Sarah Bilston - Bed Rest

Bed Rest

Sarah Bilston

For Daniel and Maisie

Contents

havent written a diary since I was twelve. Wait, thats not

true.

Its now been seven hours since we left the doctors office.

This is the first morning of my first full day on bed rest.

Rereading yesterdays diary entry, it strikes me I am not

Day three of bed rest. I woke up this morning and thought

Why is no one coming to see me? Ive had at least a dozen

Toms been at work for over three hours already, but so far

I cant bear it, I dont think I can bear it. This morning I

awoke

Slept all day, watched TV.

Slept, watched TV, slept some more.

Tom working. Watched TV. Cried. Ate cookies.

Tom working again. Cried hysterically. Ate cookies.

Several important things happened this morning

Just as I was about to devour my lunchtime smoked

Jeanie is coming tomorrowI cant wait. Only thirty-three hours to go

I didnt sleep last nightmaybe Im still preoccupied with Briannas

crisis

Best things about having Jeanie here

Jeanies gone to have drinks with a school friend who recently moved to

We just got back from the doctors officeJeanie took me this week

Jeanie left at four oclock yesterday afternoon for JFK.

In the evening

Ive had twenty minutes sleep so far tonight.

In the darkness I listen to his heartbeat. Lub-dup. Lub-dup.

Lub-dup.

Less than twenty-four hours ago I was at home. Thirty-six hours ago Jeanie

Ive just had a nightmare. I dreamed I was in the hospital, in

serious

Achingly tired but cant sleep. Ive been thinking a lot about

Its a bright sunny day today; the sky is clear, cloudless, endlessly

blue.

Mrs. Gianopoulou came to visit this morning, bringing spicy sausage, red

I woke up at 3 A.M. in a vast, sweaty panic. I have just

Diapering 100

Alexis and Mrs. G have just been here to read the letter I

drafted

Ive just been checking the status of my packages, and according

to

My first memory of Alison is from the day my mother brought

I remember reading, in a class on feminist theory at university, a book

My party starts in an hour. The caterers are in the sitting room

The party was quite an event. My failures were numerous and

varied.

Tom and I met on a warm late-September Sunday afternoon four years ago

What are your dreams, Q? This from Alison, over dinner last

evening

Its not true that I dont think about work. Brianna keeps me

Its incredibly windy today, and the sky is heavy and overcast.

Tom left for Tucson in the early hours of the morning; hes going

to

At least the baby responded well to the nonstress test and ultrasound

today.

I woke up this morning and glanced over at the empty place beside

me

Im thirty-three weeks pregnant today. Tom has been gone for four days.

Alisons flight departs from JFK at 9 P.M. this evening.

She left here

I took PPE at university, but I had always wanted to study literature.

I was watching an elderly couple eating dinner together in the

building

This morning I went to Dr. Weinbergs office for another ultrasound.

Lottie, an old friend of mine from London, recently sent us a fairy-tale

My stomach is scored with purplish stretch marks. I seem to have developed

Theres something I need to discuss with you, Tom said to

me

I stumbled into the kitchen an hour ago to find a note propped

up

But there are other ways to pursue my ends. Ive spent the morning

drafting

I perched illicitly (and precariously) on the window bench for twenty minutes

A delighted phone call from Brianna this morning. She spent the

weekend

My dear girl, should you be eating quite so many tarts?

Thank God, shes launched herself into the streets of Manhattan armed with

Im thirty-five weeks pregnant today, a huge milestone, a day Ive been

A phone call from Jeanie this morning, just after breakfast.

My mother was

The ultrasound this morning showed another fluid level dip, which is upsetting.

Today my mother told me the most extraordinary story.

She was chatting

Lara called early this morning to say that Mark has packed up all his

Since breakfast, Ive been doing fetal kick counts, the other bit

of

I am having a baby in a week.

Tom left at 5:30 this morning, slamming the door viciously behind

him.

My father was a short man, not much more than five feet eight. He had

I have another nonstress test, ultrasound, and fetal growth check

scheduled

Wheres a paper bag when you need one? Im in the hospital

again

Last night I was allowed out of bed for the first time in eleven

weeks.

A visit this afternoon from Brianna and Mark.

I havent written a diary since I was twelve. Wait, thats not true. I kept one for about six months when I started dating Mike Novak. I still have the notebook somewhere, a scruffy green ring-binder half filled with teenage angst about Mike and his terrible kissing and his lamentable desire for a student nurse named Susie.

Writing a diary seems like an admission you have nothing better to do. Its the life story of a person who doesnt have a life.

And frankly, Im not sure that anybodys existence is worth recording for posterity, unless youre a world leader or a Theatrical Great or something. Maybe not even then. I read my grandmothers diary once, it was all about the weather and her trips to the Womens Institute and the progress of her runner beans. Id rather leave no record of my existence than that. Id rather my life was a big blank page, so my future granddaughter can imagine me as a toothsome lovely whose youth was one long succession of olive-skinned, silk-shirted men.

On the other hand, when you really dont have anything better to do, writing a diary is as good a way of passing the time as any other. It makes the hours and minutes seem less of a vac-uum I thought, I felt. I existed. I suppose Ill just have to hide this book from any future granddaughters.

This afternoon, I left my office early, just before three. I work atwait, why am I telling myself this? I know where I work.

Time for the first admission. Im an anxious obsessive. I hate gaps and omissions; I have to record everything. That green ring-binder started out normally enough (Mike Novak has a tanned chest and nipples that flush brown when I pull them with my teeth) but by page five it was more like a scrapbook, filled with lists of the important people in my life (1. Mum. 2. Mike. 3. Our cat) and terrible poetry (Mike has gone and my life is / A dark page / A black night / A bottomless sea / Of / Unequalled Misery). As soon as I get a pen in my hand, or a computer keyboard beneath my fingers, I cant stop myself, there it is, the contents of my brain in black and white, facts and fictions, thoughts, details, imaginings, everything.

And anyway, if Im reading this in fifty years, Ill probably have forgotten things like the name of my law firm. My memory will be going, and itll be really irritating to find that my younger self failed to record the nitpicky details of her life. So here goes.

I work at the law firm of Schuster & Marks, in New York City, on Fifty-fifth and Fifth. Today I locked my office door just before three, leaving the printer spewing out the pages of a brief I need to proofread before tomorrow morning. I flung myself through the heated revolving doors at the front of my building and out into an arctic February afternoon. Fifteen yellow cabs tooled past, their snug passengers watching, emotionlessly, the heavy pregnant woman in a sodden camel coat dancing up and down on the sparkling cold sidewalk (I forgot the important bit, I was twenty-six weeks enceinte on Monday, yesterday). Nothing for it, I thought helplessly, as icy water prickled at my eyelashes. I pulled up my collar, clasped my hands around my enormous belly, and ran the eleven blocks uptown to my obstetricians office through crowds of scurrying pedestrians, their faces stretched taut against the freezing wind.