What Have I Done?!

I may have done something really stupid.

I have an old friend named Pat - a friend that I am very fond of but who also drives me crazy. When I first met her at university, I was deeply impressed. I had actually never met anyone so clever, so deeply intellectual, so assertive and so clear in what she wanted. And she is still all those things.

At the age of 42 years old, she has decided that the right man is never going to turn up. She's had a few relationships, but the men all seemed to be pretty hopeless, so I can see why it didn't work out. And she has gone to a sperm donor clinic and got pregnant by herself.

I know. Doing it the hard way. But I think, in her position, with no good man in sight, I would have done the same thing. I know what it feels like to think that you will never have a child if it is the one thing you ever wanted to do. For me, it felt like death. They might as well have told me that I would die the following day because, frankly, I didn't see the point of going through all those long, barren years I would have left to live with no child.

Anyway, since Pat got pregnant, she has become estranged from her own family. It turns out that she was sexually abused by a neighbour when she was young and that her family, who found about it, did nothing at the time and nothing since. The fact is, she doesn't trust them to help her at a time when she is feeling vulnerable. She doesn't want to be around them herself and she definitely doesn't want them around her baby.

I listened to the whole story and thought about how horrible it would be to have a baby alone. I thought of my long labour, and how much worse it would have been without my Big Dude and my mum with me. I thought about those early weeks with a new baby when I wondered if I had made the worst mistake of my life. And I felt that I just couldn't leave Pat to do it all alone.

Somehow I found myself volunteering to have her at our place from late in the pregnancy through to the first weeks after the baby is born.

For a while there, I was very happy with the plan, thinking about how nice it would be, two old friends together with our babies. I even stopped brooding about my stupid job and reflected cheerfully on how their flexibility about my hours will hep us during that period. I was deeply moved when she said "Oh, I'm so grateful. You are the only person I really feel safe with".

But now, I am waking up to the reality of what I have committed to. I don't really like having house guests for longer than a week and this could be up to three months. Not to mention that extra house guest who will cry during the night, want to be fed every few hours and need its bottom wiped.

And of course, I am remembering the thousand little incidents of petty irritations with Pat over the years - she's so brilliant intellectually and yet so impractical about simple things. She can never admit that she's wrong about anything. She is already conducting running battles with her obstetrician over the handling of her diabetes. Also, she's very disorganised. She runs late all the time, she makes huge messes, she starts complicated projects and never finishes them - I'm very structured and that kind of thing gets on my nerves.

She won't be here until mid-July and already I can't decide whether I am excited about the whole project or dreading it.

Fuck. What have I done?!