I've just had a conversation in the kitchen – and it's the usual mayhem. The conversation, conducted in the midst of Harry attacking your thigh with a spatula, Jack yelling for "more Born to Run", Polly doing a handstand and Alice chewing the dog lead, went something like this: Me: Tam, do you mind if I write my Men of Letters letter [for a stage show about the lost art of letter writing] to you? It's for the woman who changed my life.
You: Not at all, that sounds really nice.
Me: (continuing, injudiciously) I actually meant to write you a letter in March. When Alice was born. To say thanks. For everything you've been through, you know, with the pregnancies and births and stuff.
You: Really? You were going to do that? That's so nice … (pause) … But you … didn't do that?
Me: (sensing trouble now) Um … no.
You: And now you'll write a different letter. One you'll read out. So it's for me but it's also a little bit for you too, yeah?
Me: Um … so can I?
Dear Tamsin,
The letter I should have written earlier hangs on these two words – thank you. Thank you for our four beautiful children. A fortnight ago, we were marvelling at our seven-month-old Alice, who is at that ridiculous stage of silken fat rolls and beaming smiles and flappy arms, and you mused out loud, "Can you believe I grew this thing with my body?" Polly added – generously, I thought, "And Dad, he grew her too." Your response: "He contributed half of ONE BLOODY CELL!"
Your mental and physical toughness over these eight years has been extraordinary. I remember the 2006 World Cup as three of the most exhilarating and happy weeks of my life, but they were probably less exhilarating for you, given you morning-sicked your way around Germany, dropping 10 per cent of your body mass as foetal Polly took hold. It still makes me smile that you lugged a lead blanket onto all our flights, because you'd read on the internet that harmful radiation exposure could occur at higher altitudes.
We learned in that first pregnancy that for you, there's no end to the vomiting. First trimester, second trimester, third trimester, front seat of the car, in labour on the way to the hospital. I think the average gestation for our four has been 38 weeks, and given nausea kicks in at about seven weeks: 38 minus seven, that's 31 weeks of vomiting, times four pregnancies, that's 124 weeks, or 868 days spent vomiting. At an average of 10 vomits a day – more earlier in the pregnancy, fewer later – that comes out at 8680 vomits. You went through that for me, for us, for our family, and I thank you.
The sad truth is that there were actually more vomits than that, because there were more pregnancies than that. We always knew we had what we would call "a keeper" when you were extra sick, but we were unlucky too. Thirteen pregnancies, nine miscarriages – four beyond 10 weeks, after we'd begun to hope. You went through that for me, for us, for our family, and I thank you.
Polly's birth, we would learn later, was smooth sailing, relatively speaking: you experienced nine hours of ridiculous pain, completely beyond the realm of my own experience or comprehension.
We call it "labour", but that doesn't do it justice. I'm pretty sure labour is a word that was chosen by a man. I hate to think what a woman would have named it. Maybe something long and German, with plenty of jagged syllables – frucktenschmerzen or something like that.
There was a small hiccup at Polly's birth, when I forgot the electrodes to the TENS machine, but luckily I raced home from the hospital, ransacked the house, experienced a eureka moment, grabbed my prize, raced back to the hospital and flew through the birthing suite doors, electrodes raised in triumph above my head, ready to be hailed as a hero. I hastily attempted to attach the electrodes but had no luck, which was less surprising when we read the words on the packet, which said "bicycle repair kit"
You were in serious frucktenschmerzen at this point, and I think your exact words were: "What! What! Why! Why! Why do these things always happen to you!" Harry's was a natural birth too, and this time you nailed it. For a few weeks you'd listened to an audio series called Hypnobirthing, and we'd both made fun of sentences such as "I feel my natural anaesthetic flowing through my body."
But two hours into labour, you were hypnobirthing like a hypnochampion, relaxing through contractions, doing everything the hypno-voice-on-thebeach was telling you to do. Meanwhile, the baby did something that wasn't in the spirit of gentle waves rolling onto a beach at sunset. He caused a tear.
You won't love me saying the words "uterine tear" publicly, but that's what it was. It wasn't immediately diagnosed; there was just general concern that the bleeding wouldn't stop. So what was meant to be a simple post-birth operative procedure for retained placenta ended up involving multiple blood transfusions, a near hysterectomy, and 48 hours in intensive care. You went through so much pain that day, major surgery straight after giving birth, and that second night was one of the scariest of my life. You went through it for me, for us, for our family, and I thank you.
Because of the trauma with Harry, Jack was always scheduled to be a caesarean birth. He wasn't scheduled for 34 weeks, but that's when he arrived. We know now that he suffered a brain injury that day, or maybe in the days leading up, or maybe in the hours afterwards, and the joy we felt at his arrival is tempered by the dull thud of hindsight. He began to struggle with his breathing on that first night, and was taken by ambulance to another hospital.
Despite the caesar, you were discharged early, after just three days, so you could commute more easily to be with him. That week you moved between home and hospital while we attempted to move house at the same time.
Two weeks later, the day before Jack was due to be discharged from special care nursery, I received that phone call, the worst phone call of my life, from the specialist in charge: "Can you come into the hospital to see us? There's bad news." I asked to be told on the phone, and then told you about Jack's cerebral palsy on the nature strip outside our house.
We were sobbing in panic then, unaware of what his or our futures were going to hold. Now that we know what it means, we'd probably have cried even more. We received the thunderbolt of that diagnosis together. We've walked this worrying, maddening, saddening, life-consuming road together. Of course, Jack is beautiful, a livewire of four-year-old opinions and fun.
Last night he said to you, "You are a very good singer too, Mummy." And every night he says to me, "Daddy, what speeches have you done today?" Any letter from us to him would be full of light and laughter. But this is my letter to you, Tam, who has lived the diagnosis, the appointments, the hope, the disappointments, the fear of the future, the endless equipment, the progress that everyone says is being made but is so hard for us to see. Yes, other people have it tougher, and one of those people is Jack – and you're one of the best at reminding me of that – but it is hard, and it's unimaginable to think of walking this road alone, and I'm so lucky that it's you who's beside me, you who's beside him.
The moment I decided to write you a letter, the one I didn't write, the one I'm writing now, was after you'd been taken into theatre for Alice's birth. I'd been shunted off into a little side room known in the obstetrics caper as the for-god'ssake-keep-the-bloke-away-while-we'recutting-open-his-wife-ante-room. I was beside myself with worry and was sitting there by myself, shedding tears of panic.
It was a bit self-indulgent. You'd carried the baby for 38 weeks. You'd endured seven months of nausea. Your ankles were swollen. You were about to undergo surgery. You were doing it all again, for me, for us, especially for Jack.
I found it so hard to shake the fear during that pregnancy. I so admire, and am so grateful for your positivity, your ability to focus on the 999 out of 1000, rather than the one. I could hear you through the wall, making small talk with the anaesthetist, chatting about your art career, the career you've interrupted to raise our children. You seemed calm, casual, especially in comparison to me.
It wouldn't be a Tamsin™ birth without some drama, and there were a scary few hours when the bleeding again didn't stop, and again the threat of a hysterectomy. "I'll give the drugs half an hour to work," said the obstetrician, and I remember him drawing a big breath and shaking his head and saying, "Can I get some sort of guarantee that you won't have any more children?"
We did it, Tam. More accurately, you did it, although if you're crediting me with half a cell per pregnancy, four kids means I'm now up to two whole cells. Your love radiates through our house. I love watching you parent, seeing the care and time you'll put into carving a pumpkin or setting rainbow jelly cocktails in seven easy parts or judging gala talent shows on the trampoline – but that's all for another letter.
For now, I just want to thank you for a pregnancy and birthing career that has been as long and as physically gruelling as most football careers. You've been such a warrior, emotionally and physically, and we've come out the other side with this life, this amazing life, that we couldn't have imagined in 1999, when we stood at the bar of the Builders Arms in Fitzroy, falling in love at first sight, or at least I thought it was first sight. You say we met four times before, but as you know I have four eye conditions, which neatly accounts for all those previous non-meetings.
To Tamsin, my wife, the woman who changed my life. I'll say it here, publicly. I owe you a letter, a private one, which says how much I love you. And I promise you'll get one. All my love, Tony.
Edited extract from Signed, Sealed, Delivered: A Collection from Women of Letters (Penguin Random House), curated by Michaela McGuire and Marieke Hardy, is out now.