Baby Boys and Expletives

Minnie Driver finds life doesn't follow any roadmap

- MINNIE DRIVER

Academy-award nominated actress Minnie Driver shares the ups and downs of her life through entertaining and poignant tales in her book managing expectations, ranging from her first solo sung on the local news from a windy tree at her English boarding school to the death of her beloved mother during COVID-19, with candid stories of acting failures and successes in between. In this excerpt, Driver describes her son Henry’s birth—a surprise from start to finish. Henry is the happy result of a brief relationship with writer Timothy J. Lea when they were working together on the TV series the riches. Driver has raised her son as a single parent since his birth in 2008. And through it all, Driver explores the beauty of managing her way through the unexpected and painful to find joy.

“I THINK YOU’RE PREGNANT,” my sister, Kate, said.

“No.”

“I think you are.”

“But I’ve got a difficult uterus, remember that horrible old doctor comparing it to having a U-bend in a toilet and said I’d never get pregnant.”

“F**k that guy. Let’s get a pregnancy test.”

Even through the profound fear of what this might mean, a keen wonder was also present as I peed on the two sticks. I then sat on the edge of the bath and waved the sticks like Polaroids. My mind was now blank, it was clear, it was unmoving; my whole life, past and present, had come to a gliding halt as one of two potential futures prepared to join the caravan. I looked down at the sticks, and the two sets of parallel lines that told me I wasn’t alone in the bathroom. I stood up and looked at my face in the mirror, and I smiled. That was the very first acknowledgment of my baby, an instant human reaction to joy, our first salutation.

One day at an ultrasound the doctor said: