Free The Choice by Bernadette Bohan Page B

went to the bathroom I told myself not to be surprised if I was bleeding. However, when the morning sickness started around the fifth week, I began to believe that this little embryo was really there, making its presence felt, and I felt a small shiver of pleasure through my anxiety and nausea.
I didn’t talk about it to the children. Richard seemed to have forgotten for now, and since I showed no outward signs of being pregnant, Sarah was not aware of anything.
They were at each other in those first few weeks though more than ever, and it seemed as if I was constantly breaking up fights. Maybe I was less involved with them, perhaps I left them to their own devices more than usual. Certainly I was wrapped up in myself and my fears, and I know how my moods can affect them. I would wake up each morning, throw up, then have a shower, running my hands over my body – checking for any signs that the cancer was back. Once dressed, I would put on my Happy Mummy face, have some dry toast for breakfast and get the kids ready for school. It was only when I returned home that I would sink into a chair and weep. I was so full of dread, so afraid that my pregnancy would bring back the cancer. It was as if a dark shadow was waiting in the wings to envelop me. It felt so close I could almost reach out and touch it.
Gerard kept me going through those first few weeks like never before. I cannot put a number on the times I would call him at work and offload my worries of the day. He always had time to listen, and always offered some reassuring words.
‘Bernie, don’t forget that the first few weeks of any pregnancy are like a rollercoaster. You’ve got all those hormones whizzing around your body. They are bound to make you feel more emotional than usual.’
‘I know that’s true, but these are the very hormones that might trigger the lymphoma again.’
‘Listen, we don’t know that for definite. It has always been something the doctors thought was just a possibility. They don’t know everything. I reckon it was caused by that bash from the table. If you find a lump obviously we’ll have to get it sorted, and we’ll face that if we have to. But please don’t go terrifying yourself about things that aren’t there.’
I knew that was true, but at times I just could not stop crying. I felt I was going to be the ruin of our family. We had all been so happy, so fortunate that I had survived the lymphoma. Not a day had gone by since I had finished the steroid treatment that I did not think about cancer and wonder if it would come back. Now, here I was almost actively seeking it. How could I endanger Ger and the kids like this? How could I do something that might take me away from them for ever? How on earth was I going to survive the next eight months of this? It couldn’t be good for the baby if the mother was a nervous wreck – I had read that the adrenalin flooding my system from anxiety and stress could cross the placenta. I willed myself to calm down.
Appointments had been made for me at the same hospital where I had been treated for the lymphoma. I was to go for regular check-ups with the obstetrician, and after each one I was booked in with my oncologist. The twelve-week appointment was looming – the first time I had been back in the hospital since dropping the bombshell.
‘Ger, can you come with me to the hospital next week? I have an appointment to check the baby, then I need to see your man again.’ I couldn’t say his name, I refused to think I might become a cancer patient again.
It seemed odd to be going to a different department, turning down unfamiliar corridors, but once we were through the heavy swing doors of the gynaecology and obstetrics department we might just as well have been in a different world altogether. There was the sound of lively chatter, and parenting magazines and children’s toys filled the waiting areas. Everyone seemed