Is This My Beautiful Life?

by Jessica Rowe

  The following Saturday, Dr Tierney gave us a tour of the IVF clinic where we would spend a lot of time over the coming months. I fixated on the ugly brown carpet in the reception area as we waited to enter the treatment room. Thankfully we were the last appointment of the day so we could look around without enduring the stares of other couples. I knew that if my desperation was mirrored in the eyes of another woman it would be my undoing.

  Dr Tierney told us we could have our almost daily appointments (which would happen once we started a treatment cycle) before the clinic opened, and the nurses would let us in through the loading dock at the back of the building to avoid any possible media interest in our plight. The emergency exit stairs, our secret passage that linked the loading dock to the clinic, became very familiar to us during our quest for the golden egg and the golden child.

  ‘And this is Di, she’ll be looking after you,’ Dr Tierney continued. ‘She will do your blood tests, show you how to inject yourself with the medication and answer any extra questions you’ve got. Then once you’ve finished here, I’ll show you the labs.’ Di, the nurse, gave us a warm, calm smile, and Peter complimented her on her creamy pearl necklace. She had been working at the clinic for twenty-five years and had seen her share of nervous, emotional and desperate couples.

  Peter and I sat down on uncomfortable office chairs. On the biscuit-coloured wall behind Di were dozens of photos stuck up with sticky tape of beaming couples snuggling brand-new babies, triumphant smiles on their shiny faces. Despite the many different families in the photos, each couple wore a similar expression of relief, joy and ecstasy. The blissful look said we have made it, we survived, and here is our reward.

  It was impossible to concentrate while Di demonstrated how to use the injection pen, which was how I would self-administer the follicle-stimulating hormone each day. As she pushed the small needle into a rubber sponge I couldn’t look, not because I was squeamish but because I had to study the happy family portraits on the wall. I thought by memorising their expressions it would help me to unlock their secret. How did they do it? How did they manage to have a baby? I must know. We sat on those bum-numbing chairs for an hour and a half while Di answered question after question from us.

  ‘You’ll have a picture of us to put up there. Please save a spot for us,’ Peter said as tears streamed down his face.

  ‘I will. There will be a spot for you.’

  ‘How long will it take?’ I asked. ‘How long did it take for those couples in the photos?’

  ‘Some of them had just one cycle of treatment. Others kept going.’

  ‘For how long?’ I persisted.

  ‘As long as it took,’ Di said.

  Peter and I were taken through to the laboratory. ‘The babysitting is going on in there,’ said Di, pointing to a silver vat. And as she explained the process, I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. Inside each large cylindrical container were the hopes and dreams of so many couples, liquid nitrogen preserving their precious embryos. Each cycle of IVF treatment might produce more than one embryo, but the clinic would only transfer one at a time because of the health risks of having multiple pregnancies. Any extra embryos were stored in thin plastic straws, each one labelled with the couple’s names and identification number, before being sealed at both ends and frozen. The embryo could then be thawed out if needed and transferred into the woman’s uterus, rather than having to endure another full round of fertility treatment. According to the clinic, 30 percent of their patients had successful pregnancies using their frozen embryos.

  Next we were introduced to the scientists in the lab. Two of them looked up from their microscopes. Dressed in blue gowns, with blue elasticised shoe covers and matching caps, the team were checking the health of the embryos under their watch. It had taken blood, sweat, tears and hormonal drugs to get the cells to this stage.

  ‘Say an extra prayer for us when you see our names,’ Peter said to the head scientist.

  I kept my head down and looked at the white floor tiles, counting how many fitted across the length of the lab. I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, afraid I would burst into tears again. This was the only way I could stay in control.

  Dr Tierney, Peter and I compared our diaries to work out the best time to begin our baby-making. It was encouraging to write down all the dates as it gave me a plan on which to focus my attention. I was frightened that my wafer-thin veneer might split and my supposedly successful, charmed life would come undone if I allowed my emotions to take over. In bright red texta, I drew a star on each date of the treatment cycle. Days to count down until my next blood test, days to count down until an ultrasound, days to count down until I had made enough eggs. Everything was clinical and planned, with no room for a spontaneous love child. It had to work.

  When I first started using Synarel nasal spray, I welcomed the bitter aftertaste in my throat. Surely that meant the drug was quickly sinking into my system and flattening my hormones, shutting down my pituitary gland? The results of the first blood test would reveal whether my body clock had run out of tick and could now be manipulated by another dose of hormones. Once my body responded to the first lot of hormones, I was able to start injecting myself with hormones that would stimulate my ovaries to produce more eggs than usual. I wanted my body to create dozens of eggs to increase my chances of those eggs being fertilised, and then in turn increase my chances of becoming pregnant.

  Listening to Di on the phone, I scribbled down the results from my latest blood test and ultrasound. The tests revealed how my body was responding to the hormones that were raging through my body. Again with my lucky red texta I wrote down oestrogen at 3925, ten follicles—nicely*. I added the asterisk as my shorthand so I could remember to tell Peter that these results were promising. I continued making notes: Stay on 75 today and Saturday and Sunday. Remember to return my admission forms, and to bring in an esky with an icepack, so I can keep my trigger injection cold.

  The trigger injection was a big and nasty syringe needle (different to the small injection pen I had been using daily) that I had to give myself the night before the egg-extraction operation, to prepare the eggs I’d been hothousing in my fallopian tubes. This injection replaced yet another natural hormone the body would usually produce when your eggs are ready to be released. If I went through each step methodically, properly and carefully, it would work.

  Early the next morning, Peter and I arrived at the clinic ready for my egg collection. It was a Friday morning and I had taken the day off work for the procedure. I also wanted to have the weekend to recover before having to think about work again. Di pulled the curtain around my bed before I changed into a white surgical gown, blue paper slippers and a blue surgical cap. I was determined to walk into the operating theatre instead of being pushed through on the trolley bed. It was my small attempt to assert some control over a situation in which I felt I had almost no control anymore.

  Once I had clambered onto the operating table, Dr Tierney told me to think positive thoughts. I tried not to look at the anaesthetist who was tapping my wrist to find a vein, but he quickly inserted the needle and gently asked me to begin counting down from twenty. I only managed to get to fifteen before the ice-cold oblivion of the anaesthetic took hold. During that time, Dr Tierney used ultrasound to locate my eggs and a long needle to carefully remove each one from my body. While that was going on, Peter was upstairs in a bland, beige-coloured room providing a fresh sperm sample.

  The next thing I remembered was waking up with an oxygen mask over my face, groggily trying to read the number on the masking tape stuck to my wrist. I knew to look for it, as Dr Tierney had told me before the procedure about the precious white tape. In thin black biro it said six eggs. What, only six! Surely after all those drugs I should at least have double figures?

  I lay there ruminating on the number six. Would that be enough? By the time the nurse came to check on me I was ready to interrogate her.

  ‘Is that good? Or is it bad?’ I asked.r />
  ‘The doctor will be here soon, Jessica,’ she said as she helped me out of the surgical gown and back into my jeans.

  ‘But is six eggs enough? Is that what most women get? Or do most women get more?’

  I sat down in an armchair and the nurse covered me with a heated blanket as I was shivery after the anaesthetic. While I was gulping down instant coffee and cramming a shortbread biscuit in my mouth, Dr Tierney came in.

  I jumped in with my questions. ‘Is six enough? I wanted to get more.’

  ‘It’s quality, not quantity, Jessica. We only need one good egg,’ she replied.

  After Peter drove me home I headed straight to bed, still feeling light-headed after the procedure and the first twinges of what would become nasty stomach cramps. Physically and emotionally I was wiped out, and withdrawing under the doona was the only way I could cope with the extra hormones swirling through my body. Drifting off to sleep that night, I dreamt of my eggs fertilising with Peter’s strong swimmers. The embryologist would have chosen the most handsome-looking sperm and injected a single one into each of my six precious eggs.

  By the time I woke up that Saturday, each delicate egg and sperm combination would be housed in their own incubators set at 37 degrees, a temperature that mirrors the human body. I tried to visualise each of those six cells flourishing. We had to get out of the house to kill some time before the afternoon phone call from the clinic about the state of our fledgling embryos. Peter and I walked slowly from our brick bungalow tucked in a quiet, Moreton Bay fig lined street to the sparkling harbour foreshore. Boats with bright red sails skimmed smoothly along the water. An old wooden ferry pulled into the wharf as tourists armed with cameras clambered excitedly aboard. A couple pushed a pram past while a jogger in zebra-striped leggings and a black singlet ran towards us. A normal, calm Saturday morning for everyone else, yet I had never felt so powerless and hopeless. There was nothing I could do to make sure our cells survived. There were no more dates or red texta stars to note in my diary. All we could do was wait for the phone call from the lab, and when it finally came later that day my mood plunged even lower. Only three of our six eggs had fertilised.

  On Sunday, I couldn’t leave the house, the machinations of everyday life jarring with my desperation. Peter went out to pick up a sweet, milky cappuccino and chocolate croissant for me while I stayed in bed. Again, the phone call from the lab later that day wasn’t good: one cell had gone, another was starting to fragment and the final cell was hanging in under the watchful eye of the scientists. Dr Tierney recommended that we come into the clinic on Monday to transfer that fertilised cell.

  ‘You have a beautiful eight celler,’ Dr Tierney said the next day. Peter held my hand as the doctor inserted our eight cells into a narrow tube that had been inserted through my cervix.

  ‘This is the best part of my job,’ said Dr Tierney. ‘Now think positive thoughts.’ We gave her a hug as we walked back through the lab, thanking the scientists. They told us they hoped they wouldn’t need to see us again. So did I. ‘Hang in there, my darling eight celler,’ I kept repeating to myself.

  The two-week wait to have a blood test seemed to take a lifetime. The results of that test would reveal whether our beautiful eight celler liked my womb. Peter and I waited by the phone for the results from the clinic.

  ‘I’m afraid …’ started Di. Peter could hear her voice and was already crying. The two of us lay on the bed and couldn’t move for the rest of the day. The bubble of hope that I had let blossom inside of me for those fourteen days had burst with a loud, ugly bang.

  The experts—the doctors, scientists and nurses—don’t know why the medication works for some women and not others. There is an unknown factor mixed in with the science and technology. I tried to deal with the void by praying, something I had not done in a long time. I wasn’t sure who I was praying to but I hoped that someone, some higher being out there, would listen to my pleading lament. I liked to think it was a compassionate and glamorous goddess. Peter was more certain; he had a clear God in mind who he believed was listening to our prayers. I was willing to give anything a go if it meant becoming pregnant.

  Six weeks later we were back at the clinic, and now I found myself glaring at those wretched happy family photos stuck on the wall of Di’s office. It looked like a couple more pictures had been added since we were last here. Why were they lucky? Why did it work for them and not us? It wasn’t fair! I’d given myself perfectly timed injections, turned up early for the blood tests and stopped drinking wine, but it was still not enough. I’d thought the miracles of modern science could guarantee me a baby—what about those Hollywood stars having babies well into their forties? I read about them often in the trashy weekly magazines I loved to buy. My doctor told me a lot of these older women were using donated eggs from much younger women. I didn’t read that in the magazines; all I saw was the flawless star with her perfect baby.

  Another fact I hadn’t come across anywhere was that a woman is born with a finite number of eggs. For years I had been oblivious to the countdown of my own body clock, and now I only had old eggs left! I didn’t feel old, but Dr Tierney said that in fertility terms, my 35-year-old eggs were pushing it. My remaining eggs were not as healthy as those I blindly bled away every month through my teens and twenties.

  I psyched myself up, convincing myself that I’d cope with the second cycle of treatment better now that I knew how the heavy-duty cocktail of hormones would affect my moods and body. Work kept me busy. Before the news each evening I would hide in a toilet cubicle and take deep breaths. I’d quickly check no one else was in there before standing in front of the toilet mirror and saying out loud: ‘I am talented, I am open, I am ready to communicate!’ Each declaration was matched with a flourish of my hands to my reflection. If anyone was to walk in they could confidently say, ‘Jessica, you are a lunatic!’ Occasionally I was caught out and tried to disguise my affirmations with coughing fits. I hid my uncertainty with bravado, my acne (an unfortunate side effect of the drugs) with heavy make-up, and my bloated stomach full of hormones with looser pants. As I read the news on Channel Ten each night, no one could see the desperation and hope that was lurking behind my shimmery gold eye shadow.

  But I couldn’t keep up the facade when the clinic rang me at work to explain that I’d ovulated early, two days before the scheduled egg collection. Twenty-eight days of nasal spray, blood tests, injections and ultrasounds had all been for nothing. Dr Tierney explained that it was extremely rare and only happened in one percent of cases. Hiding in my dressing room, I called my boss and explained tearfully that I wouldn’t be able to read the news that evening. Thankfully he didn’t ask why and told me to look after myself. I drove home in a blur, not remembering how I made it to our front gate. Bed was the only solution and I hurried inside to bury my rage and grief back under the doona.

  Dr Tierney suggested artificial insemination as a way of salvaging some of the stray eggs that may be floating around my faulty uterus after the unexpectedly early ovulation. Once again, Peter and I were back in the small room next to the lab, holding hands and trying to be positive. But we both knew it was a long shot so we weren’t surprised when we got a call two weeks later to say that I was still not pregnant. The bubble of hope was now much smaller than when I learnt of that beautiful eight celler in our first cycle of treatment. I had relied on that bubble to deal with challenges in my young life. By nature I was a big believer in looking for the silver lining, but my optimism was struggling to even find a drab grey lining in this latest disappointment.

  Peter and I still hadn’t talked about what would happen if we couldn’t become parents. In truth, I wasn’t ready for my mind to explore that possible future. If I verbalised my fear that IVF would never work I worried that it would become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Previously I had discovered that if I committed to my career it would reap rewards. I was going to pursue this desire to become a mother, for us to be a family, with the same dogged determi
nation.

  To soften the heartache of the last failed interrupted cycle, we decided on a shorter round of treatment before Christmas. My weary ovaries were not responding to the higher levels of hormones I was injecting. Each morning at ten past eight, I injected myself with the now familiar follicle-stimulating hormone. It was satisfying to hear the click of the injection pen as I spun the dial around to the correct dosage. Getting up from the bed to dress, I would quickly glance at the five miniature ‘lucky’ Chinese cat statues I had on the table. Each porcelain figurine was no bigger than my fingernail but they had become my charms. The morning of my latest ultrasound to check on my follicles I decided to walk back to my mirrored bedside table to put the cats into a circle. My small circle of hope. I needed one good egg, just one.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Jessica, happy birthday to you!’

  I love a party, any chance to celebrate. And this birthday was special. It wasn’t just the fizzing sparklers on top of the chocolate mud cake and the satisfaction of making a wish as I plunged the silver knife through the thick icing that marked this evening apart. It was the chorus line of singers that made tonight especially memorable. I was being serenaded by my television idols. Superstar reporter Jana Wendt, who I had wanted to be when I grew up, was sitting next to me, and just moments before had been chatting about the decadent times she and her camera crew had at the Hôtel de Crillon in Paris while she was reporting for the 60 Minutes program. All I could do was nod and smile, and hope that none of the chives from the seafood risotto we ate for dinner were stuck in my teeth.

  The light from the sparklers reflected in the glasses of Brian Henderson, the legendary Nine Network newsreader. He held the hand of his wife, Mardi, while everyone called out ‘hip hip hooray’. Also seated around the large walnut oak dining table was Mike Munro, a fearless journalist with a reputation for covering tough news and current affairs stories. Earlier in the evening he had asked how I coped with having my husband away for up to eight months of the year. Mike said he hated being away from his family when he worked on 60 Minutes. I told him that my work at Channel Ten kept me busy too, and having time apart also meant Peter and I didn’t take each other for granted. My dream dinner party guest list was finished off with the fabulous Liz Hayes. Here was a woman whom I had watched on breakfast television for years, and I was now hoping I could model my television career after her.