Have You Thought About IVF?
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Exclusion Zone
You appear always to be on the edge;
An uninitiated observer
Not invited to worship at the altar
Of in-jokes and secret nods.
You can tell your stories and ideas
And will be acknowledged but not confirmed.
Uncharted rules are stricter than the law;
They can't be found, only offered
When you are judged ready to be received.
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I'll have the lentils - only if they're organic and hold the salt.
Eating during pregnancy seems to have become very much 'other people's business' . Being in a hopeful state isn't easy either because you have to make sure that you're eating the right thing in order to get pregnant but that has to be the right thing for once you are pregnant. All those people who got pregnant after a night of seafood, champagne, dry white wine, a rare steak, red wine, ripe brie and port washed down with an espresso and a grappa are, quite frankly, so irresponsible that it's not even worth considering them. Take their children into care now. Have they not considered the foetal alchohol risk? The listeria? The bacteria in rare meat? And don't mention the seafood.
Obviously there's some good medical facts behind a lot of that but when it's you that's pregnant or trying to get pregnant then you're not going to take the risks. Plus, it gets a bit wearing when your sister-in-law reminds you for the 3rd time that there is listeria in unpasteurised brie and that it can be bad if you're pregnant. She opens her eyes wide when she says pregnant and nods at your stomach. There are 6 adult women at the table but you are the only one that has to bring a medical certificate announcing that you're not pregnant.
So, this started several months of excluding practically every single food that I enjoyed. It started slowly. I'd already given up cigarettes with my first pregnancy because people would have thrown stones at me if they'd seen me smoking. (only joking - ha ha - they'd shoot you on sight.) Then I moved into giving up alcohol because it seemed to make sense. At this time I worked in a college and spent a lot of time dealing with the pastoral issues of young women who had found themselves pregnant after drinking an industrial amount of Bacardi Breezers. To me, that was a step too far. I wasn't drinking Bacardi Breezers for anyone.
So all the soft cheeses joined the forbidden group. I bought only organic food after finding some crazy magazine that told me about the toxins that were flooding my uterus just by me looking at non-organic food in the supermarket. At college, I averted my eyes from the heavily pregnant young women who were showing KFC down their necks with abandon. Usually followed up with a good high tar cigarette.
Breakfast would be some complex mixture of grains, nuts and seeds. I felt like a budgie. Plus for years my breakfast had consisted of a newspaper, 2 cups of coffee, several cigarettes and perhaps a Mars Bar so I was feeling bereft. Lunch would be a mixture of organic leaves with some organic cherry tomatoes and some organic humous with organic bread. Herbal teas played a big part in my life. Organic naturally. Supper would be too boring to even think about and I won't expose you to it. Hunger started to play a huge part in my life. It would have been great if I'd been able to lose some weight while following this madness of a diet but all I lost was my sense of humour and my sense of reality too, if I'm honest.
One of the reasons that I didn't lose any weight was because whilst eating alfalfa like some West Coast hippy, I was also taking mega quantities of Clomid, a fertility drug. I went from being a size 8 to a size 12 in about 2 months. At that stage I never saw any irony in any of it.
So what does it all mean? Not a great deal. It was just something to do that made me feel that I was doing something. That I could say that I'd tried everything. Even alfalfa.
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The more things change then the more they really change.
Having this blog is feeling a little like the adult equivalent of
sticking my tongue out at anyone who pissed me off at school.
Yeah, bitch, you got off with Terry O'Connor , well just you wait, yeah
wait, one day ...one day, yeah ...one day....I'm gonna blog it.
Then you'll be sorry.
I suppose, in the end, there's something about it that makes me feel better.
After the miscarriages there was a grey stage that was rather soggy and
damp underfoot. You knew there was a pathway there but it wasn't
clear, it wasn't marked in an obvious fashion and everything felt very
tiring and wearying. I remember it well and although the sharpness of
the emotions at the time have faded I can remember the sting. I
can remember just how desolate everything was. There wasn't even
a daffodil on the crap heap at that stage.
Much later I ended up becoming friendly with a woman called
Jackie. She and her husband became a part of a group that met
loosely. We weren't together all of the time but we tended
to consult and check with the others over various social
arrangements. Our lifestyles fitted, our age groups
matched. After a year of knowing Jackie she became
pregnant. She lost the baby during the first trimester. For
me, it was one of those toe-curling, embarrassing moments of not
knowing that she'd miscarried and meeting her the day after she came
out of hospital, talking to her in a way that made it clear that I had
no idea that she'd lost her baby. Once I was aware, all I
could do was tell her how sorry I was. I remember standing in a
shopping centre and telling her how sorry that I was. And she
acknowledged that I was. I would have preferred to have spared
her the loss combined with me turning it into something
that made me upset and embarrassed.
Months later and she lost another baby. And then another
baby. This went on and on in a relentless way, slowly destroying
her, her husband and her family. Every announcement of a
pregnancy was in some way a proclamation of doom. Yet, we all
celebrated in public and said congratulations.
After one of her many miscarriages, I really had begun to lose count at
this stage, I went to visit Jackie. We talked a little of the
baby she had lost, of the other babies before and then she asked me
about my own situation. I'd avoided talking to Jackie about my
own experiences because most women who miscarry do go on to deliver
children at full term. However, she asked me directly and I
didn't want to lie to her so I explained what had happened to me. I did
it as lightly as I could and explained that it was unlikely that she
would find herself in a similar place. I didn't want to take hope
from her. We both cried and talked over things. About
motherhood and motherloss; about lipstick and lying; about the things
that women speak of.
Eventually Jackie took a baby to full term and she had a
daughter. For me, it was unfortunate timing because it was
shortly after my own parents had died, it was very close to Mothers Day
and there was probably an R in the month. For many reasons I
couldn't face going to visit her in the maternity unit of the hospital;
a maternity unit that I had visited on so many occasions and knew so
very, very well. Instead, I chose to visit her and her daughter
when they returned home. It was the worst of times for me.
I really, really coped so badly with the loss of my own parents, with
the idea that Mothers Day meant nothing to me at all - I had no mother,
I had no child. It was such a bad time but I went to visit
because I liked Jackie and I wanted to see her and her daughter.
She looked wonderful in that way that women who have recently given
birth look wonderful. They do. They may look tired and
harrassed but their skin and hair have a glow that cosmetic companies
would pay millions for. I sat with Jackie for a little while
discussing the delivery, the post-partum experience, the feeding and
the various things that go with a baby. Then she asked me if I
wanted to hold her baby. I couldn't do it. I simply could
not take that child into my arms because I was so emotionally fragile I
knew that I would cry and I couldn't face that on top of everything
else. I refused thinking that if anyone would understand then she
would. But all she could say was 'you'll have to hold her one
day'. But I never did.
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Daddy, I hardly knew you.
There is a reduction in men offering to donate sperm to couples because
of a law that was passed earlier this year which will allow any child
born as a result of this donation to trace their biological 'father'
after they're 18 years old. To me, this is taking questions of
identity and paternity to ridiculous lengths - such ridiculous lengths
that there may be no identity or paternity to debate because of the
shortage of donors.
I'm unable to understand how it must be for a man to discover that his
sperm isn't of a quality to father a child. Although, I would
imagine that for many men it's a shock that may be impossible to
recover from and they wouldn't be able to contemplate accepting donated
sperm. I'm not sure how I would have felt about having a donated egg if
it had been me. For them to accept a child born through donated
sperm, knowing that it's clinically donated sperm rather than the
'informal' sperm donation that happens all too frequently, must be the
first step in the identity/paternity dilemma. To transcend this
and love a child born from donated sperm, knowing that in so many years
this child can find their biological father might be too frightening a
prospect to face. It would seem that the potential donors don't
want to think about who may come knocking in 18 years time so, what
shall happen?
Will there be a rise in informally traded sperm? Who tests for
any genetic problems? How do you find your donor?
Perhaps it's me being overly simplistic and following a nurture rather
than nature thread. Maybe it is important for people to have the
possibility to meet the person who provided the sperm. Possibly
this is something that adopted people have struggled with and continue
to struggle with. Maybe there is little difference to the person
born how the sperm was transferred to their mother and it is important
for them to have a possible link to their 'father'.
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It's a family affair
I
can remember the first time my partner had a miscarriage, it was on
one of my birthdays. Over the next couple of years there were more
miscarriages on more forgettable dates. In the meantime there were
tests which determined that whilst not impossible it would be
unlikely that she would successfully carry a pregnancy full term.
Each miscarriage was like a car crash –
sudden, unexpected and very, very painful. They hurt, they hurt so
much. Having a child was something we had talked about regularly, it
was something we looked forward too, a dream we shared. All of a
sudden this was falling apart. It was like watching a tree shed it's
leafs in autumn. Gone was the promise of spring, the glory of summer
and now all that was left was preparation for the harsh realities of
winter. The leafs falling, one by one, were like shared dreams
breaking lose and being whisked away on the wind. Up until that
point we had some idea of what our relationship would look like. It
certainly wouldn't have been 2.4 kids, a dog and a car, but we
dreamed of being a family, we had some idea where we were going. What
was revealed took some time to come to terms with. Our relationship
had a new form, there was some pruning back of ideals to be done, we
faced a new set of realities that were painful to contemplate.
Looking back there are two things that
stick in my mind.
The first is the guilt. I had a child
by a previous relationship. I knew how desperately my partner wanted
a child, I saw the way she lit up whenever family or friends came by
with their young children. The pleasure she had playing and
comforting them. I knew that even the regular visits of my daughter
would not quench the thirst she had to become a parent. However much
'my' daughter became 'our' daughter it would never be enough.
The second is how painful it all felt.
I remember sitting down with my partner, having seen her hopes and
aspirations come crashing back to earth again after another
miscarriage, after another D & C, having witnessed yet more
tears, floods and floods of tears, having wept and heaved myself, I
remember saying, “I can't do this any more. It hurts too much. I
can't witness you go through this again and I don't want to feel this
way again.”
The shock of those words. Once they
were out it was such a relief and at the same time it felt like the
worst possible thing in the world to say. Those words, full of guilt
and pain, would deny the woman I loved dearly, would deny our
relationship, the pleasure and joy of bringing a child into this
world and the enjoyment of caring for it.
Whenever my partner talks to others
about her childlessness, even with a decade between now and those
fateful words, I feel the heat of pain and guilt flush through my
body. Before the conversation moves swiftly on, no one, and I mean no
one, asks me how I feel about the situation. It seems for many people
it is often too difficult to step over the childlessness barrier
never mind considering the next hurdle of what it means to the other
non child bearing person in the relationship.
cd
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Nuts and Bolts
I don't particularly want to turn this blog into the mechanics of
fertility treatment because there are brilliant sites dealing with that
already and the two organisations on the sidebar have a great number of
links. However, there are a couple of details that I do feel need
to be shared with you.
At some point you may have an X-ray whereby a dye is run through your
fallopian tubes to determine their patency. (I'm not the one who
invented medical terminology). You may be told that it can cause
some discomfort by a person who isn't going to have it done to them and
because they've got testicles it means that it's unlikely that it will
ever happen to them. If you replace 'cause some discomfort' with
'fairly fucking painful' you'll get a better idea. It's worth
taking your own painkillers with you as I found at 4.00pm on a Friday
afternoon in the X-Ray dept of a major hospital. It's really too
difficult for them to find someone to write a prescription, get to the
pharmacy and bring them back to you.
The other thing worth mentioning is that at some point in the medical
investigations someone within the medical profession is going to start
asking questions. Some people are better at this than
others. At the very early stages of our investigations a nurse
took me to one side, away from my husband because she needed to ask me
'a very personal question'. I was dying to know what this really
personal question was that couldn't be asked in front of my
husband. Given that 10 minutes before I'd been lying on a couch
with my legs in the air having 8 medical students studying my fanny
whilst my husband discussed football with the consultant.
'When was your last period?' she asked.
I told her the dates and then asked her what the personal question
was. She said that that was the personal question and when I
looked puzzled she explained that she didn't know whether or not my
husband knew about my periods. How someone can spend a long time
'trying for a baby', share a bed and a bathroom, go on holiday
together, have rows based around whose turn it was to clean the
bathroom, and them not know that you have periods is somewhat beyond
me. It made me laugh on a bad day however.
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The Maternal Flame
There are a few words that really bother me. Feminine, masculine,
manly and ladylike are up there in my hit parade. But the number
one spot will always be held by that old favourite, maternal.
Depending on who is using these words will determine just how much
you're being insulted or complimented through them. They can be
delivered with a smile and laugh but they're all the deadlier for that.
For me, there's a particular moment that crystalised and encapsulated
everything about losing babies and then being unable to become pregnant
again. It was when about 100 different things slotted into place
and I realised where I had been placed; what my position in the
hierarchy of motherhood and how the language would be chosen to
complement it. Or, to be more accurate, where some would want to
place me.
In the film Cabaret, there's a moment where the camera pans around the
audience becoming faster and faster and the audience are laughing
louder and longer and it sweeps to the Master of Ceremonies, with his
grotesque make-up and back to the audience and the laughing goes on and
the spinning continues.
After I realised that I wasn't going to have children I carried on with
my life and, on the surface, nothing really changed. Now and
again, I'd talk about it with close friends but it was easier for me,
mostly, not to talk about it. Work absorbed much of my time.
One of my colleagues was an irritating woman who tended to ask
questions and then before anyone had a chance to reply, she would fill
in the answer for herself. Mostly, it was fairly inane stuff such
as the wherabouts of a an elastic band, a stamp, a book. When she
wasn't asking and answering questions she would keep up a fairly
relentless running commentary about her children and family. What
you have to realise is that this woman had children who were quite
remarkable and were unlike any other child. There was another
woman in this office who hadn't realised that Margaret's children were
the greatest children in the world and that this was entirely due to
Margaret's superior parenting skills. From time to time they'd
engage in the Parenting Olympics and if they were feeling particularly
benevolent they'd throw the field open to rank amateurs who'd never
made any great parenting claims.
One day there were several of them competing for first place in how
well behaved your child can be when you have visitors. Some of
the amateurs had been practicing because Margaret and the other
colleague were being outflanked. I was keeping my head down and
wishing that they'd all shut the fuck up and/or move away from my
desk. Because Margaret was doing so badly she went for a bit of
gamesmanship and turned to me and said, 'I can't remember, Heather - do
you have children?'. I leaned back in my chair and looked at her
and thought for a moment that this was an ideal opportunity for me to
say that I didn't and, in fact, was unable to have children. It
would get it out in the open, get it over and done with. It
may even stop people suggesting in a leery way that I was pregnant if I
said that I was a bit tired/fancied an apple pie/didn't want a cup of
coffee/ felt a bit unwell/or asked what was on telly.
Just as I was about to open my mouth for the big announcement
Margaret's braincell twitched into life and she said 'oh no, of course
you haven't. I don't know why I thought you did because you're
not the least bit maternal.' And then she laughed. Then
someone else laughed and said 'oh God, could you imagine Heather with a
baby.' It was like the scene from Cabaret as they all laughed and the
room span round and I sat there being back in the playground and not
knowing how to play the latest game.
I don't think there was any malice there. No one wanted to be
unkind. It's how it was. I wasn't maternal and so I didn't
have children and that explained it. Are we what we become or do
we become what we are? But what is maternal? I have several
friends who are brilliant mothers and I wouldn't describe a single one
of them as maternal. They're interesting, sexy, fun, bright,
intelligent, gorgeous, funny, friendly, vibrant but I wouldn't describe
a single one of them as maternal. But they're all fabulous
parents and love their kids and their kids love them.
It's just another word that's used to beat people with and I don't feel
any of that stuff anymore. At the time, feeling vulnerable,
feeling at some level that I'd failed something, although I didn't know
what - at that time it was easy to believe that I wasn't
maternal. Now I know better.
Sometimes when I play the 'which 2 minutes of my life would I like
back' game then I think I'd like those 2 minutes back so that I could
tell them what a pile of crap their notion of maternal actually
was. But that would be a waste of time so I'd rather have the
time spent on a first kiss. That would just be so much better,
and a lot less maternal.
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