Claiming Noah (3 page)

‘We are, aren't we?' James asked. ‘We're pregnant?'

Her heart fluttered in her chest like a trapped butterfly. ‘We are. We're going to have a baby!'

Later that night, as Catriona lay in bed with James snoring softly next to her, she tried to imagine what kind of mother she would be. Tough but fair, she decided. The type of mother other mothers admired. The type of mother whose child never threw a tantrum in the supermarket, or ran away in a car park, or bit another kid in the playground.

She smiled as she rested her hands on her still-flat abdomen. ‘And I promise, no matter what,' she whispered, ‘I'm going to love you with all my heart.'

Wednesday, 24 November 2010

T
he clunk of a coffee cup being set down on her bedside table roused Catriona from her sleep, but after briefly blinking open her eyes she closed them against the light. James had opened the shutters in their bedroom, allowing sunlight to pour across the carpet and on to Catriona's face. In an unintentional display of colour coordination, this morning her skin was the same grey as the quilt cover and the cushions lying on the floor next to their bed.

‘Time to get up, Cat,' she heard James say from somewhere in the bedroom. ‘You're going to be late for work.'

‘It can't be morning,' Catriona mumbled into her pillow as she pulled the covers closer around herself. ‘I feel like I haven't even slept yet.'

‘I made you a coffee. That'll make you feel better.'

‘Decaf isn't going to help me,' Catriona said as she sat up and reached for the cup. ‘I miss real coffee.'

As she brought the cup towards her mouth the smell of the coffee caused a surge of nausea to pass through her. She retched and put the cup as far away from her as she could reach.

‘What's wrong?' James asked her.

‘Put coffee on the list of things I can't stand any more.'

Catriona struggled out of bed and made her way to the bathroom. She groaned out loud at the sight of her reflection in the mirror. The bags under her eyes were as dark as bruises. It looked as if she hadn't slept at all the night before, but in reality she had been in bed by eight-thirty. Pregnancy had sapped all of her energy. Every task felt like a struggle and no amount of sleep rid her of her relentless tiredness.

James's reflection appeared behind her as she finished putting on her make-up. ‘Are you feeling any better?'

‘No,' Catriona said. ‘I'm exhausted. I've used up the little energy I had to get ready for work. I want to go back to bed now.'

‘Why don't you take a day off? Tell your boss you're sick.'

‘I can't, there's a nine o'clock meeting I have to be at. I'm sure I'll be fine once I get to work.'

James leaned forward and kissed her shoulder. ‘I'm sorry you're feeling so horrible. I wish it was me feeling this way and not you. But the book said it's common to feel like this in the early stages. You should feel better once you're further along. And once the baby's born, you'll forget all about this part.'

Catriona attempted a smile, but her heart wasn't in it. She hadn't realised exhaustion was one of the side effects of pregnancy. She let James read the pregnancy books and asked him to tell her only the parts she absolutely had to know. She was eight weeks into her pregnancy and the idea of feeling like this for another thirty-two weeks was more than she could bear to think about. It didn't help that her job demanded long hours and vivaciousness in front of her clients. She tried her best to act the part while she was at work, despite her sluggishness, but as soon as she dragged herself on to the bus each evening to commute home she felt her posture slump. She wished her pregnancy was evident so she could ask people on the bus to give up their seat for her. As far as she could see, it was the only perk pregnancy offered.

‘Why don't you invite your parents over for dinner this weekend so you can tell them we're pregnant?' James said.

‘But you're not meant to—'

‘I know. But what's the difference between eight weeks and twelve weeks? I'm sure we'll get the all clear at the scan. It might cheer you up.'

Three days later, as Catriona trussed the lamb roast she was preparing for dinner with her parents, she decided James was right. The anticipation of their reaction to the news of her pregnancy had already boosted her mood, and the thought of eating roast lamb for dinner made her feel hungry rather than nauseous for a change.

Her parents didn't have any other grandchildren – Catriona was an only child – and they had long ago given up hope that she would change her mind about having children. She knew it anguished them to hear stories about their friends' grandchildren and see their fridges decorated with a collage of photos and artwork lovingly made for them by small fingers. Now they would finally have a grandchild of their own. She hadn't told them she and James were going through IVF, so her pregnancy would be an even greater surprise to them.

As she placed the roasting pan in the oven, Catriona tried to guess how her parents would react to her news. Her mother would cry, she decided. It didn't take much to make her mother cry. Her father would probably shake James's hand and congratulate him as though he was the first man ever to impregnate his wife.

By early evening the smell of roast lamb had permeated the bottom level of the house. James walked into the kitchen, where Catriona was topping and tailing green beans, and sniffed the air appreciatively. He peeked into the oven, where the lamb was starting to brown and pucker in between the trusses of string holding the leg in shape. ‘That lamb looks
so
good. Is it the one with the date-and-pistachio stuffing you made for my birthday?'

But Catriona wasn't listening to him. She had felt a dull pain in her abdomen earlier that day and now not only had that pain worsened, but she felt a sudden warm wetness between her legs. She ran up the stairs to the bathroom, racked with fear.

James followed her. ‘What's wrong?' he called through the bathroom door, his voice high and pained. ‘Cat, what's happened?'

Catriona stared at the underwear around her knees, wet and stained with bright red blood. She knew what blood meant. This had happened to her once before, long before she and James had started dating, but she had never told him about it. She couldn't believe it was happening again.

It took a few seconds for her to find her voice before she managed to answer. ‘I think I'm losing the baby.'

Slowly the handle turned and James appeared, ashen-faced. He looked down at her soiled underwear, still stretched between her knees, and what little colour was left in his face disappeared completely.

‘I think I'm losing the baby,' Catriona repeated.

Then, as if someone had pressed a button on a remote control, James sprang into action. ‘We have to get you to the hospital,' he said, taking her by the arm and leading her down the hallway towards the front door. ‘There might still be a chance the baby's okay.'

‘James—'

‘You never know, Cat, it might be fine. We just have to get to the hospital quickly.'

He fidgeted by the front door while Catriona changed her underwear, found a sanitary pad to soak up the blood that was still seeping from her, and located her handbag. When she met him at the door he already had his car keys in his hand and was halfway over the threshold.

‘Wait, the oven—' Catriona said.

‘I turned it off.'

‘And my parents—'

‘I'll call them from the hospital,' James said as he ushered her down the front steps. ‘I'll tell them you've come down with a stomach bug. Don't worry about it. Let's go, Cat, quickly!'

During the drive to the hospital James talked non-stop, quoting paragraphs from the books he had read about how bleeding was common in the first trimester, how there were many reasons for it other than a miscarriage. Catriona remained silent, her hands clutched to her stomach as if that could prevent what she knew was inevitable.

Despite James's optimism, Catriona's intuition was confirmed. The emergency room doctor assured her it was nothing she had done wrong, that miscarriages happen all the time for no real reason, but it didn't alleviate the guilt she felt when she thought back on everything she had done over the past eight weeks. Surely it had been that glass of wine she sneaked in one night, or those prawns she had eaten even though she knew she wasn't supposed to, or all those times she had worked late when she was exhausted and should have been resting. Whatever it was that had caused it, she knew it was her fault.

The memory of her miscarriage more than a decade earlier came rushing back at her. She had been twenty-four, only three years out of university, and was working at her first proper marketing job after enduring an oppressive graduate program. She had started dating a colleague five years her senior, an Englishman named Stephen. She was attracted to him from the time she met him. He told travel stories from all over the world, took her to the best restaurants in Sydney and discussed politics with her over glasses of red wine. Her pregnancy was unplanned and when she told him about it he suggested she get an abortion. He told her she wasn't the motherly type, and if she had a child she could say goodbye to her career. When she miscarried four weeks later, she felt that it was her body's way of telling her that he was right: she wasn't supposed to be a mother. It had taken James a long time to change her mind, but even so a sliver of doubt remained.

Catriona knew that James was devastated about the miscarriage, even though he tried to be upbeat. ‘We'll give it a break before we try again with IVF,' he said as he drove home from the hospital, one hand on the steering wheel and the other on her knee. ‘Let's wait a couple of months. Maybe we should book a holiday somewhere, give you a chance to rest and get your strength back. How does that sound?'

Catriona didn't respond. The thought of going through the whole affair again was too much to handle. As if the hormone injections and implantation procedure weren't bad enough, there was also the anguish of waiting for the pregnancy results, and then the constant nausea if she did fall pregnant. She had already miscarried twice in her life – what if it happened again? She missed the life she had before she started trying to fall pregnant, when her body was still her own and her life wasn't dictated by a fertility schedule.

When they got home James tucked Catriona into bed with a hot water bottle and a movie playing on the television in their bedroom. She saw how much strength it took for him to put on a brave face and she wanted to ask him how he was feeling, but she couldn't find the words to console him. Instead she stayed silent while he fussed over her until she fell asleep.

•  •  •

For the first month after the miscarriage James coddled her and didn't mention IVF – until Christmas Day, when he showed her a present he had planned to give to their unborn baby: a wooden mobile with the characters from ‘Hey Diddle Diddle', complete with a cow jumping over the moon. She responded with a tight smile but said nothing, unable to find the words to tell him that she had changed her mind about having a child. By the second month, he was tentatively suggesting dates for another implantation. And by the third month, when Catriona hadn't agreed to a date, he started to get angry.

They were sitting at their usual table at Greco's one Sunday morning, eating eggs Benedict and reading the papers, when the latest fight erupted. Catriona had read out loud a snippet from one of the newspaper magazines about the dangers associated with women over the age of thirty-five having children and she remarked that it was a good thing they wouldn't have to worry about that any more.

James frowned at her from over the top of his coffee cup. ‘Cat, I know losing the baby was awful, but we can't just give up. We decided to do this. We knew it wouldn't be easy. For God's sake, we have three babies sitting on ice just waiting for us!'

Catriona scoffed. ‘That's easy for you to say,
you're
not the one who has to lie spread-eagled on a table while a doctor shoves a tube into you. And if we do get pregnant again, it's
me
who has to deal with the sickness and the exhaustion and watching everything I eat and drink so I don't lose the baby again.'

She watched James set down his coffee cup, take a deep breath and adjust his glasses on the bridge of his nose. ‘We've been through this hundreds of times. It wasn't your fault, you didn't do anything wrong. You can't keep blaming yourself.'

‘Well, it wasn't your fault, was it?' she said, pretending to read an article in the newspaper and trying to keep her voice from wavering. ‘How do you know it wasn't something I did?'

When James didn't respond Catriona looked up to find him staring at her, his gaze full of sympathy. As the waiter cleared their plates from the table, she felt her resolve dissipate. This wasn't just about her. She sighed and closed the paper. A dog at the next table strained at its leash, trying to get to a Pomeranian being walked past the cafe by a woman who was talking on her phone and seemed oblivious to the commotion. Catriona watched the dog until it settled again at its owner's feet, and then she looked at James.

‘I'm sorry. I'm being a bitch.'

His shook his head. ‘You're not. You're scared you'll miscarry again. And I get that. I'm scared of that too. But we promised each other we would do this. I really want to be a dad. Please can we try again? This is so important to me.'

So, they soon found themselves at Doctor Malapi's office, again listening to his corny jokes as he implanted an embryo into Catriona's uterus. This time the television on the ceiling was turned on and Catriona and James watched a day-time soap opera in silence as Doctor Malapi completed the procedure.