I Gained A Baby… And Lost A Friend

Christina Quaine and Bethany * bonded over their struggles to conceive. But the friendship couldn’t survive their journeys’ different endings.

WHEN YOU’RE TRYING – and failing – to conceive, there’s great comfort in having someone in your life, apart from your partner, who knows what you’re going through. Who understands the rituals you develop as, month after month, you wait for the results of a pregnancy test.

If I stand here staring at it, I won’t be pregnant. If I go downstairs and casually make a coffee, I definitely will be. If I’m pregnant now, the baby will be born in June. I’ve always wanted a summer baby!

Then there’s always that sharp slap of disappointment when it’s negative, again, and the voice in your head says: ‘I’d be really happy to have a baby at any time of year, just please let it happen.’

So it was that, four years ago, I found myself trying to get pregnant at the same time as Bethany. We’d first met a few years earlier through a mutual friend, and it was one of those friendships you form in your thirties that’s lovely and surprising and life-affirming. I liked her instantly. She was warm, fun, generous – a positive force. We shared a lot of interests (cosy knitwear, red nail polish, ’90s R&B) and soon we were at the same life stage: both a few years into our marriages and ready to have a child.