And finally, here is the news
Having put the test in her “urine flow” as the instructions so quaintly put it, we waited four minutes. I flicked through teletext whilst keeping an eye on the clock, rounding it up to the next minute to be certain.
We shook hands, turned the stick over and it was positive. Within the next hour both sets of parents, Emma’s sister and best friend were all on the phone asking about the holiday we’d just got back from. Emma bit her lip and kept a straight face. She spent the rest of the day reassuring herself that she was “having a baby” by imitating what it'll be like to stroke the cat when it sits on her tummy eight months from now. We order the Rough Guide to Pregnancy (and a copy of Bloc Party’s remix album for good luck); the Rough Guide served us well in Cuba and Vegas and Toronto and Boston and Florence and Dubrovnik and New York. It's rubbish, of course. We decided the next step was to get everything confirmed and checked out with the doctor. We also decided we need plans for money, the house and who we told and when. Then we got on with today's life.
That was the end of August, we'd just got back from Havana, we'd sat for nearly 36 hours in a terminal full of cigar smoke where the rain was coming in through the light fittings. Unbeknown to us, Emma was 5 weeks pregnant; it would have been safer if she'd injected MRSA bug in her eyeballs.
Telling people has been a long process; it's hard, we've waited for the conversation to come around, we've stopped other conversations mid-flow, we've tried being direct, we've tried being cryptic, we've even told people straight away to avoid "spoiling a perfectly good night out". We've tried telling people face to face, by email, by telephone. In groups, one to one. Over Thai food, Italian and good old fashioned English pub grub. We had to delay telling the people who we knew couldn't keep a secret until we'd told the people who could. Eventually we got everyone; not always how we wanted to, but we did it.
The technicalities; 20 weeks gone, due 22nd April, Sex: unknown (we both thought we'd spotted some boy-like elements on the scan, but it turns out it's the umbilical cord - like a bad joke, but true). We've had 2 scans and everything is going dandy. Emma's in excellent shape. She's developed a multi-dimensional sense of smell and sleeps a lot. But she hasn't been sick. There's already a wardrobe full of maternity wear from Isabella Oliver and La Redoute, not that any of it is needed at the moment. Her initial concerns that she'd lose her shape have been replaced with the realisation it offers a whole new set of shopping opportunities.
Me? Well, apparently I'm instantly more attractive to woman, my evident virility releases chemicals that make me a more appealing catch. Apparently, I'm more likely to spread my seed (done it once, can do it again, see?). The truth is more prosaic, we're hurrying along a few outstanding jobs, we're getting a bigger car, we've got a baby bank account. And then we wait; we wait for the baby to grow. I go to football, we've got tickets for Depeche Mode 2 weeks before the due date, we carry on doing what we're doing. To quote my dad; "You need to be ready because nothing can prepare you". And nothing can, so I won't be ready, I'll just be there waiting for it to leap on me. I can't wait.
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