Love... And Sleepless Nights MAY 2012 by Nick Spalding Page A

like a bitch) to my midwife Marigold.
    ‘You need antenatal classes, you stupid girl,’ she said in her usual caring manner. ‘I keep telling you to go. It’ll help you with all this stuff when I’m not around.’
    I admit I’ve been putting antenatal classes off.
    I have enough night terrors thinking about the birth thanks to the information I do have - I don’t need my worst fears confirmed in a public setting.
    I say as much to Marigold.
    She shakes her head and regards me with the eyeball. ‘I never heard such girly rubbish in all my days. You think you’re the first to have these worries? Get your skinny white backside to classes and don’t talk such cow shit to me anymore!’
     
    With this sage advice ringing in my ears, last night Jamie and I attended our first antenatal class.
    I’ll give you three guesses how it went…
    The first two don’t count.
     
    ‘Really?’ whines my husband when I tell him what we’re doing.
    ‘Yes Jamie. We need to go. I’m thirty weeks in now. There’s stuff we have to learn about.’
    ‘It won’t be any fun, you know.’
    ‘It isn’t supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to be educational.’
    Jamie groans even louder. ‘But it’ll be a room full of idiots like us.’
    ‘Look, Marigold’s recommended this class to me at the leisure centre. It’s private, so there are less people. It won’t be that bad.’
     
    I should learn to never say ‘It won’t be that bad’ before entering into a new activity for the first time. It’s like I’m putting a curse on myself.
     
    We bowl up to the leisure centre at
six thirty
to find four other couples waiting outside one of the smaller activity rooms towards the back of the building.
    ‘Evening,’ I say, waddling up to them. I get a few obligatory British nods of heads and muttered return greetings.
    One woman, a petite Oriental girl, gives me a toothy grin. ‘Hello to you! I’m Lolly! This first time?’ she says in that clipped efficient manner Asians have when English isn’t their first language.
    ‘Yes,’ I reply.
    ‘Ah… good! Good!’ she turns to a white guy in his fifties standing next to her. ‘They like us two week ago Brian!’
    ‘Looks like it,’ Brian replies. The dynamic between the two of them is fairly obvious. I have to wonder whether he paid for her up-front or on inspection of the goods at the airport.
    ‘Why are we all stood out here then?’ Jamie asks the small crowd of expectant parents.
    ‘She’s late again,’ sneers a tall, rangy looking individual in a brown sports coat near the door – one arm wrapped round his much shorter wife’s neck. Body language can be such a dead giveaway sometimes. He rolls his eyes.
    ‘I’m sure she’ll be here soon.’ This much friendlier response comes from a lady a good few years past forty, standing with her equally friendly looking husband of about the same age. ‘Nice to meet you love,’ she says and extends a hand, which I’m happy to take. ‘I’m Susan and this is Clive.’
    ‘Hello. I’m Laura and this is Jamie.’
    ‘Lovely.’ She regards my belly. ‘How far gone are you?’
    This is a question I’ve been asked more times than any other recently.
    A pattern has formed in most of my conversations, which revolves exclusively around how my pregnancy is progressing… and very little else.
    ‘I’m thirty weeks.’
    ‘Thirty five for me. First time?’
    ‘Yes. You?’
    ‘Yep. Decided it was about time we produced offspring. Couldn’t have left it much later!’
    She’s going to ask me if I know the sex of my baby next.
    ‘Boy or girl?’
    ‘Girl.’
    I have to finish the ritual, to do otherwise would be rude. ‘Yours?’
    ‘We don’t know yet. We wanted to keep it a surprise.’
    Yes, and by the look of the clothes you’re wearing you can probably afford it.
    The predictable conversation is interrupted by a stick insect in a yellow jump suit. At least this is my first impression of the woman who runs the antenatal