Pregnant! Oh my God no!
The effort it took to keep behaving normally in the face of this entirely unexpected and completely unwelcome news deserves an Oscar. The shock and horror almost made me faint; my blood ran cold and a strange buzzing noise came into my ears. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out; thank goodness I still had the presence of mind to slip the test with its dreadful news into the pocket of my dressing gown before my daughter could see it.
Izzy didn't notice but she was so relieved with her own escape I doubt she would have noticed anything anyway.
"I'm okay Izzy," I mumbled. "Maybe it's a hot flush beginning."
That couldn't have been further from the truth; if I really was pregnant then menopause was the last thing that could be blamed for any strange behaviour.
"Want some water?" she asked.
"Please."
A few gulps later I had recovered a little of my composure. Half a glass more and I was back to normal, at least outwardly. Izzy had gone back to her room to get dressed, a bouncy spring in her step that made my own situation feel even worse.
Me pregnant? At the age of fifty-one? How could this be?
What kind of nightmare was this?
My legs felt like lead as I returned to the bedroom I shared with my husband, the slim white home test; the harbinger of doom with its clear, unambiguous message still in the pocket of my robe. Had Pete been there he would have seen a ghost of a woman stumbling across to the bed where she sat down hard on its edge.
But my husband had gone into work for an early theatre list that morning. At the time it had seemed so fortunate; his absence would leave Izzy and me in privacy to re-take the pregnancy test she had been so very worried about.
Who would have guessed when we two girls entered the family bathroom that morning that it wouldn't be my irresponsible daughter but me, her slut of a mother who would be leaving fifteen minutes later with her life in a spin?
Perversely, in a way I should have been pleased. After all, had it not been for my daughter Izzy's lax morals and her foolish attitude to birth control -- something she probably inherited from me - I wouldn't have taken the test myself and wouldn't have discovered that I was pregnant for many weeks or even months.
By then it might have been too late... but too late to do what?
I most certainly was not pleased. I was angry; angry and frightened.
Izzy herself was so relieved at her all-clear result that she was actually singing in the family bathroom in which we had performed our respective tests. I thanked God that she was so distracted she was unlikely to have picked up the sudden and profound change in my demeanour; a change I had to hide at all costs.
Continuing my Oscar-worthy performance, I showered, dressed then watched Izzy eating a hearty breakfast as if nothing had happened. I was too upset to eat anything at all but blamed it on my supposed hot flush again. Then I waved her off to the library to catch up on some of the work she had missed the previous two days.
Izzy would go back to University the following morning, light of step and happy.
She would leave behind a truly terrified mother.
I called the office, explaining that I would be working from home for a few hours but would be at my desk by eleven o'clock. Then, alone in the house, I paced round the kitchen, my mind racing, my hand playing constantly with the slim white test in the vain hope that its message would disappear or at least change to something less frightening.
It didn't; I was pregnant!
But how could this be? Okay my menopause hadn't started yet but I would be fifty-two this year, for Christ's sake. And who could the father be? Both my husband and my ex-lover Tony had had vasectomies long ago.
Had one of those operations failed? Had their tubes re-joined making one of them fertile again? It was rare but I knew it did happen sometimes.
Or had Tony been an even bigger shit than I had imagined and lied to me about his vasectomy? No, surely Julie had let that bit of information slip a long time ago.
Then the obvious truth hit me like a sledgehammer.
Darren!
Oh my God!
It had to be Darren, my one and only one-night-stand; the twenty-nine year old Personal Trainer in whose bed I had spent one foolish but unforgettable night just over a month ago when Pete and I had temporarily separated.
During that amazing but unrepeated night, Darren had inseminated me at least four times and, stupid woman that I was, neither of us had used any form of protection at all. What was more, my body filled with his semen, I had spent the entire night in the boy's grubby bed, mostly on my back; often with him on top of me or inside me. There could hardly have been a better opportunity for one of my few remaining eggs to be fertilised by one of his millions of active, youthful sperm. Darren must have had assumed I was on the pill or that I, like many of his other older conquests, was past the point where conception was possible.
I laughed hollowly. Don't be naive Penny; with the prospect of an unexpected free fuck in front of him, Darren hadn't thought about protection at all!
But I had been no better; stupid, stupid woman! Thanks to Pete's vasectomy, I hadn't had to think about birth control for over fifteen years. Tony had been snipped too. When the opportunity had come, I had been so flattered that a boy as drop-dead-gorgeous as Darren wanted to fuck me at all that the idea of protection hadn't entered my stupid middle-aged head either.
For a second I wondered if it was just a mistake; if the test had been faulty; if a repeat in the morning would show it had all been a simple error. But in the real world I knew just how consistent and reliable those tests were.
It hadn't even been inconclusive; if the test said I was pregnant than I was pregnant!
There was a real baby growing in my womb.
I sat slowly down on the edge of the kitchen table, my hands instinctively falling to my rumbling tummy, a feeling of nausea rising within me.
Was it just fear? Was it psychosomatic? Or had morning sickness already started?
Oh my God! What was I going to do?
***
I went to work that morning extremely distracted. Fortunately it was a day more for research than for patients so I didn't do too much harm to too many people. What I did do was use the hospital's resources as anonymously as I could to research the whole concept of middle-aged peri-menopausal pregnancy.
What I found was both reassuring and alarming. Although there were many examples of women my age becoming pregnant and carrying a child through to full term, most of these were through IVF. Natural conception was far less common in older women but not unheard of by any means.
The risks both to the unborn child and the mother were greatly enhanced with older parents but with my baby's father most likely being Darren, only one of us was significantly older than normal. If a woman my age could conceive naturally with the sperm of a much younger man, she could carry the baby through to birth and there was a fair chance that the child would be healthy.
There was, however a strong possibility that the baby would spontaneously and naturally abort within a few weeks of conception. Usually when this happens it only feels like a very heavy period and the mother usually doesn't know she had conceived at all.
The fact that this had not yet happened to me did not mean it would not happen in future. I was probably no more than five weeks gone; twelve weeks was considered the minimum period to be considered 'safe'.
Early in the afternoon I made a few anonymous enquiries through acquaintances followed by an important phone call making an appointment for early the following morning.
When I arrived home, Izzy had already made dinner for the three of us. This was such an unusual event that it spoke volumes about the relieved state of her mind. I tried hard to greet her and her culinary creations with the appropriate degree of enthusiasm but still she asked me several times if anything was wrong.
I was off-hand and distracted with Pete too when he finally came home from work and joined us at the dinner table. Something within me was desperate to tell my story; to share the terrible news and ease my mind but with Izzy home it was impossible.
As well as being revolted by the idea, telling my daughter would simply let the cat out of the bag as far as my sex life was concerned and I couldn't have Izzy-Oh-God passing judgement on my morals as well as my husband. Despite her own considerable sexual misadventures, I was sure that, like most of her contemporaries, my daughter would be highly judgemental where her parents were concerned.
No, if I was to tell my husband at all, it would have to be in an air of absolute privacy with time to talk things through. With Izzy in the house this would be impossible so I had to keep my terrible secret to myself; at least until I was sure there was no alternative.
Pete wanted to have sex with me that night but I couldn't face it. I could feel his disappointment and knew he would be a little suspicious of my motives in refusing but he didn't force the issue.
I did see him checking my phone just before I dropped off into a rather fitful sleep.
***
"I'm afraid it's true, Mrs.... er, Doctor Barker," the young man corrected himself, not knowing whether to smile encouragingly or frown in sympathy. "You are most definitely pregnant."
I looked at him as blandly as I could when what I most wanted to do was burst into tears. I felt terribly sick and had done since I had woken that morning, as if there mere knowledge of being pregnant could bring on the morning sickness that had apparently been missing so far.
"Congratulations!" he said, apparently deciding a professional noncommittal expression would be the best option.
It was eight o'clock on Friday morning, forty-eight hours after the shock of my entirely unexpected test result. I was sitting in the private consulting rooms of a well-respected gynaecologist in a quiet area of a city some thirty miles away from the one in which we lived.
Before driving there I had dropped my daughter off at the railway station shortly after seven to catch the first train of the day. At this stage of her University course she could not afford to miss any more lectures. If I was lucky, there was just time to have my appointment, drive to work and be in time for the regular Friday morning meeting at ten.
But my luck wasn't too good at the moment.
