They are definitely not going to let Alice make up her own mind about this, even if she were capable of doing so. The idea that she might not tell Chris (which she is in fact allowed not to do) would not be something they would expect Archers listeners to accept readily.
The only hope that we have left to us is that they truly do despise what they think is their audience, and Alice aborts as a slap in the face to that audience.
Oh, with a side-order of miscarriage, which would do.
I notice she did not tell the counsellor that she had been drinking hard and passed out and then found out she was pregnant. I wonder if she was drinking this evening with Chris. Didnāt he ask her if she wanted any more wine?
But maybe like the other Alice, the one in Wonderland, she could have replied that she could very well have more since she hadnāt had any.
Well, that sweaty crowd of flies was a clear steer: get knittinā forā¦
I pity the counselor
Asmodai Beleth Crocell Decarabiaā¦ what? (not-proven tseep)
Clive, shurely?
Well, there you have it. Drinking in possession of a functioning ovary is Irresponsible. A glass of wine while Knowingly Pregnant is tantamount to GBH.
Tsk, these awful women, imagining they are anything but incubators.
Something Must Be Done.
Canāt imagine itās of direct relevance to much of the TA audience, but plenty of DiLs will be getting Rat Week.
Jobās a goodāun.
Told you so. All I do is imagine what would be most melodramatic, and there you go, a new set of predictionsā¦
Oh, I never doubted you or TFM for a minute, dereā¦
I imagine the midwife-person would have fainted if Alice had not lied through her teeth the entire time.
It strikes me that this is a situational rehash. PRH couldnāt get shot of the sperm donor to talk privately with the midwife either.
Sheās way more advanced in pregnancy than I thought she was. Twelve weeks, blimey. So when she passed out from drinking (and it looks as though the hospital did not do a blood-alcohol test) she was about seven weeks pregnant, the foetus being five weeks old. And she was binge-drinking all time, wasnāt she? Iād say the chances of having damaged the foetus are quite high given the extremely large amount of alcohol during a crucial time of development for the foetus, from what I have read.
Yes, really. And the combination of scare tactics and evasiveness was not well done. Is that the way they talk to all pregnant women? I suppose itās too much to have expected her to say, supposing Alice had admitted to the weeks of binge-drinking, āFrankly, my dear, given that, Iād get an abortion pronto and try again if you want a child.ā
You reckon? I thought the midbotās tone suggested she knew otherwise but confidentiality forbadeā¦
Oh ā¦ hadnāt thought of that. Why donāt they insist on the father buggering off? As you rightly pointed out, Ellie the useless midwife was all over the lovely Rob and this one was letting Chris answer for Alice.
So she loses the conventional get-out for not telling people, innit? Oh and to give room for the sprog to have plausibly been pickled in utero. Win-win, that.
Yes, we know it does happen that women go into labour not knowing they are pregnant, but Alice really might have noticed not menstruating two months in a row, if only from the online shopping list.
She said she got muddooed about taking the pill. And we know why.
I thought they would go with her having been drinking only in those very early days before the egg implants, when the - did you know itās called a blastocyst at that stage? lovely name! - is not, as far as I can tell from what I read - affected by anything in the motherās bloodstream. It seems itās safe till about 10 or 12 days after conception, just about at the earliest moment you could get a positive pregnancy test. After that itās called an embryo and is very vulnerable.
They seem to have had her binge drinking at the worst possible time to do it. Not going to end well, thereās bound to be a miscarriage, isnāt there?
I donāt think thatās a foregone conclusion at all.
We are in either for Angst and a battered marriage and a healthy bouncing Beelzebub; Alice desperately trying to wangle a drink and a termination under the radar; or a baby they are all terribly worried about for six months or so and who then just fades, neuro- and phenotypically, into the background.
They couldnāt handle the āno-faultā disability* DS sprog, and FAS, as well as being somewhat nebulous, diagnosis-wise, is much more difficult to write for the social stuff. But probably Burn the Witch, for starters.
And tsk again, she hasnāt been mainlining folic acid for months. [very WIDE and tasteless grinnity]
*not my take on it. Blasted Bethany should never have seen the dim of day.
Alice passed out pissed on the evening of 15th September, so if she is twelve weeks pregnant now, and allowing that two weeks of that had no fertilised ovum in her body because of the way they count dates for pregnancies, she was at that point nine weeks pregnant and the baby had been marinading in alcohol for seven weeks.
Her appearances during the time between her actually starting to be pregnant and September:
She was definitely drunk on 3rd August going by Chrisās complaints and her hangover on 4th; drinking alone during the day (in the shed) on 4th; ditto on 5th, avoiding Brian; on 6th she stayed out in the evening drinking in the farm office; she was drunk again on 11th, and on 13th August Chris found an empty vodka bottle in the shed, and Alice had a quick drinkie at work to steady her nerves; on 17th she was drinking with Fallon; on 24th August she had been drinking when she told Ed to put the grain in the wrong bin; on 25th August she stayed late at work to have a drink; on 26th she was hung over and then got drunk in the office and was seen to be drunk by Ed.
Seems pretty regular to me, given she was only in eleven episodes that month and drunk in ten of those.
Weāll see, but theyāve made a big point of stressing the humongous amounts of vodka Alice has poured down her throat in the early weeks of her pregnancy. I canāt see a healthy bouncing baby being allowed to occur. Not the kind of message the BBC will want to promote, surely. Sheās lied to Chris and to the midwife (who, as you say, may know differently).