followers. Probably only about half of them were fake.

  Still, I was crippled with panic every time I tried to compose a tweet (was I even saying that right?). What if what I thought was funny wasn’t funny at all to anyone else? I’d seen other people be positively roasted alive, with mint sauce and potatoes on the side, over the most inane things on Twitter. Which explained why I’d only tweeted ten times. My last one, from a few days ago, was met with absolute radio silence, and I couldn’t say I was surprised.

  Toast for dinner. Living large!

  It was sourdough toast, handmade by Ellie, topped with vine-ripened tomatoes and home-grown basil, but I felt like it wasn’t part of the ethos of Twitter to mention all that. When I’d to
ld Lucy later she’d shaken her head and said, ‘You should have Instagrammed it!’

  For fuck’s sake, I had to work this out.

  It was Lucy’s idea to do the Q&A – apparently other magazines did it and their readers loved it. I questioned the value of answering readers’ questions online rather than encouraging them to, you know, buy the magazine to see what we were all about, but I was feeling like too much of a dinosaur to say no. Besides, Lucy knew best, right?

  The Q&A wasn’t supposed to start for another few minutes, but already I had a question.

  @GeorgeJolie Why do you always put skinny white girls on the cover?

  I wanted to answer honestly and say, ‘Because nobody buys the issues that have more diverse cover girls. Sorry. You’re all a bunch of closet racists/sizeists.’ Instead, I put my Editor’s Hat on and replied:

  Hey @CarlyG83, great question. Choosing a cover star depends on publicity, whether we have a good image and access. Quite complex.

  @GeorgeJolie Yeah but why are they always the same girls?

  Ugh, I knew this would happen. @CarlyG83 just would not let up. Wait – no – it was a different person. It was @cupcakes4life. As I paused to process the fact that two different people were now attacking me, my screen pinged with updates.

  @GeorgeJolie Totally agree. So sick of seeing Jennifer every month.

  @GeorgeJolie I want to see a real woman on the cover. Someone who I can relate to.

  @GeorgeJolie This is why nobody reads mags anymore. #yourindustryisdying

  @GeorgeJolie Really interested to hear your thoughts on this. #yourindustryisdying #Joliecovermeltdown

  Jolie cover meltdown? What?

  I tried to use some yogic breathing from a long-forgotten class to calm myself down but it didn’t work.