A Tuesday in August

Or the first day, to be precise.

It was a Tuesday. Jody worked a late shift then, it was the last few weeks of his job but we didn’t know that then. We had been back from Leeds for three days, we had gone to check it out as a place to live as he had been offered a post grad place at the University there. We didn’t know then that he would turn it down, that he would go to an interview the next week for a job none of us thought he would get and he’d get it and we’d stay where we were, in the same house in the same town. At the time, I was imagining where we would live in Yorkshire, what we would do as a family, how I’d maintain the relationships we had here with our families when we were there. I wasn’t particularly thinking about pregnancy.

We had been trying to conceive for fourteen months. FOURTEEN MONTHS. The doctor wasn’t concerned especially, despite my age, and he had suggested trying until Christmas before even thinking about any further tests. We were under no illusions that we were to do it naturally or not at all. IVF was ruled out on the NHS because we had children and privately because we didn’t have the money. We had decided that we would have my eggs tested, a fraction of the cost of IVF, when we reached eighteen months. I was comfortable with the decision but, to be honest, I was getting used to the idea of it just being the four of us.

I had just published the book, it was going well (at that stage, ha!) and I was thinking about the future. The girls were coming up to three and a half, a wonderful age and we had some freedom suddenly, we had emerged from the twin fog into this place where we just had two children, not twins followed by many unspoken exclamation marks.

I had got into the habit of buying a pack of cheap pregnancy tests every month, the ones that cost literally £1, the little strips that looked like litmus paper. I would test too early, every single month, always hopeful, telling myself that I wasn’t, until it became obvious that it was another dud month. I’d then try a couple of days before my period and then, if I hadn’t got my period, on the day of. It was a comforting, if somewhat depressing, routine.

That month, August, I had tested on the Sunday, the day after we got home, and yet again, as per usual, it was negative. I hadn’t been as phased as normal, as I’ve said, I was feeling positive about life, and my own place in it as a mum of two. I’d wandered over to the newborn section in Next when we stopped on the way home and I’d spent a few minutes looking at the tiny clothes, holding a tiny pair of trousers covered in frogs in my hand and I’d sighed and walked away, had a coffee and that was that.

My period was due on the Monday and it hadn’t come. This wasn’t a massive deal, and in the morning, the Tuesday I had peed into a cup simply to trick my period into coming. This often worked, if I as much as uttered the word ‘symptoms’ to Jody, then I’d get my period, if i found myself clawing at my own boobs, desperate to find them in some way sensitive or tender, my period would come. So I peed, the girls eating their toast in the living room, Jody in bed because of the aforementioned late shift and I dipped and…

I was pregnant.

I told J immediately. He was his usual laid back self about it but texted me from work later, I was in the supermarket with my sister acting normal but hopelessly happy, asking me if I thought I was pregnant. I told him that I was, there was no doubt but that it probably wouldn’t last. I spouted off statistics, one in three pregnancies end in miscarriage, it was stupidly early, best just to forget it and live our normal lives.

And that was that, a wonderful day in August where everything changed. It’s very surreal that that morning has translated into this baby, kicking away inside me, and us, waiting anxiously for her to be born.

A wonderful day in August indeed.