Chapter 1 Stick it in me, Mister #2
His praise is a warm glow around my already full heart.
I know he was sceptical about knocking me up, but I was confident that his scepticism centred more around my age rather than his desire to expand our little family.
Still, his ecstatic reaction to Jonny is more than I could ever have hoped for.
‘I can’t believe I was scared of having a boy,’ I say with a laugh.
We didn’t find out the sex of the baby, even though I was dying to at every point.
And my God, was it worth the wait. When the consultant told us it was a boy, I was frankly gobsmacked.
I don’t know why—I was big at the end. I should have guessed.
But because Zach already has two girls, I assumed we’d just keep on making girls.
A flawed assumption, clearly.
‘It’s a step towards evening the scales,’ my husband deadpans.
‘I give it a week before you’ve bought him a tiny England rugby kit.’
‘Cal might have beaten me to it.’ He shifts and pulls his phone out of his pocket. ‘Look.’
Oh my God. Among the flurry of congratulatory messages in the Alchemy boys’ WhatsApp chat is a screenshot of the teeniest, cutest onesie—white, with England’s national rugby team’s red rose in the middle.
‘Okay, that’s very cute,’ I concede.
He puts his phone away and gives me and Jonny a watery smile again. He looks absolutely wrecked, which is not surprising, given we both just pulled an all-nighter.
‘You sure you’re up to seeing the girls?’ he asks.
I’m offended that he’s even asked. ‘Obviously. I wish they’d hurry up, though.’
Ruth, our nanny, is bringing them in after they’ve had breakfast. It’s a Tuesday, but Zach has messaged the school to say they’ll both be in late.
Meeting their baby brother is far more important.
* * *
ZACH
For as long as things have been serious between me and Mads, I’ve felt this odd conflict where I worry simultaneously about having expedited her future by pulling her into instant motherhood at such a tender age but also having robbed her of so many facets of the future she deserves because she’s not with someone who can share all those awe-inspiring firsts with her.
She’s always insisted that this exact situation is what she wants, of course, and my hyper-vigilant observations of her with the girls tell me she derives nothing but pleasure from her relationship with them, so I know I should cut myself some slack.
Still, it’s taken the past nine months and the past twelve hours to fully understand that this experience of love and parenthood and family is far too vast to be curtailed by concepts of limits and firsts.
Watching my wife bear, and grow, and birth our son has been every bit as new and awe-inspiring as those firsts were with Claire.
Standing by as our obstetrician laid him in Maddy’s arms? Best thing I’ve ever, ever seen.
And witnessing this first meeting between our daughters and their baby brother?
I’m a fucking mess.
Stella was three when Nance was born. We have tonnes of footage of that day—it was all super cute—but she wasn’t far off being a baby herself.
This is totally different.
Now, Nancy’s ten, and Stella turns thirteen in a month or two.
My daughters will, I hope, remember the day they met their brother for a long, long time.
The past nine months have been a family celebration.
The girls have embraced every ultrasound photo.
Maddy’s done a fantastic job of including them in the preparations for Jonny’s arrival, from allowing them to rub anti-stretch-mark butter into her bump to consulting them on the decor for a tasteful, gender-neutral nursery.
She even brought them along to a couple of our later obstetric appointments, once we were comfortable everything was progressing well.
Now, I sit in my chair and watch as the girls flank Mads on the bed. She has her knees up, Jonny swaddled and propped in the ridge between her legs as they coo over him.
There are ends, and there are beginnings, and, although Stella and Nancy have experienced new beginnings in some form with my marriage to Mads, Jonny’s arrival into the world is the best possible proof I can give to our daughters that life is indeed a circle and not just a dead end.
I have no intention whatsoever of connecting the following dots for the girls, but it blows my mind that new life has come from the ashes of Claire’s life.
That she had to die for Jonny to exist. I can’t fathom it, and I don’t want to.
It’s a binary whose truth makes me uncomfortable, when I want only to celebrate today.
To give thanks for the amazing humans in my life.
For the palpable joy, the hope, that exists today, in this pleasant, sunny room.
One of the midwives, Susan, comes in to check on us.
She’s in her fifties, with a briskly warm energy that reminds me of our nanny, Ruth.
She’s been on duty since we left the labour room this morning, and she’s doing a great job of providing endless cups of tea for us.
(Maddy declared earlier that her first cup of tea after giving birth was the best thing she’d ever tasted in her life, a fact I don’t doubt.)
‘How are we all doing?’ Susan asks cheerily. ‘Ooh, you must be Jonny’s big sisters! Isn’t he a lucky boy?’
Maddy gives her a huge grin. I suspect her warmth towards Susan is a combination of feel-good hormones and that natural human instinct to gravitate towards people who seem to know what they’re doing in situations when you yourself feel like you’ve entered a parallel universe.
‘Indeed he is,’ she says. ‘This is Stella and Nancy, and they’ve come to meet their baby brother.’
Susan beams. ‘Isn’t that lovely? Stella and Nancy—what beautiful names. Are there any biscuit-eaters among you?’
Nancy opens her mouth to deliver a vehement affirmative, but she’s interrupted by a shrill, tinny ringtone coming from the depths of Susan’s apron.
Holy fucking shit.
The tune?
I Want it That Way by The Backstreet Boys.