A Mother's Story by Rosie Batty

be a full-time mum? Was I a bad person for wishing the father of my child was more conventional – more capable of being the breadwinner I needed him to be?
    I did feel I had Greg’s loyalty. He was no longer interested in chasing other women. I had the distinct impression he thought he was connected to me. He saw me as this woman he had chosen, and with a baby on the way, we were meant to be together. But Iwas the one with the house, the car and the career. The sum total of what he was bringing to the partnership was pretty meagre.
    It was also telling that I avoided exposing my friends to Greg. As long as he was around, there was no fear of me inviting my friends to come and visit me – Greg was too unpopular with them and his behaviour far too unpredictable. And so, without even noticing it, I became increasingly isolated. Greg, for his part, had never introduced me to a single friend in all the time I had known him. He always fell out with anyone he got even mildly close to, another symptom of his paranoia that everyone had an agenda to bring him down.
    The only friendships he maintained were with his brothers, who I hadn’t met. He had three brothers, and he was the second oldest. Years previously, in Belgrave, he had shared with me stories about growing up. Because his dad had a career in which they had to move all the time, they changed schools so often he didn’t really form any lasting friendships in boyhood. So he and his brothers became a tight-knit unit. He felt his father didn’t like him. He used to say he’d wished his mother would leave the marriage and take Greg with her. When I met his parents, they appeared to have a loving marriage, so I assumed it was just Greg being Greg.
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    Greg assumed he would be present at the birth but I had always had my misgivings. And as the pregnancy progressed, I became more certain I didn’t want him anywhere near me during labour. I resolved that, when the time came, I would simply get through the birthing process alone. As a girl, I had been sent to the dentist alone to have teeth pulled. Taking on something like this bymyself didn’t seem like such a big deal. After all, my mum – and countless women before me – had managed on their own, and so would I. As the due date loomed, however, I started to worry about how I’d get to hospital, and so I reached out to my friend Carri. She fell over herself to help, offering to be on standby in the event I needed her.
    I had chosen Monash Hospital for the birth, because it specialised in difficult and premature births. Because I was forty and this was my first pregnancy, I figured it was better to be in a place prepared for anything. I had no reason to be concerned – my doctors had been pleased with my pregnancy and all the signs were for a normal birth – but it was 2002, when having a baby at forty was still considered high-risk, as every medical professional I encountered seemed to take delight in reminding me.
    A few weeks before my due date, Greg headed north for one of his semi-regular retreats at the Russian monastery, where he would help around the property with manual labour in return for food, lodging and inclusion in some of the monks’ prayer sessions. Greg would sometimes describe it as the only place he could go for solace and respite. This time, his visit was scheduled to finish long before the baby was supposed to arrive.
    I finished work four weeks before my due date. Because Greg was not around to help, I bustled awkwardly about the property tending to my animals. I remember picking up a 30-kilogram bag of meal to feed the goats, not realising what effect that may have.
    I went to my weekly doctor’s appointment a few days later, but I had to wait to see a doctor. Suddenly I became aware that I was wetting myself. When eventually a doctor saw me, he told me my membranes had ruptured, but to go home and return in the morning when they would induce me.