often took couples a year. Joe started to get a bit bored of it all, became sort of Buddhist. âMaybe you just canât have kids,â he said, one evening, and I lay in the shadowy dark of our bedroom stunned and sobbing, staring at the height chart of the previous ownerâs children, etched into the door frame. This was unthinkable. I was good with kids. I could do a Donald Duck impression.
Joe began to resent organised sex. And I resented him when he couldnât or wouldnât perform on the
most
important night of the month. Then I caught him looking at porn. It was late; Iâd been on my way to the loo when I saw a sliver of light beneath the door of his office. I opened it to find him in a panic, thumping Ctrl Alt Deleteand Escape. On his screen were a dozen frozen images of âmature womenâ in compromising positions. âI donât know how any of it got there,â he said. The mature women part was what worried me most.
I took up yoga to help me relax, acupuncture to sort out any blockages â my chi was all wrong according to my therapist. I bought and boiled foul-smelling herbal concoctions. I exercised, but only at the right time of the month (the first half) and not the wrong sort (running, horse riding) and always gentle, not too much. I bought more books, endless books, relaxation tapes, meditation CDs and month after month after month I purchased pregnancy tests, convinced that my early symptoms â stuffy nose, sore boobs, frequent urination, stomach pains, blurry vision, increased appetite, slight nausea, tiredness â were real rather than imagined. And each time I got a negative, I got more bewildered, angrier, more determined.
It had been over a year of trying and babies now filled my every waking thought. I leafed through magazines with a pair of scissors and cut out anything baby related. I created baby collages, pinned them to a cork board and kept it hidden in the wardrobe in our room. I thought only positive baby thoughts; I saw mothers and babies and buggies and swollen bellies everywhere. The mums so smug in their happiness, so damned lucky. How come they could do something I couldnât? Look at their faces, my sister used to say, trying to make me feel better. Do they really look so happy? Are they not exhausted and stressed? But all I could see were perfect babies, big fertile bodies, huge motherly breasts. I held my friendsâ newborns, breathed in their delicious new smell. We returned to Dr Percy. She looked a little more concerned this time and agreed to send us for tests.
Six months later, tired, broke, no longer excited, we embarked on our first round of IVF. Around about the same time, Joe was madeCreative Director at Browne & Davison. Now I was going it alone and I was out of bounds. I was bloated, crotchety, hormonal, my thighs covered in square patches where the progesterone was entering my body; the skin underneath pink and sore and itchy as anything. I set alarms that woke me too late at night and too early in the morning, to remind me to take drugs that made me flatulent and swollen and grumpy. There were no bottles of wine together, no runs with the dog. I was on my own with my private obsession. Just me and my maybe baby.
I went to bed early after each attempt and tried to picture a busy little embryo burrowing into fleshy darkness. Why couldnât I stretch my head inward, disappear under my polo neck and travel internally down through my throat and on past rubbery tubes and wires and workings of purple, black, rich red, to have a look, one huge upside-down animated eye staring at the fleshy, pulsating womb and see what was in there, if anything, and what it was doing?
I Googled success stories and waited and waited and purchased endless pregnancy tests. And when the day came I held the little white stick up to the light with shaking hands and turned it and squinted at it and saw â there it was! Was it?
Joe began to resent organised sex. And I resented him when he couldnât or wouldnât perform on the
most
important night of the month. Then I caught him looking at porn. It was late; Iâd been on my way to the loo when I saw a sliver of light beneath the door of his office. I opened it to find him in a panic, thumping Ctrl Alt Deleteand Escape. On his screen were a dozen frozen images of âmature womenâ in compromising positions. âI donât know how any of it got there,â he said. The mature women part was what worried me most.
I took up yoga to help me relax, acupuncture to sort out any blockages â my chi was all wrong according to my therapist. I bought and boiled foul-smelling herbal concoctions. I exercised, but only at the right time of the month (the first half) and not the wrong sort (running, horse riding) and always gentle, not too much. I bought more books, endless books, relaxation tapes, meditation CDs and month after month after month I purchased pregnancy tests, convinced that my early symptoms â stuffy nose, sore boobs, frequent urination, stomach pains, blurry vision, increased appetite, slight nausea, tiredness â were real rather than imagined. And each time I got a negative, I got more bewildered, angrier, more determined.
It had been over a year of trying and babies now filled my every waking thought. I leafed through magazines with a pair of scissors and cut out anything baby related. I created baby collages, pinned them to a cork board and kept it hidden in the wardrobe in our room. I thought only positive baby thoughts; I saw mothers and babies and buggies and swollen bellies everywhere. The mums so smug in their happiness, so damned lucky. How come they could do something I couldnât? Look at their faces, my sister used to say, trying to make me feel better. Do they really look so happy? Are they not exhausted and stressed? But all I could see were perfect babies, big fertile bodies, huge motherly breasts. I held my friendsâ newborns, breathed in their delicious new smell. We returned to Dr Percy. She looked a little more concerned this time and agreed to send us for tests.
Six months later, tired, broke, no longer excited, we embarked on our first round of IVF. Around about the same time, Joe was madeCreative Director at Browne & Davison. Now I was going it alone and I was out of bounds. I was bloated, crotchety, hormonal, my thighs covered in square patches where the progesterone was entering my body; the skin underneath pink and sore and itchy as anything. I set alarms that woke me too late at night and too early in the morning, to remind me to take drugs that made me flatulent and swollen and grumpy. There were no bottles of wine together, no runs with the dog. I was on my own with my private obsession. Just me and my maybe baby.
I went to bed early after each attempt and tried to picture a busy little embryo burrowing into fleshy darkness. Why couldnât I stretch my head inward, disappear under my polo neck and travel internally down through my throat and on past rubbery tubes and wires and workings of purple, black, rich red, to have a look, one huge upside-down animated eye staring at the fleshy, pulsating womb and see what was in there, if anything, and what it was doing?
I Googled success stories and waited and waited and purchased endless pregnancy tests. And when the day came I held the little white stick up to the light with shaking hands and turned it and squinted at it and saw â there it was! Was it?
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