In the Sticks: Abortion is more than just saying goodbye to a bean

WHAT I haven't mentioned amid the dangers of oversexed Jerseys and chook population explosions is the one thing that has been totally dominating our lives for a month: our own possible population explosion.

I didn't really need the little blue line in the second window to tell me I was pregnant. It has admittedly been a long time since Bunny was a nice, controllable being inside me, but I hadn't forgotten the day-long feeling of being on a small boat in the Bay of Biscay in a force eight gale. "Morning sickness" makes it sound like a genteel little malaise that makes you want to sit in a pink bed jacket and sip weak tea for an hour - not the sort of all-embracing nausea that an Aussie truck driver gets after 20 stubbies and a bucket of duff prawns.

But even with the sickness and the completely disastrous timing - 100,000 words to write, a couple of acres to cultivate, a mortgage to pay, two soon-to-be horrible teenagers to bring up - I couldn't help being stupidly pleased that I was up the duff, basically joyful that our love had made something as good as a baby.

Of course, right from the blue line, right from the first chunder, I knew we couldn't keep it. Even with my best mate telling me how babies "choose their parents", how "a baby is always a good thing" (yeah, like the 10th baby born to a Sudanese mummy in a drought, sure), I knew that just a year down the road from my divorce, with a load of responsibilities and griefs on my back bigger than a Bactrian camel's two humps, a baby would be a big, fat, final straw.

So off I went to get an abortion - let's be straight here, and stuff that euphemism "termination" - in grown-up-woman-making-sensible-decision mode. I didn't expect the first obstacle: a female GP who has a big problem with abortion.

"You realise there must be a medical reason for abortion," she said, as if abortion were something you did to relieve the boredom on a wet Tuesday afternoon. I gave up with that route and went straight to a family planning clinic, where I met the second unexpected obstacle.

"You're a lot bigger than your dates suggest. I think you may be carrying twins." I managed to out of the appointment and into my car before collapsing into tears. Against the odds of contraception and my age, not only had we conceived, but conceived something as special as twins. How could I possibly "get rid of" twins? Maybe we had been chosen.

Now, just consider the logic of this. One baby is a disaster so I get shot of it. Two babies - double the disaster - I proposed keeping. Those hormones... they make your brain go to jelly from day one.

I was spared the consequences of my own ridiculous logic (incidentally also shared by Doug) because the scan showed only one little bean of a thing. That made me feel better, too - it was a bean of a thing, not a baby, nothing with a heartbeat or a head end or tail end. Just a teeny blob.

Then: obstacle three. I had to see a counsellor. I didn't want to be rude. She seemed a nice woman. So I didn't say, "Look, I'm 40 years old. This is what I've decided, OK? And I don't want to talk about it." So I talked about responsibility, about being sole earner, about kids still grief-stricken, about being too old. And against the bright, shiny idea of a baby all my words seemed so jaded and cynical. I left her office feeling as if I'd chosen not to have this child because it didn't fit in with my tax year.

But the date for the deeds (two deeds, in fact, as I'd gone for a medical abortion, not the one-suck-and-it's-gone sort) were settled. I just had to wait a week and turn up, and it would be done.

That's when I hit obstacle four: in shops I began to feel myself turn white, and lean against the counter.

"Are you all right, love?" the assistant would ask. When it had happened with my two other pregnancies, I'd smiled wanly. "Yes, I'm fine. Just pregnant." "When's it due?" she'd say then, smiling back. Nothing to say now. "Yes. Just a bug." The kids in the morning told me I looked ill; they were worried. If only I could tell them: "It's your little brother or sister." All I could say was, "I'll be fine soon." So I spent all week hoping for a miracle, a lottery win that would make this baby a sane decision instead of insane irresponsibility, or a sudden reversal of the last 10 years that would put '68 not '58 on my birth certificate.

But there wasn't a miracle or a time-warp. And as of yesterday, I'm no longer pregnant. The gale has gone down to a force five and by next week I may get into some normal-size bras. I can work without bursting into tears.

On the condom packet it doesn't say "100 per cent effective", so somebody is going to get pregnant. It was us. We made a very hard, very sad choice, Doug and I, and we look at each other with a new sort of tenderness. But to everyone else, it's invisible. If we'd had 20 kids while living in a caravan and drinking meths someone would have been prepared to celebrate my being pregnant with yet another. But decide not to have a child, and no one is allowed to commiserate.