Ill Conceived Plans

Loves Labours Begun

SARAH had a love hate relationship with being pregnant; she loved feeling Bean move around, loved talking to the baby, knowing someone else was there. But then feeling the baby move reminded her that she probably wasn't keeping it. And she was starting to hate that.

Today she hated pregnancy more than usual.

Her back was sore and paining, her feet were swollen and she was tired. Really tired.

Sarah had just under a month to go, probably closer to three weeks (though Margaret kept reminding her that first babies were often late and all of hers except Dane were overdue by several days at least). She felt like a whale already, she wasn't looking forward to three to five weeks more of this, getting out of bed was almost a fork-lift job already and it was so long since she'd seen her toes that she could actually be wearing anything at all on her feet and she wouldn't know. She hoped it was her nice slip-on Vans; she didn't care which of the four colours it was but knowing her luck it was her fluffy rabbit slippers – highly professional indeed.

At the moment she wished there was someone here with her to help her put her slip-on shoes on and do up her mega-bra – needed to support her now back breaking boobs. But there was no-one. Margaret had offered to come and stay with her but she was still recovering and Boyd and Dmitri and Barb and Dehlia had also offered to either stay or have her come to them. But well she wasn't up for that much fussing. She needed someone to help and then get out of the fucking way "wide-load" coming through. Someone who knew her well enough to gauge her moods. Sure Boyd and Dmitri had known her a long time but not in the way she needed. She needed? She didn't need anyone!

Dane flew back yesterday but she was in Stratford until this morning and he was in a meeting now and wouldn't be out until lunch and then he had a rehearsal at a hall not that far away from his house. A rehearsal for the piece he was doing with Sabine for the RSC. He and some of the other London-based actors were meeting with the director to go through their pieces and discuss the event. They'd held a similar event in Stratford yesterday and she and David the director had driven back down for today's run-through. Sarah was there as technical advisor and co-producer. Luckily for her David had driven there and back, getting behind the wheel of a car was quite an effort these days and if she got too close and the wheel pressed her stomach Bean would give it hell – one of the many joys of pregnancy.

This was one of her last jobs before she went on maternity leave – well her version of it, which was more working from home than actually stopping. She had hoped to have Bean's future settled by now but Davie had wanted a face-to-face meeting, first with her and then the two of them with Boyd and Dmitri. She hated to be mucking them around but they were both so damned understanding and supportive, she wondered how they'd be if they hadn't found a surrogate and weren't actually going forward with impregnation – Bean might be a big brother or sister if it went to them. An only child if it stayed with her until she accidentally left it on a bus and it was adopted by Gypsies (not that she used buses that much but that was beside the point). Who was she kidding, she knew Boyd and D well enough that she knew they would be just as supportive even if there wasn't a chance that the little one would be theirs. She had a lot of support if she was honest but the self-doubt was still crippling. In her head she knew she could do this, in her heart, she suspected she wanted to do this. But without her mum and dad and Dane, it felt overwhelming. Even though she knew Del and Barb would be there, Petra was proposing some sort of informal mother's club and Dane's family, her family, were overwhelming (she still hadn't told them – coward, that she was). But she was an academic first, had always been an academic, it came first – just as it had with her dad. Her Aspie academic father had loved her but well he wasn't good on the practical side – without the support of the extended family and Dane's Sarah had no doubt she'd be living in a caravan somewhere and destined to wear a large meringue dress to borrow a popular and probably erroneous stereotype.