Page 8 of Christmas for the Village Midwife
‘No thanks. I think I’ll just keep my head down until it’s all over.’
‘I don’t blame you.’
‘By the way, have you given any more thought to your own finish date? Fliss isn’t the only one who’ll have to be replaced, and you don’t have long to go. Simon will also have to get cover for you while you’re on mat leave. I’m surprised he’s not more panicked about that.’
‘I think he’s preoccupied with Fliss’s replacement. I’ve got ages yet.’
‘You’ve got eight weeks until the birth, and even you can’t work until the end. You can’t keep putting it off.’
Ottilie waved a vague hand. ‘I’m not; I just haven’t had time to think about it. Anyway, Simon will be able to get agency cover for me. It’s not like what I do is rocket science.’
‘Hey, don’t knock yourself down. It’s going to take one hell of a nurse to cover what you do.’
‘I don’t know about that, but I remember what people around here are like when there’s any kind of change. They don’t like it one bit. I pity the poor nurse who covers for me, that’s for sure.’
‘Well,’ Zoe said as she went for the door. ‘You’re going to have to decide soon, or you’ll be having the baby on shift.’
‘Shut up…’ Ottilie said with a faint smile. ‘You sound like Heath. You worry about your other mums; I’ll be fine.’
Ten minutes later, Zoe was welcoming her first appointment of the day, Lara, who was ten weeks pregnant with her second child. It was their first meeting, and Lara had only confirmed the pregnancy a few days previously.
‘You’d think I’d be used to all this,’ she said as she sat down in Zoe’s consulting room. ‘But I don’t remember it being this hard with Rhys.’
‘Rhys is your little boy?’ Zoe asked.
‘Yes, he’s six now.’
‘I expect he’s the difference. You didn’t have all that extra work back when you were pregnant with him – there was just you to worry about. Is he active?’
‘And then some. Never sits still. I’m knackered, and I don’t know if it’s him or the baby. Honestly, if the new one is half as bad, I’ve got my work cut out. I think that’s why I kept putting off doing the test – I was dreading finding out because I knew things would get a lot harder.’
‘Were you trying?’
‘For a baby? Yes and no. We weren’t putting any special effort in, if you see what I mean, but I wasn’t tryingnotto get pregnant either. And I think it had been so long since Rhys I was wondering if I could get pregnant again – I mean, I’m thirty-six.’
Zoe smiled. ‘Hardly ancient.’
‘Yeah, I know, but they do say I’m an older mum, don’t they? Anyway, with all that in mind, I didn’t take a lot of notice until I started to feel a bit off in the mornings, and then I started to go off coffee and I was like, oh, this seems familiar. I don’t know, but Rhys seems to be worse since we told him about the pregnancy. I think he’s playing up deliberately. He’s always been a handful, but he’s just being so naughty. I had to go and see the head at school about him last week because he’d started giving his form teacher so much lip.’
‘You’re sure there isn’t something else bothering him? You’ll know him better than anyone, of course, but have you asked him if there’s something bothering him?’
‘I asked him why he was being such a little shit, but my other half says that’s just showing him that playing up to get attention works. Anyway, I asked if he was upset about the baby, and I didn’t get an answer either way – he just started to cry. I suppose that’s my answer, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sure he’ll come round to being a big brother when the baby arrives. I’d say give him plenty of attention and cuddles and maybe persuade your partner that’s going to be more productive than ignoring the issue. Let Rhys know he’ll always be number one whatever happens. He probably just needs reassurance.’
Lara looked unconvinced but not half as unconvinced as Zoe herself often felt when handing out words of wisdom to women who already had children, when she, despite her professional qualifications, had none. It was easy to regurgitate a training manual, but Zoe suspected that there was no substitute for livedexperience, and she felt like a fraud for trying to hand out advice on a subject she had no lived experience of. Not out of choice, but that didn’t change anything.
‘Are you all right?’ Zoe asked. ‘In yourself? I imagine the whole thing with Rhys is stressful, but are you managing with being pregnant again? You’re happy?’
‘Now I’m getting my head around it, I think I am. I’m sure in a few weeks I’ll be more excited.’
‘You know you can talk to me about anything any time you need to,’ Zoe said with a reassuring smile. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m due to see you for a check-up or not. I’ll let you have my mobile number before you go.’
‘Thank you. I’ll try not to ring.’
‘Don’t worry about that. Anything else you want to ask?’
Lara paused in thought before she spoke again. ‘How much longer do I have to stay on the folic acid?’
