The first thing that happens is that everybody her age gets married. It's all sparkling shoes from Gina and prenuptial nights at the Four Seasons, and she's thrilled to be asked to be a wedding singer or a reader, but she sometimes leaves the party early, because half way through the evening she remembers with a jolt that she has always found weddings depressing. Even her own.
Then, all of a sudden, everybody she knows is getting pregnant. It's all about the size of the bump and the antenatal classes and which style of pram and what kind of nursery motif, and because they can't help themselves they ask her if she'll be having kids herself, and she replies "If God blesses us", because that confuses them for a minute. Which is exactly the idea.
A girl could start to feel left out if she wasn't careful. A girl could start to feel she was lagging behind, just drifting, not following the natural order of things. And the more weddings and the more pregnancies that occur the more she might feel that, well, just because everyone else is doing it, why should she? She might know this argument holds no logic, but she still considers herself a bit of a rebel, and that's what seems to be keeping her from joining the sisterhood on this unfathomable journey.
It's the uncertainty, too. She used to think people just decided to have children, but now she knows it isn't that simple. There's the heartbreak of close friends who lived through, and will always live with, unspeakable losses, and the despair of people who never become pregnant at all.
She reads Martina Devlin's The Hollow Heart and can't put it down, and she thinks that if "God" doesn't "bless" her then she doesn't know if she would want to try IVF, the path Martina pursued. It makes her realise that she doesn't suffer from what some people call baby hunger. She doesn't know if this is good or bad. Surely she must have at least a baby thirst. If she doesn't, what's wrong with her? Maybe nothing is wrong.
Still, she does have an interest. She enjoyed Anne Enright's Making Babies, which was odd, given that it's not the kind of book, being squeamish, she ever thought she would enjoy. And it's not as if she isn't enjoying charting the pregnancies of those gorgeous and strong and brave women around her who are carrying babies. It's kicking, they say, so she puts a tentative hand on their bellies and leaps across the room when these things whack the spots where her hand is. They talk of not liking coffee and of their cravings for cheese-and-onion Hula Hoops, and she laughs and says that's as good an excuse as any.
The woman with the bump is almost ready for her baby to arrive, and she speaks of a husband who is turbo-nesting. Every surface has been painted, every shrub clipped, every baby accessory researched and purchased and assembled. The nursery will have a giraffe theme, the animals stuck on to a green square beside the cot, which he painted. The lady with the bump is bemused, and sometimes can't sleep, and she still can't quite get her head around what's going to happen.
Her unpregnant friend appoints herself chief researcher and discovers some important information about Caesarean births. You have to wear these dreadful tight stocking yokes. And you'd better remind them to give you the baby to hold afterwards. And get the catheter out as quickly as you can, because it reduces the chance of a bladder infection. Knowledge being power, these vital pieces of information improve the mood of the woman with the bump. But not as much as sending her husband out to buy pairs of industrial-sized pants for her to wear after the baby comes. The baby! Somehow the nine months preceding the event have not prepared her for this.
Another friend avec bump is admitted early to hospital with pre-eclampsia. She will be induced, but more worrying than the birth is the fact that her husband has gone strange on her, talking more about the World Cup and garden centres than their baby. But she laughs, knowing he'll come around when the baby - the baby! - arrives.
The girl who is starting to feel left out knows she might feel even more left out when these deliveries arrive. She worries about always being on the outside looking in. She thinks about this part of life's magic sailing past her like a ship she can't be sure she wants to board. Someone tells her it's about immortality, about leaving a mark on the world. She doesn't have that desire. Not now, anyway. Worst would be if she developed a desire only when it was too late.
Then James is born to Mand and Brian. And, two hours later, Charlie to Fin and Mick. And the girl who felt left out is bowled over and has to think it through again.
