by Hodge, Sibel
‘Hey! How are you? You sound down, what’s happened?’
I took a deep breath. ‘Nothing.’ My friends were getting sick of me going on about babies all the time. Karl was getting sick of me going on about it. Even I was getting sick of me. And unless someone was going through the same thing, they just didn’t get the excruciating pain of being infertile. It’s the equivalent of losing all your children if you were lucky enough to have them in the first place. You grieve every single day for something that you’ve never even had yet. I picked up the picture of Mum next to my bed and stared at it. She would’ve understood. I had my friends and Karl but I felt cut off and lonely. Only Poppy and the girls on the fertility forum completely understood what it was like.
I forced my voice to sound brighter and put on my happy face. ‘Nothing. I’m OK.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, not sounding convinced. ‘You sound pissed off.’
‘Oh, we’ve just had a bit of a row. You know, the usual.’
‘I see. Well, I’m your saviour then. Do you fancy going out for a drink on Friday night? Kick off your shoes, have a boogie and a laugh. It might help to take your mind off things,’ she said.
That sounded so tempting, but gone were the days when I could sink a couple of bottles of wine with my friends. ‘I’d love to, but I might be tempted to drink lots of wine and get pissed, and I need to stay off the booze still if I want to be in tip-top shape for the IVF. Why don’t you come round here instead?’
‘Sounds like a plan!’ she said, then paused for a beat. ‘Is it OK if Kerry comes, too? She thinks you’ve been avoiding her since she started showing.’
I sighed, feeling like the most horrible friend in the whole world. ‘I have kind of been avoiding her. It’s just so difficult to see her now she’s getting bigger.’
‘She knows it’s not easy for you, and she feels really bad.’
I could’ve kicked myself. I was so wrapped up in my own life that I hadn’t even stopped to think about how Kerry was feeling at being pushed away by me. ‘Yes, I’ll make sure I invite her.’
‘Good. She’ll be really pleased to see you.’
‘Anyway, how are you and Dan?’
‘Oh, we’re good, now he’s got his shed! He’s building a train set in there for his sister’s oldest boy. Actually, I think he’s really building it for himself. His nephew is just an excuse. They never grow up, do they? Still, it means I can watch what I want to on TV and there’s no fight over the remote. I’ve got it all figured out.’ She laughed.
I envied the sound of her laid-back laughter. I wished I had it all figured out. ‘Men and their sheds.’
‘Yep. OK, I’ll see you about eight on Friday?’
‘Looking forward to it,’ I said. And I was. Amelia was always happy and bubbly, just like I used to be. Nothing ever seemed to faze her. I wanted some of her positive vibes to rub off on me.
I hung up and wandered downstairs, needing to clear the air with Karl. I hated sleeping on an argument. It always made things ten times worse. I could never get to sleep, just tossing and turning with things running through my head, and I needed a calm womb.
The TV was on quietly in the lounge and Karl was flopped out on our black, leather sofa, tuned in to Top Gear. Amelia was right. Give a man a car or a shed and he’d be happy.
I stood over him, taking his hand in mind. ‘I’m sorry I flew off the handle.’
He took my hand and pulled me on top of him, holding me tight.
‘It’s just–’
‘I know,’ he cut me off, squeezing me close so his heartbeat resounded in my chest. ‘Believe me, I know. Are you going out with Amelia?’
‘No.’
‘It’ll do you good. You need to go out, have a change of scenery.’
I tipped my face towards him and kissed his soft lips, suddenly so grateful to have him. It wasn’t his fault things had worked out the way they had. ‘Because if I do, I’ll be tempted to have too much to drink, and you know that might mess up my body.’
‘Well, maybe that’s exactly what you need.’ He eyed me. ‘You need to get out and have some fun. Relax for a change and stop thinking about babies for five minutes.’
‘No, Amelia and Kerry are coming here for a girlie night in instead.’
‘I’ll pop over and drag Dan and Mark to the pub when she gets here, then. Give you girls some peace.’
‘OK. But please don’t have too much to drink. Alcohol can affect the quality of your sperm,’ I said, painfully aware that I was sounding like a stuck record.
‘Mmm, don’t I know it!’
Nurse Awful
We arrived for our first appointment at the hospital half an hour early. As we took a seat in the waiting room, I couldn’t believe the amount of women sitting there who were pregnant. Didn’t they have a separate waiting room for them? Talk about rub your nose in it!
I sat down next to Karl and grabbed a magazine, burying my head in it so I wouldn’t have to look at them. I was just getting a headache and eyestrain when a Scottish nurse called Claire finally called for us.
I threw the magazine down on the table and stared at my feet as we followed her to the doctor’s office.
‘I’m Dr Jansen.’ A man with bushy black hair and half-moon glasses stood and reached his hand out with a welcoming smile. He didn’t look like Herman Munster, which was a relief. Not a weird-shaped head or neck bolt in sight. He was spick and span from top to toe in a pin-striped suit and tie and a white doctor’s coat, and looked like someone who would iron their boxer shorts.
‘Hi.’ I nervously shook his hand.
He gave me a firm handshake in return. That was good, wasn’t it? Didn’t a firm handshake mean he was confident? Good at his job? Hopefully.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Karl said as we sat down.
‘First, I need to take your medical history.’ Dr Jansen clicked the top of his biro and began writing notes as we explained our history in detail. He asked us various questions and took more notes.
‘We need to take some more tests from you at this stage,’ he said, ticking them off on his fingers. ‘Gina, we need to do a transvaginal scan on you. Karl, we need you to do another sperm test, and we need to take various blood tests from both of you. Just to get an idea of how things stand at the moment. If the tests come back normal, then we can start your IVF treatment at the beginning of your next cycle.’
Hurrah! Bring it on!
After my scan, which appeared to be perfectly OK (thank God!), Claire took us off to the pathology department to wait for our blood tests.
With those completed, all that was left was Karl’s sperm sample.
‘I’m afraid we’re a bit busy today and we’ve run out of private cubicles at the moment,’ a scary-looking nurse said. She was so short and stocky, she reminded me of a munchkin. She looked like she’d been at the hormone treatments herself, complete with a big Adam’s apple and a thick spattering of upper-lip hair. I was dying to get my wax out and whip if
t off for her. Any minute now I expected her to break into a rendition of “Follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
She led us into a corridor that had doors with “occupied” on them. ‘The only room available is the cleaner’s storage cupboard,’ she grunted.
Karl looked at me in horror, then back at the nurse.
‘Er…can we wait for a private cubicle to become free?’ Karl asked, looking uncomfortable at the thought of doing it in a cupboard.
She made a huge point of sighing and glancing at her watch. ‘It’s half past five now and the clinic will be closing soon. You can always come back tomorrow. Or if you live within a couple of hours travelling time I can give you a sample cup to bring back.’
Karl sighed, glancing at me. ‘I’ve got meetings all day tomorrow. I’ll have to leave home about 6 a.m. as it is.’ He paused for a moment. ‘No, it’s OK. We can use the cleaner’s cupboard.’
‘Would you like some magazines?’ She asked with a smirk, as if she were en
joying this.
Ew. I dreaded to think what kind of state they were in. By the look on Karl’s face, he was thinking the same thing.
‘No, thanks,’ Karl said. ‘I’m sure I’ll be able to manage.’
‘Right you are, then.’ Nurse Awful stopped in front of a door marked “Cleaners” and opened it, turning the light on. ‘Your suite awaits you.’ She grinned.
Karl and I stepped in and she closed the door.
‘Great. I’ve got to have a wank in a broom cupboard. And on top of that, I’m paying three grand for the privilege. And where’s the lock?’ Karl stared at the door, eyes wide. ‘There’s no lock. What if someone barges in?’
I snorted. ‘No one’s going to barge in.’
‘Oh, yeah, I thought that at the hotel and Clive barged in.’
We glanced around the tiny cupboard for something to shove in front of the door. Mops, wide brooms, containers of disinfectant, a couple of nurses’ uniforms hanging up, a plastic chair.
‘There.’ I pointed to the chair. ‘Shove it under the handle of the door.’
Karl scraped it across the floor and positioned it carefully. Checking and re-checking the handle to see if someone could push it open. When he was satisfied, he looked around the grey cupboard, which was lit by a dim bulb.
‘Doesn’t exactly inspire me to get in the mood,’ he grumbled, looking at the mops. ‘There’s nowhere to sit because we’ve shoved that chair under the door, and there’s nowhere to lie down.’
‘What’s wrong with doing it standing up?’ I asked, stepping close to him.
I closed my eyes and kissed him, stroking my hand up and down his back. After a little while, he seemed to relax a bit so I moved my hands to his crotch, massaging him gently through the fabric of his jeans. I felt him stiffen underneath me and glanced up at him, eyebrow raised. ‘How about now? Are you in the mood?’
‘Mmmm,’ he mumbled. ‘That’s pretty good.’
I undid the zip and slid my hand in between his jeans and baggy boxers just as I heard a pair of high heels clacking along the tiled flooring in the corridor outside, getting louder and louder.
Karl froze, pushing my hand away. ‘Someone’s coming.’
We both turned to look at the door, expecting someone to burst in, but the heels carried on past and disappeared into the distance.
‘That’s probably a patient or doctor wearing heels,’ I said. ‘A cleaner isn’t going to be wearing stilettos.’ I turned back to him. ‘Now, where were we?’ I resumed stroking a now very soft willy.
After about five more minutes, he was getting back into the swing of things when we heard a doctor with a really loud voice talking to a patient in the room next door. ‘So, the nurse was just telling me you think that the hormone injections are causing your diarrhoea,’ he said.
‘Yes, Doctor. It only started since I’ve been on them,’ the patient said.
‘And what colour is the diarrhoea?’ the doctor said.
‘Great!’ Karl threw his hands in the air. ‘I’m trying to get turned on and someone’s talking about their toilet habits!’
After a few minutes, and no more bodily fluid references, I resumed crotch duty.
‘Oh, this isn’t working!’ Karl exhaled a frustrated breath. ‘It’s all right for women, you can just close your eyes and think about Brad Pitt and get horny. Men need visual stimulation.’ He looked around the cupboard with narrowed eyes.
‘How about we spice things up a bit and make it more visual?’ I glanced at the nurses’ outfits and hastily pulled one of them over the broom, giggling. ‘What do you think? Is she turning you on?’ I held it out, grinning, trying to bring some humour into the situation to get him to relax. ‘Is she visual enough for you? If you look at her from the right angle she looks a bit like Angelina Jolie, doesn’t she?’
Karl glared at me.
‘What? You’re always going on about how much you fancy her!’
More glaring. On a scale of one to ten glaring this was triple digits.
I put my hand up. ‘OK, OK, I’ll put the uniform on.’ And just as I said that, there was a knock at the door.
‘Sorry to disturb you, but I need to get the broom,’ a voice said from the other side of the door.
In Karl’s rush to do up his zip in case she walked in, he caught his wedding tackle in it. ‘Agh!’ He winced, screwing his eyes shut, head turned up to the ceiling, letting out a silent scream.
‘Just a minute!’ I said, removing the chair and opening the door a smidgen so I could slide out the broom, which was now wearing the nurse’s outfit.
A young girl with a pierced nose and spiky hair raised her eyebrows at me. ‘Whatever floats your boat.’ She chuckled as I slammed the door shut and replaced the chair.
Karl carried on glaring, but this time at the door. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘This is ridiculous!’
‘Well, I’ll just put on the nurse outfit, then.’ I stripped off, doing a slinky impression of a striptease and acting as seductive as you can when you’re stuck in a broom cupboard, trying to turn your husband on.
‘That’s more like it.’ Karl allowed himself a slight grin as I pulled on the nurse outfit.
‘I’m Nurse Angelina and I need your sperm,’ I said in a husky voice, beckoning him towards me as I licked my lips.
Letting Go
I was looking forward to my next appointment with Suzanne. I’d been trying really hard to do what she said, to trust that everything would work out and then forget about it, but it was like telling a crack addict that they couldn’t think about getting their fix anymore. Not that I’d ever smoked crack, you understand, (although there was one time in college when I smoked a joint) but it just seemed like an impossible task.
‘How have things been?’ Suzanne gave me a warm hug as she greeted me at the door.
‘I’ve been feeling a lot calmer since our session.’ Then I paused. ‘Well, some of the time,’ I added with a laugh. ‘I’ve turned into an uptight, impatient stress-head since we started trying for a baby.’
‘It’s understandable, but you need to keep working on it. Come on, let’s go to the treatment room.’
‘I’ve been avoiding one of my friends who’s pregnant and I feel so guilty about it. It’s not that I’m not happy for her, I really am. It’s just so painful to see other people with big baby bumps. And another friend I met online through the fertility website is also pregnant now. It just feels like it’s happening for everyone except me.’ I sat down on the treatment couch.
She nodded. ‘Jealousy is a normal emotion, but again, it’s a negative energy that will affect your chakras.’ She paused for a moment. ‘You need to try and turn all negatives into positives, and pretty soon you’ll find you’re happier and it actually enhances your life.’
‘But how can I do that?’
‘The way you should look at it is that if it’s possible for someone else to get pregnant, then it’s possible for you to, as well. Success and happiness is infinite. Just because someone else has succeeded doesn’t mean you won’t.’ She sat next to me, taking my cold hands in her warm ones. ‘When someone is doing well in life, or has achieved what they want, you should be genuinely happy for them. The happier you are for them, the more those things will come around to you. It’s all about good karma.’
I took all this in, jotting down everything in my memory bank so I could think about it later.
‘So instead of being jealous of your friends, congratulate them, and genuinely mean it. Be happy for them. Don’t feel miserable about things or harbour resentments. Have confidence and trust that everything in the Universe is connected and then you are lighter and free to enjoy your journey in life instead of just focusing on your end goal or destination and missing out on the here and now.’
She was right. Everything she said always made sense. I would ring Kerry when I got home and apologize to her for keeping my distance.
‘Did you do the visualization exercise I told you abo
ut last time, where you focus on achieving your pregnancy and then let it go?’
‘No.’ I gave her a sheepish grin. ‘I promise I will. But I have been trying to think about what I’m going to do with my life if I can’t get pregnant so it stops me obsessing so much about the IVF. I’m turning into someone I don’t recognize with the stress and hormones flying around all over the place. I mean, when I look in the mirror it’s still me staring back, but it’s not really me, if you know what I mean.’ I glanced up at the ceiling and sighed. ‘But at the same time, I know I can’t go back to the old me I was before all this started because that would be impossible. Now there’s something in me that’s missing, so I need to do something drastic to either fill the gap or focus on instead.’ I turned back to her and smiled. ‘And I did actually ask Zel…I mean, the Universe for some guidance.’ I chuckled. If Karl could hear me now he’d think I was bonkers.
‘Really, that’s the second step to the visualization process I was talking about. After you take the first step, the next is to get on with your life. Look for guidance or intuition in what you’re supposed to be doing. It’s not an either/or situation. The Universe, or God, or whoever you want to believe in, doesn’t say, “OK, you can’t be mother so that’s it, your life is over.” It goes back to the trust thing: trusting that it will happen, then forgetting about it and getting on with your life. Then something fulfilling or some opportunity will come to you.’
I was so going to do that exercise when I got home.
‘And all this experience you’ve been going through is bound to have an effect on your self-esteem and self-confidence,’ she went on. ‘You need to love yourself and be happy with yourself before you can love others fully and get happiness from your life again.’
All this emotional talk brought more tears to my eyes, and I wiped them away with the heel of my hand.
‘Just take everything one step at a time.’ She gave my hands a quick squeeze and let go of them. ‘Now lie back and relax, and I’ll start the treatment.’
