Even after we received these good results at thirteen weeks, we didn’t announce the pregnancy to the world. I was strangely self-conscious about having a fourth baby. A lot of people said things like, You’re brave or Better you than me. I was sick of having to respond and wished people would just wish me well, without judging. To put it less politely, I wished people would mind their own bloody business! People also commented on the fact that Bonnie’s pregnancy had been high-risk and asked if we were worried it would happen again. I wanted to answer, “Yes of course we are!”, but I usually brushed them off with false optimism instead. I only told really close friends, and let the news filter out to others organically, hoping to avoid having similar conversations over and over. Even by eighteen weeks, I had people coming up to me saying, I only just heard from so and so that you’re having another baby. Wow! You’re brave!
As far as pregnancies go, apart from the bleeding at the start, it was pretty standard. Crushing fatigue, ever-so-glamorous constipation, and a raging addiction to Ben and Jerry’s Phish Food ice-cream. The first flutters of movement were magical: that delicate whoosh and the first tentative little kicks began at about sixteen weeks. I was still nervous, still worried something was wrong, but the movement signaled that the baby really was there and was growing well. By about nineteen weeks, I was starting to feel confident that it would be okay. My bump was bigger than it had been with Bonnie, so I felt that this baby was growing well. People pointed out that I wasn’t looking very big, but I’ve never had a big bump. I hadn’t announced the pregnancy on social media and thought that perhaps I would announce it publicly after the big twenty-week anomaly scan.
I booked the scan for my birthday, for no reason other than it was my only kid-free and work-free day that week. The previous two weeks had been sheer chaos, with end-of-year school concerts and Christmas catch-ups. Work was also very busy in the lead-up to Christmas, so I thought it would be nice to get all of that behind me and head into the scan with a clear mind. I felt like I should start to make some effort to enjoy these milestone moments of my ‘last’ pregnancy. I’d been too nervous to relax and cherish it before now. I had forgotten to book the older boys in to vacation care, (school holidays had started the week before), and rang to organise it that morning, only to find it was fully booked. I rang Mum, but she had an appointment, so the boys couldn’t go to her house until later. They were old enough to come to the scan and understand what it was all about, so I thought, What’s the harm? I’ll drop Bonnie at day care and bring the boys along, they’ll love it. They could go to my mum’s later, when I needed to do some client work.
The excitement of being allowed to come to the scan was evident on their little faces. When the baby’s tiny form was projected on the screen, Ted said the baby looked like a duck face and kept asking the sonographer to tell him if it was a boy or a girl. I reminded him that we’d decided we weren’t going to find out the gender this time. Ted was desperate for a boy. He’d conjured up this entire fantasy about he and his baby brother being the ‘annoying ones’ and ganging up on his older brother Alfie, together annoying the hell out of him. Ted had written letters to the baby and drawn pictures, saying how much he was going to love it and could it please be a boy, named Tom, after his best friend. When we’d told the boys that Bonnie was going to be a girl, Ted had burst into tears and yelled, “Change it! Ask to swap, I asked for a boy baby”, to which we replied, “You can’t change it Ted, it is what it is. There’s no one who you can go to to change these things.” Ted responded, “Yes there is, talk to the man, there’s a man for everything.” This became a running family joke and every time someone wants something impossible done, we say, “ask the man, there’s a man for everything”.
Between Ted calling the baby duck face and yelling out, “It is a boy, I’ve seen its willy!”, (which was totally made up), the scan was not your usual calm, quiet one. Even the sonographer got the giggles and I had to breathe deeply and try to stop laughing, so she could capture the pictures she needed. I thought this distraction, along with Ted’s constant interruptions, was why it was taking so long. At about the fifty-minute mark, she asked if the boys could go to the waiting room to watch TV. I instantly felt alarmed. Sensing this, she told me there was a problem with the baby’s brain and she needed to call in the supervising radiologist to review the images. She was openly upset and deeply apologetic about the limited amount of information she was able to give me. I felt an overwhelming dread and hopelessness. The room was suddenly ice-cold. A few minutes before, Alfie and I had been pointing out the baby’s fingers and toes to each other, while Ted was shouting out, “There’s the willy!”. In an instant, we had gone from utter hilarity to eerie silence. Shaking, I called Josh. After three previous pregnancies, I knew that the sonographer’s response meant this was not an ordinary problem: this was going to be bad. I asked Josh to collect the boys, run them over to Mum’s and head straight back.
I sat on the edge of the bed, alone, holding back tears, waiting for the sonographer to return with the radiologist. Each ten minutes felt like an eternity. I have no idea how long I actually waited. I was supposed to meet at a client’s office to do some photography work at midday, so I texted to tell her I’d be late, even though I doubted the news would be good and knew I might not make it at all. When the radiologist arrived, he looked crestfallen. He was young, softly spoken and incredibly kind. He told me their equipment was not high-grade enough and I would be referred to an obstetric clinic specialising in level-two scans. As this was not his area of expertise, he would contact my obstetrician and organise the referral. The sonographer asked if I wanted her to load the baby’s images onto a DVD. She could barely look at me. When she brought the DVD to me fifteen minutes later, I could tell she had been crying. She started crying again when she saw me, apologising for having to deliver such devastating news. At this point I didn’t have a clue what was wrong with our baby, but could only assume that it was pretty bad.
Josh returned from dropping off the boys just as I was leaving the clinic. I couldn’t speak, so he rang my obstetrician’s rooms to ask them to book us in for the next scan as soon as possible. My doctor was in surgery. His staff said the soonest available scan was in two days. There was no way I could last that long not knowing what was wrong. I cancelled work, left the boys at my mum’s, went home and cried. It was all I could do. Nothing could distract me from my worries and the tears wouldn’t stop.
That it was my birthday was now irrelevant. I could barely stop crying, let alone contemplate celebrating. Darling Josh had other ideas: he had collected the kids from Mum’s and nursery school, and had taken over the kitchen in a flurry of festive industry. Cocoa was flying everywhere, eggs were being cracked and chocolate souffles were made. I could barely eat. Every scrap of energy I had was directed at acting as normal as I could for the kids. I felt like I was watching my life from above. I was so grateful to Josh for his ability to keep it together and carry on as normal. I couldn’t wrench my thoughts away from the news we’d received.
Our obstetrician didn’t get in touch with us until quite late that evening. He explained that at the next scan I would most likely be offered an amniocentesis and what they had seen was an issue with the brain, the ventricles of which were severely enlarged. He told us not to be alarmed, that this was relatively common. In the same breath, he mentioned that at the next scan, they may talk to us about ending the pregnancy if the baby was deemed to be incompatible with life, at risk of severe disability or diagnosed with a life-limiting condition. We were both floored. Not only to receive this crushing information over the phone, but to also try to digest it without having any real idea of what we were dealing with or what the complications identified in the baby’s brain might entail.
The next day I was booked for a longstanding lunch with a group of women who, like me, work from home or for themselves. It’s our annual tradition to have