Magical Thinking

It is the day after my birthday, and the day of my appointment at Kings College Hospital. Referred there by the less high-tech Royal Sussex County Hospital, I’m booked in for a nuchal translucency scan, the results of which will tell us whether our baby is at high or low risk of having Down’s Syndrome. If high risk, we’ll have to decide whether or not to have the amniocentesis test, with its enormous needle and inherent risk of miscarriage. If low, it will just be a nice opportunity to take home an early baby photo for the album.

Opening the bedroom shutters, I’m greeted by a sky of brilliant, uninterrupted blue and a sun so dazzling it makes me squint, which I take to be a good omen. A second later, though, I see a single magpie hopping jauntily along the wall, its black feathers slick like wet paint, its breast solid, eyes beady. My heart sinks. Spotting two magpies is cause for celebration, ‘for joy’, as the old rhyme goes, whereas a sighting of only one, of course, means sorrow. I scan the terrace, desperate to see another, but the bastard is working alone. I shudder, and repeat aloud the mantra ‘Good morning, Mr Magpie’ seven times, as I was once instructed to do by an old Scottish farmer who shared my superstitious bent. Then, completing the protective spell, I spit in my hat. I’m not actually wearing a hat, but I make a spitting noise into my hand, which will have to suffice.

My journey from Brighton to Denmark Hill goes smoothly. Too smoothly. I get there almost an hour early for my appointment. Happily, there’s a park just across the road from the hospital, which looks like the perfect place to kill some time. I walk through the gates and wander along the path, stopping to watch a grey squirrel dance along a patch of scrubby grass towards a piece of abandoned bread. It’s hopping in that care-free way that squirrels have, making me smile, when, suddenly, out of a nearby bush, a dirty huge rat appears and grabs the bread from right under the squirrel’s nose. I take a step backwards, watching as the squirrel darts in one direction and the rat lopes off in the other. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a rat in London. At least, anywhere other than in Banksy’s work.

I’m still standing there, staring at the spot where the rat disappeared under a hedge, when a mother and her small daughter join me. The woman points out some flowers to the girl, and then the squirrel hops back into view, captivating the kid with its cute squirrelly ears and tail. Until it’s joined in our line of vision, that is, by not one but two dirty huge rats, both intent on hoovering up any discarded food on the grass. ‘Look, Mummy, rats!’ says the girl, excited. The squirrel is out of there like a shot.

The woman notices the shocked expression on my face. ‘I know,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘People leave out food… it attracts them.

Convinced the rats are a harbinger of bad news, I hurry onwards towards the sterile environment of the hospital, impatient, all of a sudden, to be there and to be tested. And, more to the point, to be told that our baby is perfect.

In the large waiting room of the Jubilee suite, a TV is affixed to the wall. Bargain Hunt is blaring out of it. The place is packed, and, noticing how many couples there are, I wish Shaun were here with me. Why did I tell him not to come? That it would be a lot of waiting around for nothing? Like I know anything about it. The truth is, having spent the last 16 years actively trying to avoid getting pregnant, I still view my current state as somewhat of an embarrassment. As a result, any related medical appointments don’t feel like the kind of thing I should be subjecting loved ones to. I bury my face in my newspaper, trying to block out the glare of David Dickinson’s fake tan and his exclamations of delight on inspecting a mid-century brass dinner gong.

When my name is called, it’s by an ultrasound technician wearing a white coat stretched over a reassuringly broad chest. He wears a delicate gold hoop through one ear. Shaking my hand, he introduces himself as Hernandez, then leads me down the corridor to a large, airy treatment room where I meet his colleague, Anna, who has a matching white coat and the thickest auburn hair I’ve ever seen.

‘How are you with blood?’ Hernandez asks, showing me to a seat. ‘Oh, fine,’ I lie, feeling like I’m on some kind of Japanese medical-themed endurance show. If I can’t deal with having a few blood samples taken at this stage, what hope is there for me when I get through to the later stages of the competition? Even the NHS guide to pregnancy the midwife hands out doesn’t beat around the bush. In the section about packing a bag to have ready for the hospital, the advice reads: 'Bring towels. Preferably in dark colours.’

After my blood has been taken, I lie down on the bed. Hernandez starts to move the scanning machine across my stomach while Anna studies a huge monitor. At first, the image is cloudy, but the lines quickly become sharper and take form. My eyes flicker across the screen, trying to work out what’s what. Is something wrong? The baby’s arms and legs are jerking around spastically. It looks like one of those small wooden toys that have a button on their base that you press to make them dance. Is it having a fit? It would be funny if it weren’t so alien; the kind of thing you’d see on YouTube.

‘Is that normal,’ I ask, horrified.

‘Absolutely,’ Hernandez reassures me. The baby quietens down almost immediately, and lies still as Anna takes various measurements on the screen and writes them down; stomach, spine, brain. But she can’t get the measurement she needs of the back of the neck – the main purpose of today’s scan – because of the position the baby has settled in. Maybe it’s because I’m holding my breath, willing the results to be what they’re meant to be.

Hernandez tells me not to worry. He continues moving the scanner over my stomach, the picture of patience.

Twenty minutes later, however, he politely tells me he’s passing the scanner over to his colleague. I’m not surprised. His arm must be killing him.

Anna prods me with the scanner head, pressing down more firmly against the swell of my abdomen, but still the baby won’t play ball. I notice Hernandez discreetly checking his emails on Googlemail at the computer in the corner.

‘Is this normal?’ I ask, for the second time, wondering how I can be sure there’s not something wrong, that they’re not just stalling for time. The other couples ahead of me were in and out of their appointments in no time. Why is mine taking so long?

‘It’s perfectly normal,’ says Hernandez, again, while Anna continues to stare intently at the screen. ‘It’s just that the behaviour of the baby is not so good.’ He laughs.

Great. It’s not even born yet and already my baby’s being difficult.

Anna tells me to pull up my trousers and to go and walk up and down the corridor for 10 minutes. The motion might make the baby move, she explains. After that I am to come directly back to this room.

I feel self-conscious, walking on command. As if the teenage couple I pass at the coffee machine can tell I have an uncooperative baby on board. I march through the still-packed waiting room and push through the swing doors beyond, where the corridor stretches into the distance. I walk past the lifts, a few wards, a beautiful Indian woman of about 40 with a baby cradled in each arm. I walk past a notice board, a bank of plastic chairs and a growth-restricted new mother talking on the pay phone. She’s blonde, so tiny. Like the girl in Poltergeist, except there’s a baby in a plastic incubator-style bed on wheels beside her, not a hysterical old woman with bird’s nest hair and a high-pitched voice. I overhear the words ‘seven pounds’ and ‘very painful’, and quicken my step. By the time I get back to the waiting room, my walk is practically Python-esque, my legs hardly feeling like they’re attached to my body. I look at the clock, and see, to my amazement, that it’s only been four minutes since I left Hernandez and Anna.

In an attempt to push all thoughts of single magpies, rats and painful childbirths out of mind, I pull my paper out of my bag again and read while I walk. My eyes come to rest on an article in the health section with the heading ‘The Science Behind Superstition’. My walking slows down as I quickly get sucked in, wondering what the odds were of me reading this today, at the exact same time that I’m pacing up and down a hospital corridor, hoping for the baby scan all-clear.

A biologist from Harvard University is explaining some research he’s just published, saying that in these uncertain times, we humans choose what we want to believe. If my horoscope says the planets are in the perfect alignment and then I win the lottery, for instance, I’m probably going to be more inclined to believe what’s written about my star sign in the future. Which I think is quite obvious. But he then goes on to explain that it’s not just people who display behaviours that imply a causal relationship that isn’t there, it’s animals, too. If you stand among a bunch of pigeons, he says, and clap your hands, they’ll fly away. But pigeons are clever enough to tell the difference between a gunshot, which could kill them, and a hand clap, which couldn’t, yet they react superstitiously anyway, going on the ‘better safe than sorry’ principle.

I’ve stopped walking altogether by this point, overcome by a sense of vindication. Every ladder I’ve ever avoided walking under, every time I’ve knocked on wood, all my various good luck charms and little rituals… it’s all just about being better safe than sorry. Then I notice the clock, and realise I’m two minutes late for Hernandez and Anna, and goosestep back to their room. A smiling couple walk out. I’m ushered back in.

Back on the bed, Anna bashes the scanner wand against my stomach, making ripples appear from my belly button, like on the surface of a puddle. Staring at the monitor, I watch the baby bounce up and down. It doesn’t seem to be making any effort to change position.

This lack of cooperation is beginning to get embarrassing. It’s like I’m experiencing some weird fast-forward to the way I’ll feel when my child won’t help the other children in the nursery pick up the toys at the end of the day, or, a few years later still, refuses to eat school dinners, or, aged 18, says that it’s, like, totally not fair that we all have to share one car… ‘What happens if you can’t get the measurement?’ I ask quietly, hating the thought that I’ll have to come back and go through all this again another day.

‘Don’t worry,’ Anna says, her voice steely, ‘we’ll get it.’

A few minutes later she tells me to cough. I do as she says. The baby bobs about a little, but nothing more. I cough again, but it’s not very convincing. If I hadn’t stopped smoking a month ago, it would have been a different story. I could simply have hacked the baby into position for the bloody measurement to be taken. Where’s that kind of information in the baby books when you need it?

‘Get off the bed and jump up and down,’ Anna says.

Hernandez is now playing a game of solitaire on the PC and has the good grace not to look while I do a few star jumps.

I lie back down and Anna starts where she left off. If she doesn’t say anything before I count to 10, I bargain, the baby’s going to get into position and the measurement’s going to be taken and everything’s going to be fine. If, on the other hand…

‘You can get dressed now,’ she says, before I’ve even counted to three. She pulls a sheet of photos off the machine and hands it to me. Three perfect profiles of our baby. I can even see fingers, an elbow, forehead…

‘Did you get the measurement?’ I ask, pulling my eyes away from the photos when I realise there was no grand announcement of success; no hollering or whooping in celebration.

‘Yes, I’ve got everything I need,’ she replies. ‘Come over here to the desk and I’ll go through it all with you.’

Behind my back, my fingers are crossed.

I sit down and we go through a printout together, Anna pointing out various figures with the lid of her pen. ‘The heart action is fine; length from crown to rump is fine. The skull appears normal; brain appears normal; abdomen, bladder, hands and feet, all normal. The nasal bone is present and the nuchal fold translucency measurement puts you into the low risk category.’ She shows me the background risk and the adjusted risk columns. Nothing is set in stone, I’m reminded, but as far as today’s testing goes, we’ve passed with flying colours.

I thank Anna, thank Hernandez, am still thanking them both as I back out of the door, a dumb smile on my face. I want to call Shaun but there are signs everywhere saying mobile phones shouldn’t be used inside, and even if I don’t believe that making a call or sending a text would actually have any detrimental effect on hospital machinery and the rule is just there to enforce patients to shell out on expensive hospital telephone cards, I take the better-safe-than-sorry approach and wait.

It’s only when I stop off at the Ladies on my way out that I realise I didn’t do a very good job of wiping the scanning gel off my tummy. In fact, I did a terrible job. I stare at my reflection in the mirror, taking in the huge, very noticeable damp patch extending across the crotch of my white linen trousers.

Fuck it. I step out of the doors back into the late July lunchtime, an hour-and-a half after I walked in. The sun will dry my trousers and knickers in no time, I think, surprised at how quickly things that once would’ve mattered a lot matter very little when you’ve just found out your baby’s got a spine and a heartbeat and looks just like its daddy when its sleeping.

I clap my hands loudly, causing a flock of pigeons to take flight a few steps in front of me, then slide the baby photos into my handbag and set off back towards the tube station.