The Daily Telegraph

How do I tell him he’s about to be a dad?

This week: Telling my partner I’m pregnant did not go as I had imagined

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I’m a big one for imagining how things might go. Rehearsing every possible scenario in my mind. And I’ve learned this: they always go in the one way I didn’t imagine they would.

This especially goes for the huge, life-changing events; teenagers hanging up wet towels without first being shouted at; getting five likes on Instagram; or finding out that you are growing a human at the age of 42, when you already have three teenagers, a new partner of two years and a divorce from a previous 20-year marriage, as yet unfinalise­d… or even started.

In my version of the moment I learned I was pregnant in my 40s with the child of the man I love, we are out for dinner somewhere we can’t afford – so anywhere – I have subtly not drunk any of my wine, or ordered anything with blue cheese, raw meat or diphtheria in it.

I gaze across the table at him wistfully (“wistful” seems to be key in all such situations), hold his hands, look into his blue eyes, and whisper, “This is the most horrendous cliché of the moment a woman tells a man she’s pregnant.”

In another version, I do the wistful eye-gazing and say something romantic about buns and ovens. He kisses me like George Clooney kisses Michelle Pfeiffer in One Fine Day, orders champagne that I can’t drink, and tells me he is the happiest man on earth. We have starter and pudding, I cry and get mascara on his clean shirt, and we hug until there are no taxis left and we have to walk home, which is hard because I need to stop three times to throw up.

In reality, though, this is what happens: I leave the café where I’ve just done a positive pregnancy test. It’s raining. He is sitting on a damp bench.

“All good?”

“Yep, fine.” I sit down, but don’t look at him.

The pavement is grey. The bench is brown. My coffee is murky. Anything wistful or romantic seems to have taken a rain-check. “Sure you’re OK?” I’m holding my bag on my lap. My gut suddenly takes over. Or maybe it’s my uterus.

“I’m pregnant.”

It’s raining harder. I am now pregnant and wet. I wonder if he might have got up and walked away, but decide not to look. “You’re…”

“Yep.”

“Oh my…”

That’s it. He is going to leave me. I wish I’d never gone to Superdrug. I wish I’d never weed on that stick. I wish I…

Someone is holding my hand. He is putting my bag on the wet path, turning my shaking knees towards him and pulling me across the bench, giving me a wedgie in the process.

“That’s amazing. Isn’t it?” He is really gripping my hands now, possibly hoping to squeeze a small part of our baby out of them, just to check it’s really there.

I look up at last. Straight at him. Straight at the father-to-be of my fourth baby – and his first. Straight at the man whose child I have thought about so many times since we first met, dreamed of, almost fallen in love with, and cried many tears over, believing this could never happen because of me being so Very Old And Decrepit, and him having consumed so much alcohol for 10 years he probably had pickled sperm.

“Yes,” I say at last. “It, is. Absolutely flipping amazing!” I start to cry, I’m so happy. Happy and… suddenly terrified. Another baby. Now?

Having done this three times now, I know what’s involved; pain; exhaustion, post-natal depression, being skint for a decade, relationsh­ip annihilati­on. But now probably isn’t the time to mention all this.

For now, we hold the moment, in the rain, together, and soak it all up. Deliriousl­y happy.

Next week: What have I done?

‘I leave the café where I’ve just done a positive pregancy test. It’s raining. He is sitting on a damp bench’

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