I squat over my Hard Rock Café mug. Pee. Dip. The result appears on the test stick in all of 0.6 seconds. I hold my breath, count elephants until the full 120 seconds are up. The blue plus sign is still there, positively glowing out of the window. My first thought is: “We did it.” Second thought: “What have we done?” Third: “I need a cigarette. Now.”
Standing on the terrace in the sunshine, a delicate Vogue super-slim clamped between my trembling fingers, I question whether I would have wanted us to buy this place were it not for the alfresco smoking I envisaged ahead. Okay, the new ceilings are as high as our old flat was long, the period details gorgeous, the key to the communal, seven-acre gardens a godsend, but after years of living on the fourth floor in Shoreditch, descending to pavement level or ascending to the roof every time I wanted a smoke, it was this beautiful, plant-dotted terrace in Brighton’s Kemp Town that had been the answer to my dreams.
I stub out my cigarette into a champagne bottle, one of three stuffed to overflowing with soggy butts, and go back inside, where I eat a handful of dried figs to cancel out the nicotine.
Work doesn’t come easy. Staring at the blank screen, I think about the injustice of it all. The bad planning. I’ve spent my whole smoking life saying I’ll give up at 35 or when I get pregnant, whichever comes first. And then this happens. Now. Before my birthday. When I still have six-and-a-half weeks of smoking pleasure to go.
Elvis gets home late. The sun has long since disappeared. I insist on a walk in the gardens anyway, steer him to a secluded spot. If he doesn’t act more excited than he did yesterday, when the Weber barbecue was delivered, I’ll cry.
“I’m going to have to ask you to change the cat litter for a while.”
“What?”
“I can’t change the cat litter any more.”
Nothing.
“I thought everyone knows that coming into contact with cat crap is dangerous for pregnant women. It can cause toxoplasmosis.” Whatever toxoplasmosis is.
Elvis passes the Weber test. He jumps up and down, hugs me, kisses me. I cry anyway.
“Come on, Pussycat,” he smiles, stroking my hair. “This is a big adventure. You said you wanted to start a family.”
“Yes, I know I said I wanted to start a family, but more than that I want to smoke.”
As we start towards home, a neighbour comes into view, out walking his dog. Afraid that Elvis is going to say something, make an announcement, I tell him we must keep quiet until the 12-week mark. I don’t know how I know this, or if it’s true, but I do know it’s too soon for announcements.
“I wanted to tell the guy in the shop where I buy my cigarettes. I almost did, too. Imagine it: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be seeing you for nine months. I’m pregnant.’”
“You'd have said eight months and 15 days.”
By day two of knowing we’ve got a bun in the oven it’s become apparent that it’s not going to be a piece of cake to stop smoking “from the very second you find out you’re pregnant”, contrary to the repeated assurances I’d received from Elvis’s mum. I thought, having had three kids of her own, and a plenty-a-day habit, she was talking from a position of authority, but it seems she was just talking from a position of grandmother-in-waiting. While I’m smoking less, taking fewer drags and trying not to inhale, the craving’s as strong as ever. Stronger.
Online, an hour passes, two, and I don't find a single voice contradicting the cigarette packet warning that “smoking when pregnant harms your baby”. All the talk is of low birth weight, breathing lapses, cot death. A poor Apgar score, long-term mental and physical deficits, hyperactivity.
In Waterstones, I consult a stack of books, in vain. Not even Vicki Iovine, in her encouragingly titled The Best Friends’ Guide to Pregnancy, has a good word to say about sneaking the odd cheeky fag when the fear of impending motherhood becomes too much. Some best friend. What about the huge levels of stress faced by a pregnant woman on stopping? Isn’t that worse for the baby? Apparently not. How I long for the days when doctors prescribed cigarettes to combat everything from psoriasis to high blood pressure, when whatever was ailing you could be cured by a few nice puffs.
I meet my new GP for the first time. He tells me he won’t need to do a pregnancy test, having complete faith in the brand of home test I used. I’ve already passed the first hurdle of being a good mother by not going for the £1 test Asda had on offer. He checks my blood pressure, tells me it’s “good and low”, and then, almost as an afterthought:
“You have stopped smoking and drinking, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I say, not wanting to spoil the good first impression as I wait for him to write me a referral to see Vanessa.
It’s only three days later, at the community mother and baby centre, that I confess.
“Are you here to see the midwife?” asks the receptionist.
“No, I’m here to see Vanessa,” I reply, still unable to believe that a midwife and I could have any possible business together. Midwife, it would seem, is not a word I have ever spoken aloud. It strikes me as a term that belongs in the 15th century, not the 21st, back when women rode side saddle and babies were born with boiling water on hand and straw underfoot.
On hearing that I’m smoking one, maybe two, cigaretes a day – though they are super-slims and therefore very skinny – Vanessa, the midwife, says she’ll refer me to Jo, the NHS smoking sessation counsellor. No slap on the wrist, no being cast out of the office, struck off the register; just a gentle reminder that it’s important to quit while expecting and that the success rate is much higher when smokers are offered help to stop.
Back home, I step onto the terrace and light up, sucking the smoke deep into my lungs. I am going to stop smoking. A sweet, white calm comes over me. Stopping is easy when you're holding a lit cigarette.
Less than 24 hours later, Jo calls. I’m scared. Isn’t the NHS overstretched? The speed is a clear sign that every second counts. We make an appointment. An hour after I get a call asking if I can cover for an editor who’s off sick, her magazine on deadline. I leave a message on Jo’s voicemail asking to reschedule. My phone beeps with a text from Jo offering a 2pm slot on Thursday. It’s only when I put it in my diary that I see it clashes with our dating scan at the hospital. I leave a voicemail telling Jo I’ll be free between 1pm and 3pm, Wednesday, or after 6pm, Thursday. She emails with an alternative. I let her know I can’t make it, hit “reply”. She rings again but I miss her call because I’m out on the terrace not inhaling a cigarette, wondering how I can enjoy the noxious cocktail of tobacco, tar and carbon monoxide now that I’m with child; whether it’s possible to harm one’s unborn baby through sheer guilt alone. I’m connected to Jo’s voicemail, hang up. This is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s all part of the programme. Smokers are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dialling, texting and emailing in order that their fingers are kept too busy to take a cigarete out of the pack, light it and raise it to their poor, chapped, pregnant lips.
Deciding it will be easier to stop without help than to arrange a meeting with Jo, I hunt out my copy of the Allen Carr classic, Easy Way. It’s dog-eared, bought before the smoking ban came into force. When the ban came in, you recall, it was summer; there was always a perfectly good pavement to smoke on. And my 35th birthday was still some way off. Why rush things?
Something flutters out of the book, a list of my top reasons for wanting to quit. I half remember reading it to Elvis, trying to convince him I was serious about giving up. I was probably stoned at the time. I glance at the first point:
“I want to watch a film and get lost in the plot rather than lost plotting when I can reasonably next get up and go for a fag.”
Going for fags during films is no longer a problem. Pregnant, I fall asleep before anything is even a quarter of the way through.
“I want to stop worrying about having to stop at some point in the future, to face the worst and have it over with.”
Face the worst? This was obviously written before I’d given any thought to childbirth. The pain of quitting pales in comparison.
“I don’t want to have to work out how many cigarettes I need to stock up on every time I have a holiday or weekend away.”
With Vogues not being available just anywhere, planning has always been key. But in the unlikely event of any holiday or weekend-away plans with a baby, I’ll be so busy working out how many nappies, bottles and babysitters I need to pack, I won’t even have time to remember what tobacco tastes like…
And suddenly, as the smoke from my cigarette curls upwards, getting in my eyes and making me squint in that old, familiar way, the insidious architect of untold wrinkles in the future, I stop thinking of my long-nurtured addiction as a much-loved friend.
I see it for the enemy that it is.
The final point on my list: “I don’t want to stink of stale smoke.”
Why not baby vomit instead?
I stub out my cigarette.
My last cigarette.
Blame it on the hormones, blame in on the baby books, blame it on Kerry Katona. Charlotte Church was right. Pregnant, stopping isn’t as hard as it used to be.
Nor is staying stopped.
And even if, as the thought crosses my mind every morning, noon and night, I were to have put off stopping, postponed the difficult day for another month or two, well, I would only have reached the 35 mark and stopped anyway.
At least, this way, that’s what I can keep telling myself.
Standing on the terrace in the sunshine, a delicate Vogue super-slim clamped between my trembling fingers, I question whether I would have wanted us to buy this place were it not for the alfresco smoking I envisaged ahead. Okay, the new ceilings are as high as our old flat was long, the period details gorgeous, the key to the communal, seven-acre gardens a godsend, but after years of living on the fourth floor in Shoreditch, descending to pavement level or ascending to the roof every time I wanted a smoke, it was this beautiful, plant-dotted terrace in Brighton’s Kemp Town that had been the answer to my dreams.
I stub out my cigarette into a champagne bottle, one of three stuffed to overflowing with soggy butts, and go back inside, where I eat a handful of dried figs to cancel out the nicotine.
Work doesn’t come easy. Staring at the blank screen, I think about the injustice of it all. The bad planning. I’ve spent my whole smoking life saying I’ll give up at 35 or when I get pregnant, whichever comes first. And then this happens. Now. Before my birthday. When I still have six-and-a-half weeks of smoking pleasure to go.
Elvis gets home late. The sun has long since disappeared. I insist on a walk in the gardens anyway, steer him to a secluded spot. If he doesn’t act more excited than he did yesterday, when the Weber barbecue was delivered, I’ll cry.
“I’m going to have to ask you to change the cat litter for a while.”
“What?”
“I can’t change the cat litter any more.”
Nothing.
“I thought everyone knows that coming into contact with cat crap is dangerous for pregnant women. It can cause toxoplasmosis.” Whatever toxoplasmosis is.
Elvis passes the Weber test. He jumps up and down, hugs me, kisses me. I cry anyway.
“Come on, Pussycat,” he smiles, stroking my hair. “This is a big adventure. You said you wanted to start a family.”
“Yes, I know I said I wanted to start a family, but more than that I want to smoke.”
As we start towards home, a neighbour comes into view, out walking his dog. Afraid that Elvis is going to say something, make an announcement, I tell him we must keep quiet until the 12-week mark. I don’t know how I know this, or if it’s true, but I do know it’s too soon for announcements.
“I wanted to tell the guy in the shop where I buy my cigarettes. I almost did, too. Imagine it: ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be seeing you for nine months. I’m pregnant.’”
“You'd have said eight months and 15 days.”
By day two of knowing we’ve got a bun in the oven it’s become apparent that it’s not going to be a piece of cake to stop smoking “from the very second you find out you’re pregnant”, contrary to the repeated assurances I’d received from Elvis’s mum. I thought, having had three kids of her own, and a plenty-a-day habit, she was talking from a position of authority, but it seems she was just talking from a position of grandmother-in-waiting. While I’m smoking less, taking fewer drags and trying not to inhale, the craving’s as strong as ever. Stronger.
Online, an hour passes, two, and I don't find a single voice contradicting the cigarette packet warning that “smoking when pregnant harms your baby”. All the talk is of low birth weight, breathing lapses, cot death. A poor Apgar score, long-term mental and physical deficits, hyperactivity.
In Waterstones, I consult a stack of books, in vain. Not even Vicki Iovine, in her encouragingly titled The Best Friends’ Guide to Pregnancy, has a good word to say about sneaking the odd cheeky fag when the fear of impending motherhood becomes too much. Some best friend. What about the huge levels of stress faced by a pregnant woman on stopping? Isn’t that worse for the baby? Apparently not. How I long for the days when doctors prescribed cigarettes to combat everything from psoriasis to high blood pressure, when whatever was ailing you could be cured by a few nice puffs.
I meet my new GP for the first time. He tells me he won’t need to do a pregnancy test, having complete faith in the brand of home test I used. I’ve already passed the first hurdle of being a good mother by not going for the £1 test Asda had on offer. He checks my blood pressure, tells me it’s “good and low”, and then, almost as an afterthought:
“You have stopped smoking and drinking, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I say, not wanting to spoil the good first impression as I wait for him to write me a referral to see Vanessa.
It’s only three days later, at the community mother and baby centre, that I confess.
“Are you here to see the midwife?” asks the receptionist.
“No, I’m here to see Vanessa,” I reply, still unable to believe that a midwife and I could have any possible business together. Midwife, it would seem, is not a word I have ever spoken aloud. It strikes me as a term that belongs in the 15th century, not the 21st, back when women rode side saddle and babies were born with boiling water on hand and straw underfoot.
On hearing that I’m smoking one, maybe two, cigaretes a day – though they are super-slims and therefore very skinny – Vanessa, the midwife, says she’ll refer me to Jo, the NHS smoking sessation counsellor. No slap on the wrist, no being cast out of the office, struck off the register; just a gentle reminder that it’s important to quit while expecting and that the success rate is much higher when smokers are offered help to stop.
Back home, I step onto the terrace and light up, sucking the smoke deep into my lungs. I am going to stop smoking. A sweet, white calm comes over me. Stopping is easy when you're holding a lit cigarette.
Less than 24 hours later, Jo calls. I’m scared. Isn’t the NHS overstretched? The speed is a clear sign that every second counts. We make an appointment. An hour after I get a call asking if I can cover for an editor who’s off sick, her magazine on deadline. I leave a message on Jo’s voicemail asking to reschedule. My phone beeps with a text from Jo offering a 2pm slot on Thursday. It’s only when I put it in my diary that I see it clashes with our dating scan at the hospital. I leave a voicemail telling Jo I’ll be free between 1pm and 3pm, Wednesday, or after 6pm, Thursday. She emails with an alternative. I let her know I can’t make it, hit “reply”. She rings again but I miss her call because I’m out on the terrace not inhaling a cigarette, wondering how I can enjoy the noxious cocktail of tobacco, tar and carbon monoxide now that I’m with child; whether it’s possible to harm one’s unborn baby through sheer guilt alone. I’m connected to Jo’s voicemail, hang up. This is ridiculous. Or maybe it’s all part of the programme. Smokers are forced to spend inordinate amounts of time dialling, texting and emailing in order that their fingers are kept too busy to take a cigarete out of the pack, light it and raise it to their poor, chapped, pregnant lips.
Deciding it will be easier to stop without help than to arrange a meeting with Jo, I hunt out my copy of the Allen Carr classic, Easy Way. It’s dog-eared, bought before the smoking ban came into force. When the ban came in, you recall, it was summer; there was always a perfectly good pavement to smoke on. And my 35th birthday was still some way off. Why rush things?
Something flutters out of the book, a list of my top reasons for wanting to quit. I half remember reading it to Elvis, trying to convince him I was serious about giving up. I was probably stoned at the time. I glance at the first point:
“I want to watch a film and get lost in the plot rather than lost plotting when I can reasonably next get up and go for a fag.”
Going for fags during films is no longer a problem. Pregnant, I fall asleep before anything is even a quarter of the way through.
“I want to stop worrying about having to stop at some point in the future, to face the worst and have it over with.”
Face the worst? This was obviously written before I’d given any thought to childbirth. The pain of quitting pales in comparison.
“I don’t want to have to work out how many cigarettes I need to stock up on every time I have a holiday or weekend away.”
With Vogues not being available just anywhere, planning has always been key. But in the unlikely event of any holiday or weekend-away plans with a baby, I’ll be so busy working out how many nappies, bottles and babysitters I need to pack, I won’t even have time to remember what tobacco tastes like…
And suddenly, as the smoke from my cigarette curls upwards, getting in my eyes and making me squint in that old, familiar way, the insidious architect of untold wrinkles in the future, I stop thinking of my long-nurtured addiction as a much-loved friend.
I see it for the enemy that it is.
The final point on my list: “I don’t want to stink of stale smoke.”
Why not baby vomit instead?
I stub out my cigarette.
My last cigarette.
Blame it on the hormones, blame in on the baby books, blame it on Kerry Katona. Charlotte Church was right. Pregnant, stopping isn’t as hard as it used to be.
Nor is staying stopped.
And even if, as the thought crosses my mind every morning, noon and night, I were to have put off stopping, postponed the difficult day for another month or two, well, I would only have reached the 35 mark and stopped anyway.
At least, this way, that’s what I can keep telling myself.
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