Is This My Beautiful Life?

by Jessica Rowe

  The next day I sweated by the phone, wondering what was taking so long. Had something gone wrong? When my mobile finally rang I snatched it up quickly. It was Liza again.

  ‘You have five left, but two have started fragmenting, so that leaves three that are looking quite good.’

  ‘Quite good?’

  I was desperate for more reassurance, but unfortunately Liza couldn’t give me any. Dr Tierney called in the afternoon to explain the plan of action. She said if the three remaining embryos weren’t doing so well tomorrow she would transfer one of them into my uterus around lunchtime. Apparently they had a better chance of surviving inside of me than in a Petri dish. Di also rang to check how Peter and I were coping. Her kindness made me want to weep. It was hard to stay balanced with the huge amount of hormones that were still sloshing around my body. We had chosen not to tell our family that we were going through IVF again—it was too hard to manage their hopes and expectations along with our own emotions. Earlier failed attempts had left me heartbroken and angry and I couldn’t keep repeating the story, explaining the medication and the treatment.

  However, there was one person I did tell about our third IVF attempt: my girlfriend Annebelle. Without intruding or constantly asking how the treatment was going, Annebelle was just there. I loved that she was into chakras, the moon and magic. She was preparing a spell for our inky black smudge, lighting three pink candles with three pink flowers. I was not convinced by the pretty potion, but I was prepared to believe in unicorns if it meant becoming a mother.

  The next two weeks until a blood test would reveal whether I was pregnant took an eternity. I had allowed the bubble of hope that I carried to get a little bigger. Perhaps those three little cells I saw on the screen had now developed into a blastocyst. Perhaps the embryo had now embedded itself into the wall of my uterus. Perhaps it was flourishing. Or perhaps it had shrivelled away. Just a day after the transfer, Peter had to fly to Italy for a 60 Minutes story on Formula One racing. His constant travel had begun to wear me down. Lately we seemed to have an argument just before he went away and then when he first came home. Our conversations also seemed rushed and incomplete before he had to zip away on a story. All I wanted was to cling on to him tightly and have him close by as we tried to make sense of what was happening. Now I only had myself and hopefully my growing embryo for company. At least work was a distraction.

  There couldn’t have been more of a distraction than that festival of insincerity, the TV Week Logie Awards. The Australian television industry’s awards evening broadcast from the Crown Palladium in Melbourne was always full of glitter, sequins, fake smiles and fake conversations. But I loved being a part of it, loved the chance to dress up and feel rewarded for the hard work I had put into my career. This year I would be hosting the red carpet arrivals show to be broadcast before the awards. After being shown up to my hotel suite on the executive level of the Crown Towers Hotel, I stretched out on a grey velvet couch and rang room service to order a club sandwich, my hotel room staple, before my gig for the evening began.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the forty-eighth annual TV Week Logie Awards red carpet show. I’m Jessica Rowe, and tonight you’ll see all the glitz and glamour from our biggest stars.’ I was wearing a floor-length, silver-sequinned Collette Dinnigan gown. The make-up artist had expertly covered the acne that continued to plague my face and back, an ugly side effect of the IVF. I was interviewing my colleagues on one of the highest-rating television shows of the year, but the best part of the evening was the secret I was carrying inside my watery womb, shielded from the flashes and bright lights. It was easy to avoid the champagne without attracting any suspicion. My excuse, that I had to get up at 3am to co-host Today, satisfied my workmates. Nothing was going to jeopardise the chance of this nine-day cell growing, and growing. I could cross off another day in my diary—only ten more days until I knew if I was pregnant.

  The phone rang at 12.45pm; Di was punctual as always. I let it ring a few more times. I wanted to hold on to hope for a little longer.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Di.

  ‘I’m beside myself,’ I replied.

  ‘You don’t have to be any longer—you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!’ I screamed and cried at the same time. Hot, happy tears streaked down my face as I jumped up and down in the empty living room. ‘I have to ring Peter.’

  It was 3.10am in Milan. Peter had been lying in his hotel room staring up at the white stucco ceiling, waiting for the phone to ring.

  ‘Petee,’ I screamed, ‘you’re going to be a father! I’m pregnant!’ We sobbed down the phone line together.

  Saturday morning bliss. I rolled over to check the time, dislodging my old tortoiseshell cat, Audrey, who had taken to sleeping curled up against my stomach. She knew something was going on, and I wondered if she could sense Milano blossoming inside of me. Peter and I had nicknamed our baby in honour of the place Peter was working when he discovered our glorious news. Our Milano was now five weeks old and the size of a chocolate chip.

  It was already nine o’clock and such a treat to still be in bed, with no alarm going off at 3.20am. I had been getting up at this nightmare hour for a couple of months and still I was not used to it. Do you ever get used to getting up in the middle of the night? I have never been a morning person and here I was hosting a breakfast television show! Several times I’d stumbled into the shower unaware I was still in my cat-print flannelette pyjamas until they were soaking wet. Every weekday morning I drove in the pitch-black across the Harbour Bridge, the lights of the city reflected on the oily, dark water as I made my way to the television studios. The roads were deserted apart from a few taxis, hire cars, garbage trucks and couples staggering home from a big night out.

  Each evening bedtime was between 8 and 8.30pm, something I hadn’t managed since I was a little girl. This left enough time to read through my briefs, the background information for the interviews I’d be doing the next morning, and watching The 7.30 Report on ABC television before I went to bed. All work and no play was turning me into a very boring girl. At least with Peter travelling constantly for his reports on 60 Minutes it was not as if we had a ‘normal’ existence anyway.

  ‘How good is bed?’ I asked Milano and Audrey, as the cat curled back into position next to my tummy. And I planned on staying put under my soft sheets for most of the morning. Peter was away so often that I was used to spending time either on my own or with my mother or sisters to fill in the days. I thought that perhaps Mum and I could go to the movies. We had a lot in common, including our taste in films—which was just as well, since Peter was more interested in rom-coms and there are only so many Jennifer Aniston movies I can manage.

  Stretching my legs out in our king-size bed, I was considering getting up to bring the newspapers inside to check the movie times when I felt something damp between my legs. At first I thought I was imagining it. Audrey jumped off the bed and flicked her tail as I sat up, swinging my legs down onto the wooden floorboards before quickly pulling down my pyjama pants. There were coppery brown bloodstains. ‘No, no, no, no!’ I screamed. Grabbing my mobile off the bedside table, I frantically searched for Di’s mobile number.

  ‘Di, I’m so sorry to call on a Saturday, but I’m bleeding. I don’t know what to do. I can’t lose this baby …’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Di in calming tones. ‘Is Peter there?’

  ‘No, no, he’s away, in Uganda.’

  ‘How much bleeding have you had?’

  ‘I’m not sure, I don’t think I’m bleeding at the moment.’

  ‘Alright. Can you get your mum to drive you into the clinic and we can do a blood test to see how everything is going?’

  ‘Am I having a miscarriage?’ I had to say my deepest fear out loud.

  ‘Just call your mum and get her to bring you in. We can talk once you’re here.’

  Back at the clinic, Mum held my hand while D
i explained that it was normal to have breakthrough bleeding, but she wanted to make sure my hormone levels were still up. If these levels were increasing it meant I was still pregnant. Bright red blood drained quickly from my arm into the phial, but I couldn’t look away from those happy family photos stuck on the wall.

  Di gave me a hug and told me to go home and relax, and she would phone with the results on Monday. How could I relax when my mind kept lurching from hope to catastrophe? I dropped onto the couch, the very same spot I had been when Di phoned with the wonderful news four weeks before. Frightened of where my mind would go if left to its own devices, I kept replaying my conversation with Peter when I shared our news. When that didn’t work I began counting the books on the bookshelf, counting the number of shelves, the number of titles with pink writing on the book spine, the number of books that were mine, the books I had nicked from Mum, Peter’s sports biographies—anything to stop me from falling off that cliff and shattering into pieces. It was a fall I had taken when Peter and I learnt that our first round of IVF treatment had failed and I didn’t know if I could take it again and survive.

  Audrey jumped onto the couch and curled herself against my stomach, purring as I stroked her soft, fluffy fur.

  ‘Oh Auds, you understand, don’t you, my darling,’ I whispered.

  Bits of her motley coat were coming off onto the white mohair rug I had tucked around myself. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve—now I was counting the hairs she had shed on the rug. I could not lose my baby. I could not. Do not give up, my precious. Hold on, I promise I will always be here for you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Oh how I want you. I need you.

  This baby was my salvation and my strength, and the secret of conceiving her had kept me going through those months in my new job co-hosting Today on the Nine Network. It was a job that I loved, but it was also causing me such heartache and humiliation. On only my second day as co-host, I had woken up to headlines likening my appearance to a velociraptor. Remember those skinny, mean-looking dinosaurs that were the villains in Jurassic Park? The columnist said I had ‘razor sharp, short blonde hair’, and described my chemistry with co-host Karl Stefanovic as ‘thrusting a hand towards her co-host like an over-friendly raptor’. The article concluded with the line, ‘It had been three hours, but it felt like three years.’

  The words hurt, even though I expected to be criticised. Not everybody was going to like me, but I’d always worried far too much about what people thought and had wasted too many years seeking their approval. Constructive criticism wasn’t a problem as I understood I had much to learn. But what wasn’t helpful was the personal denigration that dominated much of the media coverage. My intelligence, appearance, weight and loud laughter were frequently called into question. One commentator summed me up this way: ‘Rowe has the long limbs and angular face of a model; she is childless and loud.’ All eyes were on me in my new role and I had a lot to prove, not only to myself but to my former colleagues and new bosses. However, now I didn’t care if my career was taken away from me; all that mattered was my Milano. But if I lost her, my sweet secret, I knew I would be broken.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The phone rang; it was Di.

  ‘It’s okay, your blood levels are good. You are still pregnant.’ My Milano was already a determined soul, and her doggedness gave me the energy to keep turning up for work each morning and standing tall, despite continuing cruel media comments.

  Over the next few weeks I enjoyed the way my body was softening and stretching. For the first time in my life I had hips and breasts, and I marvelled at how my boy-shaped physique, straight up and down like an ironing board, was filling out, plumping up and ripening like a soft, lush peach. In the shower I would run my hands over my newly rounded breasts, revelling in their shape and size. At last I had a line of cleavage between my boobs without even trying! In the past I would have had to wrap my arms right around my body then lean forward to even get a hint of a bust.

  Twisties and hot chips became my breakfast of choice. I relished lamb cutlets or fillet steak for dinner, quite a change for someone who hadn’t eaten cuts of meat in about ten years. Previously I had been a peculiar type of not-quite-vegetarian, someone who occasionally enjoyed indulging in sausages and bacon. My youngest sister, Claudia, who was a chef, always teased me about this weakness for the worst kind of meat on the menu.

  Now I understood the pleasure of eating the right sort of meat, chewing tender crumbled cutlets and savouring their sweet flavour. The perfect match for this meal was mashed potato, softened with knobs of butter and a generous slurp of cream. At dinnertime—or at any time, really—I devoured my food faster than my husband, quite a feat given his lifelong ability to hoover meals in a matter of minutes. My stubborn, angry acne finally cleared up now that hormone injections were a thing of the past and I had the sort of glowing, dewy skin I’d only ever read about in the magazines. At long last, I had become the clichéd pregnant woman. Nothing was going to break my stride—which was just as well, because my career was on skid row.

  Although I understood that a certain level of scrutiny went with a high-profile job, what I couldn’t understand were the relentless personal attacks. One morning after work I was sitting on our front steps, getting some sunshine before I logged on to the computer to check the rundown for the next day’s show. I opened an envelope in my stack of work mail that was full of clippings from a Melbourne newspaper paperclipped to a note written on an old typewriter. I should have thrown it away the moment I saw the typed letters on faded yellow notepaper, some darker than others depending on how hard the typewriter keys had been hit. In my favourite TV crime shows, an oddly typed letter is a giveaway that the writer is a little unhinged, maybe even a serial killer. But instead I read the letter, full of such hate for me, my laugh, my short hair, my weight and my life. I was dumbfounded that someone I had never met could write such cruel and vicious words. The attached newspaper clippings were nasty letters from other people who had been invited to write in about me by Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper. These criticisms had been highlighted with yellow fluorescent pen by the author of the typed note.

  I’m sure this kind of pressure caused me to have another pregnancy scare. Early every morning after I got up I had been checking for blood, then just after 9am when the show had finished I would be back in the bathroom to check again. However, my heart stopped one Wednesday morning, when I saw an ugly red discharge on my undies. I grabbed my phone.

  ‘Di, I’m bleeding again. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose this baby!’

  ‘Jessica, please stay calm,’ Di soothed. ‘I’ll organise an ultrasound for you this afternoon to check that everything is okay. Try not to panic—it could be from the pessaries you’ve been using to help your uterus provide the perfect hormonal conditions for your baby.’

  Peter came with me to the clinic and helped me onto the bed. Neither of us could speak while the sonographer spread the gel on my stomach and then placed the probe on top to capture the soundwaves that might tell us what was going on.

  ‘There’s a heartbeat,’ she said.

  ‘A heartbeat—a heartbeat!’ said Peter and I in unison.

  Desperately I marked off each day in my diary, willing the weeks to whizz by in record time. Instead it had the opposite effect and each day was like wading through thick, syrupy treacle, slow and frustrating. I never expected to be so anxious. I had imagined that once I discovered I was pregnant that would be it, I would have made it. Now I realised how tenuous the little soul was inside of me and I whispered to her every moment I could to stay with me. Hang in there, my Milano.

  Still I kept setting the alarm and showing up for work while the rest of the world slept. On camera I smiled and laughed and tried to be myself, even though a producer had suggested I needed to stop laughing. Initially I bristled at the idea: was I really as bad as everyone was saying and writing? Was I a joke, a fraud? How could I keep being mys
elf and feel confident when I had to second-guess everything I did and said? My laughter was intrinsic to who I was; I had always laughed long and loud. My parents and then my teachers had failed to smother my noisy laugh and even my tendency to snort when I found something especially hilarious. Laughter had been my defence mechanism, the antidote to dealing with challenging times. And now that weapon had been taken away from me. I stopped laughing on camera.

  Before I had accepted the job I told the head of news and current affairs, Mark Llewellyn, that I was worried about my lack of interviewing experience. He reassured me that I would get plenty of backup from producers so I would never feel underprepared going into the studio. During my first week I interviewed the then prime minister, John Howard. I was nervous but did my research and felt good about how it had gone. Each day I learnt something new, and I enjoyed feeling intellectually stretched each morning.

  But while my brain was enjoying new challenges, my body was still defying orders as sweat continued to pour out of my armpits. I tried everything to hide the wet patches under the arms of my brand-new Armani jackets. I’d given up on using sanitary pads and in the end just kept my arms clamped even more firmly by my sides. I wanted to relax in my role but still felt under the microscope.

  ‘Don’t wear that pink jacket again,’ the producer said after one show.

  ‘What?’ I replied, stunned.

  ‘Eddie hates it, don’t wear it again.’

  ‘Oh—okay.’ I was used to having my clothes and hair commented on, having worked in television for ten years. Such scrutiny on your exterior appearance is an occupational hazard for women in the media.

  The jacket went to the back of the wardrobe, but I felt under increasing scrutiny. After one show the whole team were summoned to the office of Nine’s chief executive, Eddie McGuire. Just a few weeks before, Eddie had been appointed the CEO of Nine after starring on our screens for years on The Footy Show and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. He was also credited with turning around the fortunes of the Collingwood Football Club. I couldn’t look anyone in the eye and started studying the sharp edges of the ugly marble coffee table in the middle of the office.