Free A Mother's Story by Rosie Batty Page A

choose a name that worked well with my surname, Batty, a name that had been a source of great amusement to various people throughout my life. (Greg wanted the baby to have his surname but I insisted it be Batty.)
    When I mentioned the name Trent to my cousin and grandmother in England, they were horrified. They thought it was a terrible idea. I decided at that point it was better not to involve others in the name deliberations. And so, whenever anyone asked, I would simply tell them I was planning to call my child Norman. It usually shut them up.
    While I loved being pregnant, there were certain things that made me feel sad. My pregnancy, while pleasant, was not like the ones my friends had had. I was under a lot of financial pressure. On a single income, pregnant and with a mortgage to service, I was never going to be able to afford to take much in the way of maternity leave. I looked into refinancing the mortgage and my car loan. I did the sums and determined the longest maternityleave I could afford to take was going to be four months. I couldn’t even afford maternity clothing. Everything was given to me by friends – even my maternity bra.
    Greg, who continued to visit occasionally and help out where he could around the property, didn’t help matters. When I mentioned I was worried about taking time off to have the baby and wished I was financially secure enough to take a proper amount of maternity leave, he retorted, ‘If you think I’m going to work while you sit on your fat arse having coffee with your friends, you have another thing coming.’ This made me really upset, and I vowed to never ask him for anything again. It served to confirm what I already knew only too well: that I was going to be dealing with this baby alone, financially and emotionally.
    I can’t remember any violent outbursts from Greg as the pregnancy progressed. I was starting to get the impression that he responded violently or with abuse only when he was made to feel inadequate. He used his so-called spiritual pursuits as a convenient excuse for the fact he couldn’t hold down a job and therefore buy any of the things a normal father might seek to buy for his unborn child. Rather than admit he was incapable of providing for his child, it was more convenient for him to say he was not interested in material possessions.
    We never had a specific discussion about the role Greg would play in the baby’s life, but it was always clear that Greg would be involved in his son’s life. I continued to make it clear to him that I had no interest in us being a couple, that, while I welcomed his interest in the pregnancy and would always encourage him to have a relationship with his child, there was no question of us pretending at playing happy families. What had gone on between us already made me certain that the best relationship to have with Greg was one at arm’s length. We were friends; wehad inadvertently created a baby that I had decided to keep and intended to raise on my own. It seemed simple enough to me.
    Greg accompanied me to parenting classes, which I was happy with. He was the father and he clearly wanted to have an active role in our baby’s life – and I had no objection to that. He was jobless around this time, still based in St Kilda and floating between the Hare Krishnas and the Mormon Church there. He seemed to spend a lot of our time together ensuring I understood how spiritually superior he was to me. I would have preferred he focused less on his religious enlightenment and more on getting a job.
    Since I had fallen pregnant, Greg had taken an unusual interest in the food I was putting in my mouth. (It is perhaps noteworthy that he had no similar concern for whether I was exhausted or stressed from having to work every hour God gave to keep up mortgage payments and singlehandedly maintain a household.)
    â€˜Are you eating properly, McBatty?’ he would ask me. ‘Plenty of fruit