Ill Conceived Plans

Hello Baby

WHAT was that old saying about a watched kettle never boiling?

Sarah was starting to think it also applied to babies – yes her bump was growing steadily and the doctor was pleased with her progress but four weeks dragged, she was 18 weeks and it felt like she'd been pregnant for years without anything to show for it.

The problem was, you couldn't have the big all seeing scan until 18 weeks. So the four weeks from 14 to that magical number had moved at snail's pace, until she was starting to believe she'd never see Bean face to face, starting to believe she was just getting fatter and fatter with no baby in sight. She'd obviously swallowed a balloon that was slowly inflating and not put a bun in the oven at all.

She was getting bigger, now she just wanted to see why; who was in there, what the fuss was all about and most importantly if this little individual was healthy? It felt healthy – she'd started to feel distinctive movements now, it was becoming real. Not real enough to start buying things for, no that was tempting fate, but it was all real enough.

Sarah wasn't the most patient of women at the best of time and this wasn't a Christmas gift you could secretly unwrap early (which she'd been caught doing on numerous occasions), or a book that you could flip to the end of. Everything had to be done in an order and she had to wait.

She just hadn't expected it to take so long to get to this point. At 35 life had started to speed up and she's started to say things like "where did the year go" – like people from the older generation had when she was young. She'd laughed then like young people do but it had been happening to her. Though now she'd discovered a way to slow things down – pregnancy.

So it was almost a shock to be here finally; belly bared, cold gel smeared across her skin and some strange woman sending a magic wand over her womb.

Excitement bubbled in her stomach – or it could have just been Bean who was, if the jerky movements of the health professional were any indication, tearing around like a mad chook avoiding being photographed like its life depended on it.

She had to laugh (which earned her disdain from her wand-wielding captor) – this child would be more like her than its dad then? She couldn't think of Dane ever avoiding a camera with such vigour – other than being papped. Was being scanned like being papped if you were a foetus? It was certainly an unwanted intrusion into your privacy – here you were sucking your thumb or stuffing your fingers up your nose and suddenly your quiet, gurgly world was being invaded. Yeah that would be a little off-putting – no wonder Bean was heading for the hills (or mountains as her breasts were becoming thanks to the hormones) or at least as far away as it could from the intrusion.

Although maybe Bean was more like Dane than she thought (not just because it was currently mammary gland-bound – Dane was a breast man – he always had been; she'd called him on it from-time to time, though mostly she'd just eye-roll when his eyes wandered south when he thought no-one was looking).

No Bean was proving flighty, busy, like Dane.

Sarah liked stillness, but that word didn't seem to be in Bean's vocabulary yet (not that any words were) but she sensed that the little speed demon in her womb was taking after it's excitable, never sit still father.

Father.

Shit, that still seemed foreign and slightly out of place when used to reference Dane – as foreign as "mother" was when referring to Sarah Charlotte Huntington.

Right now, as their child was avoiding the "press" it's father would be voluntarily standing in front of a camera somewhere in Eastern Europe, in the cold, filming his latest movie – not a hair out of place, bouncing up and down on his toes between takes, charming the crew and generally living up to his role as a Golden Globe nominee.