When the pee stick showed up two stripes for ‘yes’, I peed myself all over again. Then I threw up. Then I smiled. Then I wept. Then I thought it over. Then I smiled again. Sure, this had come a little sooner than expected but, hey, I was mad about Marty—he was the kindest, most awesome man in the world, I knew that now for sure—and I had always wanted to be a mum. How hard could it be? I felt so excited, I threw up again.
That night, at a Dirty Three concert at the Forum Theatre in Melbourne, I still hadn’t quite found the right moment to tell him. There’d been no chance. Later, I thought.
Violinist Warren Ellis then gave one of his world-famous song introductions, a violent ramble which ended with: ‘And in summary, this song is called “Everything’s Fucked”.’
Marty decided I needed a little ribbing and said, ‘How come you never come up with dramatic song titles like that, huh?’
I don’t really know what came over me, but in a moment of cheekiness, I said, ‘How about this for a song title: “I Am Having a Baby”. Do you like that song title?’
I looked hard into his large, unblinking eyes, and it occurred to me for the first time that, oh no, this could actually go down … rather badly.
He said, ‘Are you serious?’
I nodded. Then gulped.
And then, in a very high-pitched voice, he screamed. ‘Oh my God! This is amazing! Are you serious? Oh my God!’
We must have looked like two happy drunk fools. We were laughing and screaming and hugging, and I was just so relieved he was as into this as I was. I mean, what were the chances? It was so early in our relationship that half our friends didn’t even know we were a couple. And, yet, here we were about to become parents.
We left the gig there and then, hand in hand, stopping out the front to smile and kiss and hug, then walked up the hill towards our tram stop and into our new life—one in which there was no longer any question of how serious this would get. We were there. So much to talk about, but the conversation had now started! It was a relief, actually—now we could just get on with it, with the business of being a family.
We told ourselves a good story that night. One of the best ever, in fact.
We told ourselves, we could do this. We could.
Parenthood. How hard could it be?!
Ah. We were such kids.
Marty drove me to work the next morning. I was feeling very unwell, but it was still so early in our relationship I wasn’t sure how much I was allowed to whinge yet. There was a bucket in my lap that I was nursing like a … child.
Oh my God—I was actually going to be a mother?
Marty was just in the middle of asking me if I’d like to talk about what we were going to do from here when I was overwhelmed by a rush of nausea.
I think I’m going to be sick, I told him. I was pretty sure it was the smell of his leather jacket making me nauseous, but I didn’t tell him that. He’d been wearing that jacket for as long as I’d known him. I had rather liked it until then. Why had I only just noticed how funky the leather smelled? It smelled like, well, old leather. Urgh. I asked him to pull over, telling him I just needed a little break from the motion of the car.
I rolled down the window and gulped in fresh air. We sat in silence for a moment. ‘Can I get you anything?’ asked Marty. ‘No, thank you,’ I said. We were being so polite to each other; it was weird.
The nausea passed. I told him we could keep driving now. Sorry about that.
As he pulled back out onto the freeway, I glanced at his profile and saw that his eyes were wide and he was sitting up really straight. He looked … scared. But like he was pretending not to look scared. A kind of frozen casual look, except for his eyes, wide like saucers, which were doing that ‘not blinking’ thing again.
And suddenly I was scared, too. We’d only been dating for three months. This was insane!
I felt the panic rising in my stomach but from deep within came the encouraging voice of The Weekes, reminding me that all would be well, I just needed to FAFL—Face, Accept, Float and Let time pass. We were not the first young couple to find ourselves unexpectedly pregnant. Marty loved me, and I loved him, and we were going to work this out.
When we arrived at the office I held my breath, kissed Marty briefly on the lips and put my bucket in the back seat. He said he’d pick me up around five, and maybe we could go to dinner at my favourite restaurant, the Moroccan Soup Bar on St Georges Road?
I was sorting applications for the next round of Up the Ladder in a Skirt, a corporate training program Fabian had established specifically to support women in leadership. As I looked through their résumés I was astonished by what these women had achieved, and equally stunned at the obstacles they had faced within organisations that didn’t consider these women’s health or their families’ needs as worthy of consideration. To mention such things was seen as a weakness, I read. It struck me as insane that husbands
