What did he really want? I still don’t know. Maybe, like me, he was also a master of self-delusion and denial. We could have started a club, with badges and everything. We’d have members all over the world. Much like “Bobs International”, a worldwide organisation of men called Bob. I swear it’s true. I saw it on TV once, years ago, and have never forgotten it. Why not Petes International? Or Dicks Incorporated? Plenty of potential members for that club. I know a few.

We were both young and stupid. To think I could will something so fundamentally wrong into being right. Then again, it’s not necessarily an age thing. I’ve seen many a forty-year-old divorcee squeezing herself into jeans two sizes too small on a Saturday night, desperately hoping it would help her nab Mr Right. Or Mr Good-Enough-For-Tonight, at least. Like them, my judgment on matters romantic has always sucked, big time.

W has changed a lot over the years, and I’m proud of the dad he has become. But back then I could have strangled him to death for being such a giant doofus. He meant well, but just couldn’t give me the support I needed. I couldn’t rely on him. I was on my own, basically. Again.

Everything fell apart a couple of months before Maria was born. After weeks of crying, ultimatums, discussions about money and the lack thereof, I’d finally had enough. We broke up. I gave back his enormous diamond ring, and got on with the business of bringing yet another child into my parents’ home.

It killed me to do that. The idea of going crawling back to Mom and Dad (pregnant again, for fuck’s sake!) made me absolutely sick. But I had no choice. That’s probably why I stayed with him for as long as I did.

My guilt about doing that to my parents still weighs heavily on my mind. I don’t know how to let go of it. Maybe I won’t ever be free of it. God, Is there anything I don’t feel guilty about? Some days it seems like everything is my fault – from my children’s dubious father figures to global fucking warming. Probably not a healthy outlook. Somebody, tell me how to change that, please. Hopefully someone who doesn’t charge by the hour?

***

Voluntary retrenchment is a beautiful thing. When I was seven months pregnant, I left my job with the New Boss Man and had six weeks at home before Maria was born. Oh, what a wonderful time! I loved being home with Steven, taking him to school and spending time with him in the afternoons. Just being around and present when he needed me was an amazing privilege. I’d dearly love to have that again.

It was immensely liberating to know that I didn’t have to go back to that soul-destroying, sick office again. Colleagues still phoned me several times a week, though: “Where are the waybills? “How do I send a fax?” “What happened to that yellow Post-It note I left on my desk six months ago?” “Why is my head so far up my arse?”

Maybe they just missed me. I’d left them a detailed manual with instructions on everything from how to replace printer cartridges to how the CEO took his coffee. I doubt they even looked at it. Ha! I loved the fact that I never had to see any of them again.

I waddled around the house for six weeks, growing steadily more enormous. I was much bigger than I’d been with Steven. I just seemed to spread out everywhere. Possibly also had something to do with the fact that I had more money than I did when pregnant with Steven – money for crucial stuff like McDonald’s and Nik Naks. Mmmm. Yum. It was the height of summer and I was damn hot. Towards the end I, couldn’t do much except sleep and sweat and eat ice by the tray-load. Finally, just as I thought I would burst if my skin stretched any further, I went into pathetic, weak, laughable labour one Monday afternoon.

Concerned that this labour would progress unnoticed and as rapidly as the first and I’d end up giving birth in the car, I took myself off to the hospital way too early. I mean really early. Embarrassingly early.

The nurses laughed at me when I arrived, suitcase in hand, with almost no contractions. They told me to go home and come back later that night, when the labour was more advanced and I had something real to show them.

I refused. Not a damn was I going to leave that hospital without a baby. So I stayed, much to their annoyance. I was having contractions, but they were slight and manageable. Uneventful hours dragged on, and I began to realise that this time would be different.

Matters eventually did progress. I’d arrived at the hospital at 6pm, and by 11pm, I was finally in pain. Not a minute too soon. I was just about to admit that it must have been a false alarm. The pain of the contractions was much worse than it had been with Steven, and again I was having no pain relief. This time, however, I would gladly have gotten high on that happy gas if someone had offered it. Around 2am I called the nurse.

“Please, isn’t there some gas or something I can have?” I must have sounded pretty desperate. She nearly laughed in my face.

“No, my girl. We’ve got nothing here. Come on, it’s not so bad. Everybody else is doing fine.”

Government hospitals. Hmph. Everybody else was doing fine because they had no choice. I don’t think the labour ward had so much as a Disprin to offer.

Beds were in short supply, so I was labouring in the maternity ward itself, in full view of three other women who had just given birth. I walked up and down the passage for hours, bending double as each contraction gripped me.

I’m afraid to say, W was being no help at all. I’d prepared him for this. I’d told him how it worked, given him all the information he could have needed. But he still had no clue what was going on. He was completely panicked and seemed on the verge of tears all the time. When you’re in the clutches of a side-splitting contraction, it’s no time to be making other people feel better. He was pissing me off, big time.