Lynn Ferguson - Before Fergus 

 

Hi. Oh, come on. Who wouldn't want to be snuggling with Lenny Kravitz? [audience chuckle] So, this accent is Scottish, if you're wondering, I'm not actually from Scotland. I'm really from Westchester [audience laughter] and I just put on this to give me the edge, not really. No edge, no Lenny. Anyway, a friend of mine is Bosnian and he married a Serbian and together they had a child. They had to flee their country because their child, being of mixed race was in danger by just being. They called their son Trim, which means courage. My friend said he called his son courage because he fell as soon as the child was born. And that he'd lost all of his own courage and that anything that he'd fought for in his previous life had gone. And now he'd fight for nothing but the life of that child. 

 

I've thought about that a lot since I've had my son. About the things that I've lost. I thought that maybe I should have called him dress sense or whole night’s sleep. [audience laughter] Or the ability to watch a grownup movie the whole way through. Then I settled for peace of mind. I was 37 when I first fell pregnant. I mean, I didn't-- You know what? I didn't fall pregnant. There wasn't some incident with a sidewalk and a flip flop. I did stuff. I got pregnant. I was 37, you understand? But the point is, I'd lived a bit, but suddenly, after 20 years of self-imposed hedonism, I found myself unable to smoke, unable to drink alcohol and taking a little sabbatical from patty, caffeine and soft cheese. The discovery wasn't the kind of romantic one you get in black and white movies. I had been touring France on the back of a motorcycle with my husband when I started to feel a bit unwell. Now a word of advice, if you're feeling sick, right, don't do it 80 miles an hour, leather pants one end, crash helmet in the other in a country where they eat snails because they can. 

 

So, we arrive back home, my husband decides he wants some takeout food. I have this bizarre thing where I want to do a pregnancy test, it's positive. So, my husband arrives back with his little brown paper bag to be greeted with the immortal phrase, “Put your curry down, sweetheart. [audience laughter] Something really big I have to tell you.” You know, I've heard it said that you feel most like a woman when you're pregnant. It's complete rubbish, it's not so, I felt most like a beached whale. [audience laughter] And it's like a completely bizarre thing because you suddenly find yourself entirely responsible for this other person, and this other person has only got you. And so even though the two of you are together like 24 hours a day, it's not like you can just go to a bar and have a discussion about it. 

 

But before I got pregnant, my greatest fear about getting run down by a car was that I wouldn't be wearing matching underwear. But after I got pregnant, the whole idea of getting run over by a car took on a whole different meaning. Never mind the eating for two, it's the kind of thinking for two that wears you out. There was a lot of difficulty around my pregnancy, firstly because I was 37. Now, 37 is considered quite an old age to be having your first child. So, anybody here who's 36 and thinking about becoming a parent, get your skates on. So, in fact, in the medical profession they define it as clinical geriatric and I am not even joking, right? So almost as soon as everybody agreed that I was technically in the family way, they decided that I should have an amniocentesis. Now, an amniocentesis is like an invasive test. They put a needle into the fluid here, the amniotic fluid, and it can tell you whether the baby has Down syndrome or not. But there's also a 1% risk that it will cause damage to the fetus or the fetus will miscarry. 

 

Now, you see, I'm like, totally not against risk. I think it's a matter of choice. And I like risk and I'm completely and utterly pro-choice, but there was no way to me that I figured that they were going to do it, you know, I mean, it wasn't the baby's fault that I was 37, that was entirely on me. That was my decision. So, I was like, “No.” But at every appointment it would come up about the amniocentesis. And so, I started, initially, I would kind of deal with it. You know, that way when you don't want to have coffee with someone, when you go, “Oh, dare the amniocentesis. We'll do. I can't do it this week, though. [audience laughter] Maybe next week maybe. Oh, no, my mother's coming, no, I can't do that.” 

 

But as they became more insistent about it, I kind of felt I had too. So, I was like, “Can this test tell me whether this child will be a jerk? [audience laughter] Can your test tell me whether this kid is going to be one of those really screamy ones that annoys the hell out of everybody on airplanes? Can your test tell me whether this small, tiny growing human being will mature into a fully grown adult who has some horrific affinity with Peruvian pan flute music?” [audience laughter] Do you know what I mean? Because I'm worried about Down syndrome, I’m hands up, but I'm pregnant and I'm worried about a lot of things, so thanks very much and everything, but no. 

 

Then came the 20-week scan. We were told we were having a boy. Then the ladies scanning the baby said that my son had statistically a very large head. I looked across at my husband for the first time, I swear, noticing his statistically large head. [audience laughter] I silently cursed love for being blind. She told me I was 37, I knew that. Then scanning the baby's head, she said there were choroid plexus cyst all down one side of the baby's brain. Okay, that wasn't really something I was expecting. We were told that everything was going to be fine in that way when you just know it's not. And we had to wait for a specialist. 

 

So, the specialist we went to see, she told us we were having a boy. We knew that. She told me I was 37. I know. She said the baby had a statistically large head. [audience laughter] Then she said that the choroid plexus cysts were a problem. We'd kind of guessed that. And then scanning the baby again, she said that there was a vessel missing on the umbilical cord. She said we needed to do the test, but because I'd waited so long, they didn't want to do an amnio, they wanted to do something called a Cordial, which is pretty much the same brand as an amnio. They insert a big needle into the womb and they take a little bit off the umbilical cord and that can tell them what's going on with the baby. 

 

Now, this is an umbilical cord, right? That they have just told me isn't fully functioning. We didn't even need a discussion for the decision. I was like, okay, right. The Down syndrome thing, it's not exactly what we planned, okay. And I know it's going to be difficult, probably for us and for him in ways that I don't even know yet, but actually, personally, I think there are worse things than being Down syndrome. I mean, being down syndrome doesn't mean you're a bad person, does it? So, I said no. But then that's when they told me that Down syndrome was off the table. And what we were talking about now was Edwards, a syndrome that means the baby will either die in the womb or within the first year of life. 

 

You know what? [scoffs] We'd had so many scans, and I'd seen my son. I'd seen his heart, seen the inside of his eyes. I'd seen his hands and his feet. And in fact, during one of the scans, he'd held his hand out to the front of my body as if to say, “Will you go away? I'm busy. Do not disturb.” I'd felt my son move inside my body. Do you know what? What did it matter whether he had a disorder or not and if he was going to die? We're all going to die, right? So, we should meet first. 

 

It was my son, and he needed me. He was depending on me to make the right decision, so I said no. We had no choice but to change hospitals. After they offered me a termination at 25 weeks. It became really clear that they wanted to win a battle, and I just wanted to see my boy. At precisely 35 weeks and five days, my son decided it was time to be born. My husband drove us to the hospital in our car, neither of us talking about what lay ahead. The conversation made up of the same four phrases. “Are you okay?” “Yep.” “You do know I love you?” “Yep.” The birth process was the true definition of laborious. My husband waited and gave me water and held my hand. And the midwives were brilliant. They were really patient and reassuring. “It would be okay,” they said. Everything was really early, but it would be okay. I have no idea how long labor lasted, but eventually, after one final push, my son appeared, shot out in fact, doing a kind of handbrake turn on the table as he did so he was purple in color, and my husband cut the cord. But whereas before there had been noise and bustle and shouting, suddenly there was silence. It was like the whole world had gone underwater. 

 

The door burst open and people in white coats came in. They bundled my son over onto a metal table where they hurriedly tried to resuscitate him. I had failed my son. [scoffs] He was depending on me and I had failed him. And the whole world was underwater. Then suddenly he choked, gagged, coughed up something and started to breathe. And the people in the white coats wandered off. And with my husband standing next to me, they handed me my son. He was perfect. [chuckles] “Fine,” they said, “He's absolutely fine.” [audience laughter] 

 

My son looked up at me. He was curious. He was amazing. I was so, so very tired. He looked up at me as if to say, “Whew. That was all a bit of a trial.” [audience laughter] So, so very sleepy. “I am so glad you're here,” I said. My son is 10 years old now and he's still perfect some of the time. [audience laughter] And like his father, he still has a statistically large head. [audience laughter] And I haven't seen my Bosnian friend for such a long time, but I often wonder how he's getting on in his self-imposed exile. I called my son Fergus. In Irish, it means the right choice, but it has a different meaning in Scottish, it means courage too. Thank you.