Meeting My Future Husband

Liam and I met in the scorching summer of '98. Scorching in Ibiza, I should say; I'm sure it was as drab and grey in England as at any other time of the year. Having had a taste of the hedonistic high-life the previous year, I was back on The White Isle for a second season of shenanigans. At that time I was 22, single, and free as a bird - my only concern being earning enough pesetas to secure my entry to the best nightclubs and sink several "wodka con lima." My mate Kez and I would return to our apartment at dawn before scuttling off to work at an after-party bar in San Antonio. The party never stopped. 

One evening, I was working as a PR or 'prop' outside Charlie's Bar, coaxing passing holidaymakers into the bar with the promise of free schnapps shots, when a young guy with chiselled cheekbones and an unusually defined cupids bow sauntered up to me. Ready for the usual cheesy chat-up patter, I was all ready to shrug off his advances, but instead of the regular lines I was used to, he introduced himself as Liam and started talking about a few friends we had in common. A fresh change from the norm, we chatted animatedly for a while, whilst I drank in his good looks and assessed his character. I sold him some tickets for Amnesia later that evening and off he went, whilst I continued working. 

Several hours passed, and suddenly Liam reappeared at the bar, explaining that his friend had got a tad intoxicated and was back at the apartment, unfit for a night's clubbing. Would I like to go with him instead? he asked shyly. Although I had guest list for the club and didn't need the ticket, I readily agreed and off we went to dance til dawn. It was one of those nights where everything just slots perfectly into place: we went to the front of the queue with my guest list connections, breezed in for free, were ushered up to the VIP bar, met lots of fun people and generally had an amazing time, laughing and dancing to the intoxicating Balearic beats, loud house music pumping, heavy bass reverberating in our chests. 

As the sun came up, we stumbled out of the club, blinking in the daylight, buzzing from a fantastic night. Not wanting the night to end, Liam came back to my flat and we stayed up all day, listening to music and chatting about everything and anything we could think of, my flatmates coming and going and saying hi. There were no awkward silences, no pauses for breath, it was like we had so much to say to each other, there was no time to waste. 

By the evening we were exhausted, and Liam went back to his apartment, where his mate was waiting, furious to have been passed over for a girl. Things were a tad frosty between the two of them after that, and Liam and I spent the rest of his holiday together, parting tearfully when it was time for him to leave. 

Back in England, Liam would write to me and even sent me a few books he thought I'd appreciate. I'd look at the photos we'd taken together and long to be reunited with him once more. He lived in Essex, me in Kent, so it was only an hour's drive, once I returned to the UK at the end of the summer season. 

The last month of the season passed slowly, the shine having gone from Ibiza for me now that my heart was back in England. Within 6 weeks of our meeting, I was packing my suitcase and locking my apartment door for the last time, excited to be going home. It was early October. 

The second my flight touched down at Gatwick,  Liam was en route to my parents' house in Bexley, so desperate were we to see each other again. 

And that was it. We vowed that we would never be apart again. 

A Different Perspective

However turbulent those teenage years, my friends and I had all dodged the baby bullet and left school without a sproglet in tow. I don't actually recall anyone in my school becoming a teenage mum, let alone my group of friends. Of course, we knew of gymslip mums who lived nearby, or went to a local school, but I didn't know of anyone personally. It wasn't close to home. We passed our GCSEs with flying colours, the majority of our school year went on to study at Sixth Form, got good A-level grades. 

Of the dropouts, I later heard that a few had become pregnant; we spotted them out at the shopping centre at the weekends sporting a tell-tale bump under their clothes and then later pushing a pram, a mewling red-faced infant tucked inside. It was a topic for gossip, pity almost, not admiration or envy. Yet those girls, the ones we'd been brought up to believe were "under-achievers" would ultimately become a source of unexpected jealously on my part. The girls I'd thought of as having "thrown their lives away" by becoming young mums would always have something I never would. They'd have a family. 

I wonder if the message in schools these days is any different, now that we're surrounded by older mothers and IVF has become commonplace. Perhaps the teachers are now encouraging girls to settle down and have a family early in the way that our parents did, thus reducing the likelihood of later finding it impossible and the heartache that ensues. (I wouldn't know what goes on in schools these days - I don't have any children, remember?).

Around one in five women are childless at 45, a figure which is on the increase, has almost doubled since the nineties and is expected to grow, through either choice or circumstance. Choosing not to have a child is one thing, being physically unable to reproduce, quite another, as I was going to find out...

Anti-Baby Brainwashing

Squirming my way through the Sex Ed part of the curriculum during our Biology lessons as a young teen was always uncomfortable; formal black-and-white diagrams of the male and female reproductive systems loomed large on the overhead projector, whilst Mr Lewis rattled off the unlikely-sounding names for the various organs and functions as matter-of-factly as possible with thirty pubescent pupils tittering loudly and smirking behind their hands.

Even at a respectable grammar school, the classroom often descended into childish jokes and unruly behaviour, but the overriding message was broadcast and received loud and clear: whatever you do, do NOT get pregnant. This directive was quickly backed up with a suitably bloody video of childbirth, our faces contorting as the screen depicted a brutal scene more gruesome than any horror film even the most rebellious amongst us had ever snuck a glimpse of. At least a slasher movie would have come with an 18 rating, warning us of the level of gore to follow. It was horrific, and further reinforced the message: parenthood equals pain. 

 It was drilled far down into the depths of our impressionable subconscious minds that to become impregnated with a child would be the death knell for our promising futures, a fate reserved for the uneducated riff-raff from the all-girls comp down the road. Such was our abject terror of this unfortunate destiny that we grew up to view motherhood as some kind of terrible occupation reserved for those with no ambition or hopes for the future, a lifelong penance for not paying attention in class. To be a young mother was the height of shame and failure. 

I'm certain that this anti-baby brainwashing in the late Eighties is partly responsible for the general late blossoming of Generation X - an entire societal segment whose brains absorbed those toe-curlingly cringeworthy Sex Ed lessons like a sponge and drew the same conclusion : I must not get pregnant. 

Of course, when Mr Lewis delivered those dire anti-pregnancy preachings, he didn't mean "don't get pregnant EVER," but it's like being a hypnotist and putting everyone in the room in a trance, then packing up your show for the night and driving off into the sunset, forgetting to break the spell and unhypnotise them again. The idea stuck. Not only did we not get pregnant during our schooldays, we didn't get pregnant in our twenties either. It was only when the clock struck midnight on the eve of our thirtieth birthdays that the spell was suddenly broken and we all woke up, disorientated and rubbing our eyes, wondering when we were supposed to tick "have a baby" off the to-do lists of our lives. 

I'm sure part of the lecture was about avoiding STIs too (or STDs as they were called in those days, the "disease" part now having been swopped for the more innocuous-sounding "infection"), but that part was largely dismissed by us healthy youngsters. AIDS may have been briefly mentioned in hushed tones, but to us that was an exotic disease that happened far, far away, in Africa....or Hampstead Heath, amongst promiscuous gay men. No, we had little fear of sexually-transmitted diseases, the only immediately pressing issue for us was to remain baby-free. 

That's not to say that we all lived a chaste existence, far from it. We were highly-charged hormonal teens after all, the oestrogen coursing through our veins causing my friends and I to partake in all manner of ill-advised activities in the hope of hooking up with the hottest lads in the year. I clearly remember the hours spent in front of the mirror primping and preening prior to the local under-18s disco, plucking my poor eyebrows into submission and shaving my legs until I developed a rash. 

For weeks beforehand we'd plan our outfits, hair, make-up, as well as the less-legit details such as who would be responsible for procuring the alcohol from their parents' drinks cabinet, siphoning off a finger of vodka here or a generous glug of gin there, topping up the part-empty bottle with water and slipping it back undetected. After a few of these parties, the bottles in the cabinet would be filled with about 60% water. Our parents would be in for a disappointment when they next reached for a stiff drink after a hard day at the office. 

Feeling self-conscious and self-critical are typical teen traits, ones that we attempted to mask with self-medication: be it alcohol, cigarettes or a badly-rolled spliff that resembled a rogue Tampax that'd escaped from it's wrapping and had been knocking about in the bottom of our schoolbags for a few weeks. 

The perceived benefits of these unhealthy habits were two-fold; loosening us up (in more ways than one, unfortunately) and also making us look "cool". Or so we thought at the time. I'd love to shake my self-doubting sixteen-year-old self and say "you ARE good enough. You don't need to do this." 

As cannabis often leads on to the hard stuff, snogging boys at the school disco was the gateway drug to sex. Gradually, throughout our adolescence, we increased in confidence and experience until sex became inevitable. We shared stories within our tight social circle, comparing notes, scribbling in code in our diaries about our personal lives, tightly encrypted of course, lest it fall into the wrong hands - a nosy parent or vengeful sibling. 

Of course, despite being careful on the whole, mistakes happened. I was (and still am) lucky enough to have a tight-knit group of schoolfriends who were always there with a shoulder to cry on....or provide a lift to the Family Planning Clinic, should one of us require the Morning After Pill. "Better to be safe than sorry" the matronly staff there would say, reinforcing the school's stance, and we'd agree, embarrassed yet grateful. 

One thing I'm absolutely certain we were never warned about during those school lectures, nor the GUM clinics, however, was that sex (and sexual activity in general) could cause cancer. Would it have bothered us? I'm not sure. Would we have straightened up in our childish wooden seats and paid attention? Perhaps not, we weren't too concerned about the common four-letter swear word of the time that was AIDS, were we?

At that age, when everything's fine under the bonnet, the engine of your body humming like a prized Lamborghini, future lifestyle-related illnesses seem way off, impossible to comprehend. Although it would have been nice to have been informed. It was only around a decade later, aged 25, whilst undergoing surgery to remove part of my pre-cancerous cervix, that I found out that unprotected sex can indeed cause cancer. And a whole host of other issues as a result of the infection or subsequent surgery, including infertility. We were definitely not told any of that at school. 

The Neverending Journey

If you are reading this, I wish you weren't.

Hang on, don't go!

 What I mean is, if you've found yourself here it's likely that you are (or someone close to you is) part of an exclusive members club, although I'm not talking about some swanky low-lit London establishment. 

This club is one I was rather less eager to become an honorary member of myself. It's the Non-Mother's Club. As a long-standing member, I feel your pain. Truly. Having been to hell and back due to the agony of infertility, I'd like to give you a virtual hug, pour you a large cold Sauvignon, chink wine glasses and say "Hang in there, Sister! It does get better." 

Undergoing IVF is often described as a journey, well if that's the case it's the loneliest, most depressing journey I'VE ever been on (and I regularly take public transport, so that's saying something). 

Let me make something clear here - I LOVE to travel. The thrill of closing the bulging suitcase, knowing that the next time it's opened I'll be somewhere new - preferably hot, exotic, exciting. Checking the details on the tickets for the umpteenth time, counting down the days on the calendar until the Great Escape from the mundane routine of the nine to five. 

Only the "journey" I was about to embark on in 2007 was to be of a completely different variety. It would be the most agonising journey of my life, and, in some ways, it's one that will never end. There will be no "Great Escape." Not entirely. 

You see, to call undergoing the investigations, consultations and then ultimately the IVF procedures a "journey" implies that there is a destination, that you actually arrive somewhere at the end of it. Which in many cases couples do, to be fair. On average one in four attempts results in a live birth. Of the women that I've known or met throughout my infertility struggle, all of them went on to become mothers, eventually. I found this at first heart-warming, reassuring, and then ultimately even more isolating as it became apparent that my husband and I would not be joining them in welcoming a child of our own. 

You read stories in womens' magazines about the infertility diagnosis, the IVF....and then the "miracle" at the end of it, which takes the form of a bonny pink or blue-wrapped bundle lying serenely in it's grateful mother's arms, her palpable joy leaping off the glossy page. 

Well I'm here to talk about the darker side of infertility, the taboo subject which is often ignored due to it's uncomfortable nature: what happens to the women for whom IVF, often the last-ditch desperate attempt to produce that longed-for child, fails? What happens when you simply run out of road on your "journey" like on some cheap film set? Like the Wile E Coyote character on the Roadrunner cartoons who accidentally runs over the edge of a cliff, stopping momentarily in mid-air as he looks down and realises he's about to plunge into the abyss. 

Then what?