Whether it's twins or not, whether it's good news or not, after the first ultrasound scan some fathers-to-be fall into a bit of a decline. This Post-Ultrasound Depression, or PUD, as doctors don't call it, is surprisingly common. It is characterized by a sudden realization that your life is going to change utterly, and not necessarily in ways that you had planned. The general whooping and hollering that characterize life as a single man will soon be replaced by early nights and a detailed knowledge of estate cars. These are cliches, I know. They are also true. And this is usually when it all sinks in.
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| Pregnancy In Czech Republic |
My working title for this post was 'Drinking For Two' - a phrase I myself used a lot at about this stage in the first pregnancy. Not that alcohol is the solution to everybody's problems. Some men turn to drugs, others work too hard, and one man heard of who was having an affair with his secretary, sacked her, ended the affair, hired a new secretary and started an affair with her, all in the space of a fortnight. In many ways this could be defined as your first real midlife crisis - unless you've had one before, in which case it's your second.
What might help is a holiday, or some other equally pointless expenditure. Which is where the second main scan, at between 16 and 20 weeks, comes in. This is the dating scan, which will give you Junior's ETA. Dating is, of course, approximate - so approximate, in fact, that the due date is virtually the only day in the next seven months on which you can be certain the baby won't be born. Even so, it has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind. Now you know how much time you have left. If you are planning a holiday or fun of any description, this is the official cut-off point. (Incidentally, airlines won't allow pregnant women to sully their planes after the twenty-fifth week, in case they embarrass all the fat men in business class and give birth in the corridor.) So how about a nice little trip to, say ... Prague?
FATHER L (LESTER): Our son was born in the Czech Republic where we lived in the late nineties. It would be fair to say that the health service had not kept pace with other institutions in embracing the changes brought about by the Velvet Revolution of 1989. This was no bad thing in some respects. Medical treatment was still freely available to all, even us foreigners. But it also meant there was a lack of sentimentality about the style of treatment you received. And there was the distinct feeling that while all women were equal, some were more equal than others when it came to being pregnant. Add this to the Czech propensity for calling a spade a spade and a forceps a forceps, while laughing in the face of pain, and you have a recipe for a memorable pregnancy.
A few months down the pregnancy road Lilith had her latest check-up with the kindly but blunt doctor, whose idea of prenatal care was a regime of cold baths, long mountain hikes and eight pints of beer a day. Lilith returned distraught, having been rigorously informed that her blood test showed that she had a more than 80 per cent likelihood of carrying a Down' s syndrome baby. We had to decide whether to have an amniocentesis.
At the time, central Prague had two maternity hospitals. Friends had babies in both and recommended neither. We went to the nearest, a large late-nineteenth-century pile of terrifying aspect. There Lilith was whisked into a room for the amniocentesis, which I was allowed to witness. But I was not let into the ward where Lilith was put to recover as it was full of girls who had just had abortions. Just what Lilith needed when she was facing the same experience should the test results prove unfavorable.
These results took three weeks to arrive. There was no way they could be processed more quickly, we were told. We would just have to be patient. Unfortunately by this time we knew the sex of our child. Czech is an inflected language and during the scan before the amniocentesis the doctor had referred to our child using the masculine gender. This made the waiting worse. Our son had become suddenly real at the very moment when we were facing the prospect of losing him. The three weeks were a nightmare. Lilith, bravely optimistic, insisted on our arguing about names while I glumly gazed into beer glasses depressing and embarrassing anyone unfortunate enough to come near me. Thankfully at the end of interminable wait the news was good. At last we could look forward to the birth of our son. To find out more, you can check out Pregnancy In Czech Republic.