Your Own Kind of Girl

be to put it delicately. Shocked would be more apt, although this might have had something to do with Marty’s delivery—en masse at a party. I wasn’t there—I was home with what had now developed into morning-noon-and-night sickness, but the story goes that in the middle of festivities, beer in hand, Marty stood up on a chair, shouted at the top of his lungs for silence from the crowd and then, into that silence, yelled the words, ‘CLARE AND I ARE MOVING IN TOGETHER, AND ALSO WE ARE HAVING A BABY!’ Cheers erupted until, above the din, one honest friend piped up with the question other people in the room would later confess to thinking: ‘Um, which Clare? Do you mean Clare the singer? I didn’t even know you were going out!’ More cheering then, and laughter, and a good deal of backslapping for good old Marty Brown (The Quiet Achiever). In summary, I’d say that our friends and family were either delighted, or very good at pretending to be, and that was about as strong a start as we were hoping for.

No one needed to say it out loud, because Marty and I already knew—the statistical chances of us staying together through the intensity of a very quick courtship and transition into parenthood were, anecdotally speaking, rather slim. But Marty and I were never planning on become anecdotes. The fact it had taken years to get to this point made it quite obvious to both of us—this was no minor narrative. This was The Big Time. Although we adored each other, we both knew that it was going to take more than the first flush of limerence to build a life together. Fortunately, we were both up for the challenge.

For me, this meant observing with some diligence the kind of stories Frank told me about what was going to happen next for Marty and me. It was tempting, sometimes, especially in the fog of acute morning sickness, to fall into the trap of fear, of worry, about what would become of all of this. But I was getting better now at this practice of training Frank, and reminding myself of the truth, which was that we were bloody lucky to find each other, and I very much suspected this little pea of a baby would be the making of us. I reminded myself that Marty and I had already been close friends who worked together for almost five years, and we had never had a fight (although I’m sure we would, and we would get through them too). We knew how to make room for each other. We knew each other’s weaknesses, and strengths. And, as fortune would have it, we both happened to be absolutely united in our idea of how we wanted our family and working lives to roll.

We were not, shall we say, the most traditional of couples, nor were we trying to be. As already discussed, marriage wasn’t on the cards at this stage. Beyond the basics, neither of us cared very much about owning things, which left us relatively free to do exactly what we wanted with our lives. And what we both wanted more than anything was to make our living doing things that mattered, for as long as we could.

I still marvel at how much courage I was able to muster once I knew I was going to be a mother. I guess, in a way, it allowed me to override the voice of Frank much more easily than before. This wasn’t just about me anymore—it was about Us; it was about our family. Marty felt the same way. We didn’t say it out loud, but the thing both of us clearly wanted, above all else, was to be good (or even just good enough) parents to this itty-bitty baby, now growing in my belly.

In all these years of longing to become a mother, I must admit that I’d never given much thought to the idea of how the baby actually came out. I’d naively assumed that when it came time to give birth, I’d do it the same way my Oma had, and the same way Defah had—at home with an experienced and qualified team of midwives. I soon discovered, no, this was not to be. For reasons that really deserve their own essay, home birth in Australia is not only highly politicised and deeply stigmatised, it’s also bloody expensive. Unlike in Holland or New Zealand, our health-care system does not support the option of a home birth. To give birth at home with qualified midwives would, at the time, have cost us about a quarter of our annual income. It just wasn’t an option.

I thought hard about why I’d wanted to give birth at home and, in the end, I saw that at the core of it was my desire to do everything in my power to give this baby a good start in life. I was worried, you see, about my mental health: worried that giving birth in a hospital might remind me too much of Rowena’s illness, of her death; that it might trigger panic, might lead to a spiral of intervention where, at the end, I was left traumatised and unable to bond with my baby—to tend to him or her the way she or he deserved. I wanted, more than anything, to give this child every chance of having a very strong, very well mother—a mother who she could count on and be proud of.

Fortunately, here in Australia, there was a second option available. Through the public heath-care system, we were offered the option of giving birth at a Family Birthing Centre. It wasn’t home—it was in a hospital—but it didn’t feel terribly ‘hospital-like’. The lighting was gentle, the midwives were kind, they had time to give, and you could bring in things that reminded you of home. If felt to me that if I could give birth here, I might be in with