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By Mark Nethercote, September 30, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

Suse strides over to the bench, sitting down hard.  I follow.

“Hello?” Suse says.

“Hi there, Susan, it’s Shelley here.”

“Hi Shelley.”

“Have you got a minute?”

“Yes.”

“Look,” she says, pausing again, “I can’t tell you this officially, as the analyser is still not functioning.  But your beta-HCG level is positive.”

We both sit there for a moment, before looking at each other, our eyes wide.

“Sorry?”

“It’s just the progesterone level that isn’t through yet.  But the beta-HCG, the actual pregnancy test, is positive.  And… Well, we don’t like to give out the result until we have both, but, unofficially, it’s really the beta-HCG level that counts.”

We both sit there, a little stunned.

“So, that’s good, right?” Suse says eventually.

“Yes.  Absolutely.  And the level is nice and high.  Like really high.  It’s 703, and we like it to be above a hundred.  So you’re definitely pregnant.”

“So, unofficially, you’re telling us we’re pregnant?”

“Unofficially, yes, I am.  I just didn’t want you to be waiting till tomorrow to find out.  I didn’t think that was fair.”

“No,” I pipe in, “we were just talking about that.  We were about five minutes off ringing back.”

“Well, there you go,” she says laughing, “I beat you to it.”

We all go silent.

“So, where to from here?”

“Well you know, you still need your ultrasound at five weeks to check that it’s not an ectopic, which will be a week from now.  And, like I said, I’ll give you a call tomorrow to confirm.  To re-confirm.  But for now, it’s congratulations.”

“Thank you, Shelley,” we say together.  “Thank you.”

“Okay, talk to you tomorrow,” she says, hanging up.

I sit there, still.  Still dazed, before Suse falls into my arms.  I hear her begin to cry, and instantly my own shoulders begin chugging, convulsing, as the tears drop from my eyes.  Suse throws her legs over mine, hugging herself into me.

“We did it, honey,” she mews, barely able to speak. “We did it.”

“We did it.”

“We did it!”

“I know.”

“How are you?”

“Stunned, you know.  A bit shell-shocked, really.  I’d been bracing myself for the worst.”

“Same!”

We fall silent, staring out over the water, watching the swans as the silently float around.

“Oh my god,” Suse says, exhaling heavily.  “It wasn’t all for nothing, you know?  The herbs, the acupuncture, the hypnosis…”

“…The candle.”

“The specially concocted pre-conception recipes.”

“The meditation.”

“Ella saying I was pregnant.”

“Meg’s dream we got pregnant on the first round of IVF.”

“The Garfield doctor telling us someone had to be lucky first time.”

We both watch as the birds draw up against one another, rubbing their backs together.

“I was trying not to read too much into it all,” I say, my voice cracking.  “I was trying not to get too excited, you know, to not see too many signs.”

“Me too!”

“A winter baby.”

“Just like we imagined.  Just a year later.”

“Unofficially, that is.”

“Yes, honey.  Unofficially.”

We grip each other tight, and I place my palm against her belly, again imagining the cells multiplying, becoming a baby, a childhood lived out over seconds in my mind.  I smile.

“It’s poetic you know,” Suse says eventually, “that, in the end, it’s unofficial. The whole thing, the whole damn thing, until your child is in your arms, on the day that they are born, is unofficial.  Isn’t it?”

I look at my wife, and I smile, shaking my head slightly at her insight.

I watch as her brow furrows into that familiar frown.  “She said the level was high, right?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean it’s twins?”

I laugh so hard that I almost fall off the bench.

THE END

To be continued in three months…

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 29, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

I pace around, chasing my own tail.

I’m beginning to get dizzy.

Suse bursts in.

“Let’s go for a walk to the gardens,” she says, sounding almost light.

“Good thinking,” I mumble.

We walk out, along Punt Road, down under our bridge, and along the bike track.  We leave the din and congestion and smell of the evening traffic, crossing onto Morell Bridge.  I look at the lattice work, the ornamental Victorian lights, thinking of a simpler time in which this was built.

“What are you thinking?” Suse asks.

“I’m pissed,” I say.  “I’m frustrated.  This is a test that takes ninety minutes to run, and we’ve been waiting all day.  You went in at 9.30am, and we have to wait for six hours?  For what?  So that it can get to tonight, to now, to this point where they won’t be able to tell us tonight?”

We go silent.

“I have to know tonight, honey,” Suse says, slightly desperately.  “I can’t cope having to wait another day.  What am I going to do if I don’t have the result tonight?” she says, her voice rising.

“You’ll just have to cope,” I say testily, “just like I will.  We’ll just be left in limbo for another fucking night, just like the last eleven months.”

We let go of each other’s hands, waiting at the lights.  I walk off ahead, without the green man’s permission, and in through the garden’s wrought iron gates.

Suse catches me, taking my hand into hers.  Through all of this, we’ve tightened as a team.  People say that IVF will make you or break you as a couple.

If nothing else, through all of this torture we’re closer than ever.

As we walk, I squeeze my eyes tight, thinking of the last month, of the last year. Lighting the candle and surrounding it with salt to cleanse the house.  Our fertility ritual under a full moon in Fiji.  The boats that Suse made, to float away the spirits of past pregnancies into the sunset.  Our counselling with Jules.  All of Suse’s medical trials;  her trouble with both shoulders, her ectopic, her blocked fallopian tubes, her brush with multiple sclerosis and a spinal tumour, and then her varicella reaction.

And then I think of this last month.  Of all of her pregnancy symptoms.  Of the incident with the dishwasher.  Of Meg’s dream that we would get pregnant this first time.  Of Ella’s comment in the car.  Of what the Garfield doctor said about someone having to be lucky.  Of that feeling I’ve had, ever since we lit the candle two weeks ago.

That something has got to go right for us.

I open my eyes, and I contemplate the opposite.  The reality of where we are right now, somewhere on the road of IVF, trying to lift our feet into the next heavy step.

We continue along quietly.  The gardens now surround us, the smell, the tranquillity, the soft air.  We walk down our curve, winding right around the lake.  We walk along the path, and as we do, I see Suse’s shoulders rise, the weight lifted slightly in the presence of nature.

“If it gets to five, I’m calling back,” I say.  “I’m not…”

“…It’ll be okay,” Suse says, once again composed.  “She’ll call.

She squeezes my hand, and we walk some more.  We round the bend, past the lawn, the lake in front, a couple of birds fluttering at its edge.  As if on cue, as we pass the park bench, the phone rings.

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, September 27, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

The hours pass slowly.  I start the plumbing job, but having never done anything like this before, I have trouble judging how long it’ll take.  Added to this it is uncertainty of whether it will another minute or another hour before I’m cradling Suse in the bedroom with bad news, while water slowly fills the house through a leaky tap.  So I sort of start, and then I stop, and then I start again.

I end up not doing it.

Meantime, Suse sits in the lounge room, watching internet TV.  She devours several episodes of marginally talented singers standing in front of cruel judges and a loving audience, while shoving Rice Bubbles continuously into her mouth.

I check my watch at decreasing intervals.  I feel like a relative, having learnt of a disaster in a foreign land, awaiting confirmation of death.  Each time the phone rings, I jump up from my desk, running into the lounge room.  We both stare at the mobile phone screen, at the various names that appear, none of them Shelley.  We let them all go through to message bank.

“I’m going to ring,” I declare, finally, at 3.07pm.

“She said she’d ring us,” Suse protests weakly.

“You don’t want to know?”

“Not really,” she admits meekly.

“Well, I do,” I say.

I pick up the phone, and dial.  The phone peals five times before it answers.  I feel my heart in my mouth.

“Hi, You’ve called Shelley from Monash IVF,” begins the recorded message.

My heart starts again.

* * * * *

I return to my job of doing nothing in particular. Seconds take far longer than they should.

Never before have I been so inefficient at being inefficient.

It crawls all the way to 4.12pm, before the phone finally rings.  I run out to find Suse there, the shrieking of a contestant’s final flat note cut dead with the pause button.  The mobile rings again, the ‘old phone’ ringtone breaking the silence, sounding like something from a Hitchcock movie.  We both look at the screen to see the name: ‘Shelley’.

Suse answers on speaker phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi there Susan, it’s Shelley here.”

“Hi Shelley,” she says, sounding like the scolded child, about to be punished.

“How are you?”

“Okay.”

“Have you got a minute?”  She sounds apprehensive.

It’s bad news.

Fuck it all.

“Yep.”

“Look…” she says, pausing, “your result isn’t through yet.  They’re having some troubles with one of their analysers.”  I take a gasp.  “So, I’m just ringing to let you know that I haven’t forgotten about you.”

“But the result will be through today,” Suse says, as statement more than question.

“Most probably.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll give you a call when it does.  Just hang in there, okay?”

“Okay.”

The phone goes dead.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, don’t you?” Suse says, her head falling into her hands.  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

I stand.  And I walk out of the room and into the study.

Looking for something expensive to throw at the wall.

* * * * *

To be continued…

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By Mark Nethercote, September 26, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 20th September 2010

One year ago.

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By Mark Nethercote, September 23, 2011 10:00 am

Sunday 19th September 2010

One year ago.

We’ve stopped having sex.  Since the reimplantation.  They say that you can, that there’s no risk in doing so, but, where’s the guarantee?  Is there a money-back warranty if they’re wrong?

No.

You just never know.

“Do you think we should?” one of us has invariably asked.

“I don’t know,” the other has said.

Really, it’s a small price to pay.  Anatomically, the uterus is closed. Physiologically, the embryo will be well-implanted by now, if it is ever going to be.  It’s not like I’m going to knock it out.  Is it?  That doesn’t make sense.  Does it?

If abstinence can infer a safety effect, we’ll be abstinent.  When shit like this has happened to you, you stop being logical.  You lose objectivity.

Frankly, you go a bit nuts.

If anything could possibly help, then you do it.  Even if it doesn’t make sense.  Shit, we’ve got a candle burning in the middle of the kitchen table.

We’ll do whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 22, 2011 10:00 am

Saturday 18th September 2010

One year ago.

“This fucking dishwasher!” Suse yells.

I look over at her, from my position folding laundry.  We’ve had a really nice day, managing to keep ourselves busy.  There has not been a moment of tension.

Until now.

“The fucking dishwasher!” she yells again, kicking its scuff board hard.

“What’s wrong?”

“It won’t fucking start!” she yells.  She kicks it again.

I see her open it, pressing buttons randomly, before slamming it closed again.  Each time this doesn’t work, she lets out another shrill squeal.

“This fucking piece of shit!”

We have an Italian dishwasher.  I got it second hand from a mate.  It looks great, but it’s not very user friendly.  It has eight buttons, with various uninterpretable symbols.  It requires that you depress the two on the right simultaneously, before choosing one of the other settings, and then closing it tight to get it to start.  If you don’t do it quite right, it doesn’t work.

If you’re flustered, you haven’t got a hope.

I look at Suse, depressing the buttons unevenly, slamming it shut, squealing, and then pulling it open again.  Each time she does it with more force, each time throwing herself into it ever more.

“This,” she says, pointing, “is a fucking piece of shit!”

“Okay.”

“It is an absolute piece of shit, Mark!”

“Settle down, Suse.”

“I’ll settle down when you get it to work, Mark,” she says menacingly.  “Make it work, Mark!”

“Settle down, Suse.”

“Make it work!  Make the fucking dishwasher work!”

“Give me a second,” I say.

I walk over and open it, depressing buttons.  Suse leans her head over my shoulder, breathing fire.

“Can I have a moment?”

“I’m just watching to see what you do!”

I have a first go at it.  It doesn’t work.

“See?  See!”

“Hang on, Suse.  Just settle down!”

“I’ll settle down when that piece of shit works properly!” she yells, storming off down the hallway, “I can’t fucking take that piece of shit anymore!  This is bullshit!” she screams.  “I can’t take it!” she says, breaking into tears.  She throws herself onto the bed.

“Calm down, Suse,” I yell.  “Or you’ll lose the baby!” I say, more quietly.

The sobbing stops dead.  I pause for a moment, opening and closing the thing to no avail.  I walk down the hall and into the bedroom.  Suse lies there, her arm up under her head, facing the mirror.  I lie down beside her.

“Do you really think there’s a baby in there?” she whispers.
“Yes.”

“I feel like shit, Mark.  I feel constantly nauseated, and I’m totally knackered.  This has got to be a baby, doesn’t it?  It’s got to be.  I can’t do this every month if this isn’t pregnancy.”

I touch her tummy, something I’ve been doing over the last few weeks.  It settles her further.

“Is there a baby in there?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

We go quiet.  Suse sniffs away snot.  I keep my hand on her tummy.

“What’s she saying to you?”

“He likes the dishwasher.

“Does she?”

“He does.  So go easy on it.”

“Okay.”

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 20, 2011 10:00 am

Thursday 16th September 2010

One year ago.

The best part about this bit is that you don’t know what anything means.

Anything at all.

“The pessaries can imitate pregnancy,” Shelley warned us, “so don’t assume that you’re pregnant just because you feel nauseated.”

Way to keep the spirits up, Shelley.

“Equally, don’t assume you aren’t, even if you start to bleed like it’s your period.  Whatever happens, you need to get the pregnancy test on Monday.  IVF hormones can mess with your system.”

No kidding.

The consumer information packet from Crinone freely informed us that anything that can go wrong with Suse’s mind, body and spirit is probably due to the pessaries.  And don’t forget, this is the one that had the pamphlet with a woman hugging her belly, as she grins happily at the ground like she just found a piggie bank.

Or just before she doubles over in crippling pain.

* * * * *

In the last few days, Suse has had:

- Continuous nausea;

- An insatiable appetite for Rice Bubbles;

- Lethargy and tiredness;

- A swinging mood;

- Frequent abdominal pain (which can be misconstrued as either period pain or pregnancy pains, dependent on your swinging mood);

- prize-winning, yet very tender breasts;

- a nose like a blood hound.

Last night, as she got into a friend’s car, she began:

“My God, Ella, how do you drive in this thing?”

“Sorry?”

“It stinks.”

“Of what?”

“Well, someone’s dragged dog shit in with their shoes and wiped it on the car mat in the seat behind me. There’s been an over-ripe banana eaten in here,” she says, craning distractedly to look for it, “the skin was left in here for a while.  That shirt in the back seat really needs a wash, and this,” she says, taking the disposable cup from the console and pointing at it, “this soy latte had burnt beans when it was made.”

Ella looked at Suse for a second, before bursting into laughter.

“What?”

“You’re so pregnant,” was the response.

I guess only time will tell.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, September 16, 2011 10:00 am

Monday 13th September 2010

One year ago.

“Meg had a dream,” Suse declares, in that special way that means she wants me to bite.

“Oh, yeah?”

“That we got pregnant first time.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Great.”

“That’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“It’s a nice thought,” she whispers, looking out the window.

We both go silent.  I watch her drift off, almost unaware that I am there.  As she stares out the window, I see her sad eyes come in, for a moment, like cloud over the sun, before the wind moves it on, and I see my wife again.

“Do you think a dream trumps a candle?”

I sigh deeply.

“I think that we’ve been told that IVF is a long road,” I say, taking her hand, “and that we have a twenty to twenty-five percent chance each time.”

I look into her eyes, which again betray her.  This time, they are dark.  I move closer, and take her into a hug.

“Yes, honey, I think a dream definitely trumps a candle.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” she whispers.

I feel her hugging me, relenting slightly, and then tensing again;  trying desperately to put that shattered dream back together, like a kid telling herself that Santa does exist.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, August 30, 2011 10:00 am

Thursday 2nd September 2010

One year ago.

I walk down the footpath, staring at my feet as I go.

Each step, as I get a little bit faster, I realise how angry I am, how hurt I am.  What the fuck did I do wrong?  What the fuck did we do to deserve this?

I’m scared, and I’m angry.  We’re both doing everything right.  We’re both doing everything we can.  Each day, I pop a multivitamin, a vitamin D and two fish oil tablets.  Suse has her acupuncture, her Chinese herbs, and her specially compounded B6-free powder.  I’m exercising frequently and keeping alcohol intake to a minimum.  We’re eating right.  We meditate together, several times a week.  I’m ejaculating every couple of days to wash out my spazzy sperm.  And this week, I’ve stopped to build up the bank.

I’ve read all their material, I know what’s going on.  I’ve devoured the starter pack, the manuals, the pamphlets, and the drug information.  I even started reading the wax-covered book that Suse loved, getting through the chapter about the IVF kid that died, and the next one about the couple who took nineteen tries with donor eggs and donor sperm.

And then I stopped.

I don’t need to read hard luck tales to understand the risks.  I know what can go wrong.

I know the fucking risks.

Each night, the alarm goes off for an injection.  Each morning, the alarm goes again.  Last night, exactly thirty-eight hours before the egg collection, we gave the last injection.

And tomorrow, at exactly nine in the morning, we go to the bookie to collect.

We’ve been good.  We’ve played by the rules.  We’ve done everything we should.  And yet, there’s only four.

Fucking four.

I’m tired, and I’m scared, and I realise as I walk that I don’t want it to be like this.  I don’t want some lab-rat to decide what kid I get.  I don’t want these odds.  I want it to be real.  To be natural.  To be loving.  To be normal.

But what choice do I have?  What choice do we have?

I don’t want it to be like this.

* * * * *

I open the door, slamming it hard behind.  I sit down, running my hands through my hair.  There on the couch sits the brown paper bag, stuffed full of drugs.  Sticking out of the top, in a clear plastic bag, is the specimen container, readied for tomorrow.

I take it and hold it in my hand.

It’s short odds we’ve got.  Four.  Shorter than we thought, but betting has closed.

Game on.

Tomorrow, we try to make a child.

Again.

* * * * *

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By Mark Nethercote, August 26, 2011 10:00 am

Tuesday 31st August 2010

One year ago.

Suse is all over the shop.

In the last two days, she’s smashed the Pyrex jug, made a cup of tea with cold water, left me several unexpected presents in the toilet, and strewn an entire box of used tissues all over the house.  She’s got a constant headache, her skin has broken out, she feels increasingly bloated and nauseated, and her memory is shot.

This morning when we woke, I could tell she was on edge.

“Remember I’ve got my phone thing this morning?” I said.

“Sure.  But you’ll be done by 9.15?”

“No, it might take till 9.30.”

“But last night, you said you’d be done by 9.15.”

“No, last night, you heard that I’d be done by 9.15.  I very definitely said it might take till 9.30, because I thought it might be an issue.”

“But you’ve got to give me my injection!”

“Which I’ll do at 9.30.”

“But I’ve got to go to work!”

“And I’ve got to be on the phone.”

“Don’t you want to have a baby?” she said, breaking into tears.

It’s like a dose of turbo-charged PMS.

* * * * *

PMS is the acronym for Pre-Menstrual Syndrome.  We all know what it is, but approximately 5% of the female population know better than most.  According to Wikipedia, PMS is ‘a collection of physical, emotional and psychological symptoms that are related to a woman’s menstrual cycle’, above and beyond the normal discomfort expected of menses.

There are well over two hundred symptoms that have been attributed to PMS.  And these don’t include any of those experienced by their partners.  As an interesting aside, there is thought to be an evolutionary function to PMS, as it only occurs when a woman is about to menstruate, thereby reminding all around her that she has not fallen pregnant.  If her male suitor fails to impregnate her on a monthly basis, then irritability, tension and mood swings are potential motivators for rejecting him out of hand, making way for a more virile partner to move in, get her knocked up, and get on with the breeding.

Ain’t nature grand.

Technically, PMS is a phenomenon isolated to the final days of the Luteal Phase, the period between ovulation and menstruation.  And right now, thanks to our suite of injections, we are well and truly in the trenches of the Follicular Phase.

So, I can’t truly say that this is PMS.  While the symptoms may be similar, it’s a slightly different beast.  In fact, what’s going on here is a fully-fledged dose of POS: Pre-Ovulation Syndrome.  Or, as I like to call it, thanks to the drugs, PT-COS:  Pre-Turbo-Charged Ovulation Syndrome.

With Suse, PT-COS has been triggered because they are totally messing with her hormones.  She’s getting extra doses of some, and antagonists to others.  And while this may sound counterintuitive, it’s not.  It’s actually fascinating.

Unless you’re Suse.

The system in the body that controls hormones is known as the endocrine system.  The adrenals, the thyroid and the testes and ovaries, among others, are examples of endocrine glands.

Endocrine glands receive messages in the bloodstream from other organs further upstream.  At the top of the message system, unsurprisingly, is the brain.  A part of the brain known as the hypothalamus releases a whole bunch of hormones, including one called Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone (GnRH).  This then floats downstream to the pituitary gland, which sits right at the base of the brain.  When the pituitary gets the GnRH signal, it releases two more hormones:  Follicular Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinising Hormone (LH).  These, in turn, circulate in the blood stream until they reach the ovaries.  The arrival of FSH and LH is like the green light for ovulation, and on getting this message, the ovaries begin to release their own hormones, estrogen and progesterone. These enter the blood stream, and float all the way back to the hypothalamus, like a messenger letting headquarters known that the signal got through.

The whole thing is a finely tuned balancing act.

Except in IVF.

* * * * *

With IVF, we’re messing with the whole project.  We’re deliberately unbalancing the whole act.  For the last five days, we’ve been injecting FSH straight into Suse’s belly.  Her ovaries, being obedient little things, have start to ripen the follicles.  This is all good and well, except that it means we’ve got extra estrogen and progesterone leaching all around the circulation, having a right old party.  The messengers are telling the hypothalamus to slow down the GnRH release, but with two of the follicles already at 16mm, the message isn’t getting through quite quick enough.

So this is where the Orgalutran comes in.  If you read the pamphlet, you’ll see that it’s ‘a GnRH antagonist, modulating the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis by competitively binding to the GnRH receptors in the pituitary gland’.

And while it sounds more like something that might occur to insurgents in Afghanistan, what it really means is that we’re blocking the release of anymore GnRH from the brain.   We are competitively antagonising those receptors.  And we wonder why my wife is moody.

LH is the enemy here.  If LH levels get too high, then the follicles will burst early, and we’ll lose the eggs.  So we’ve highjacked the system.  We’ve closed down the natural release of FSH and LH by stopping the GnRH with Orgalutran, and yet we’re continuing to pump her full of pharmaceutical-grade FSH to ripen her up like a battery hen.

And then, in two day’s time, we’ll give her one last jab of artificial LH, to get those grapes good and ripe, and thirty-eight hours later, they’ll pounce.  They’ll grab the biggest needle they can find, and suck out as many as eggs as they can.

But only after she’s knocked unconscious.

* * * * *

So, it’s semantics, really.  Whether this is technically PMS or not, we’re messing with Suse’s hormones.  We’re blocking the messages to her brain, and we’re overdosing her with messages to her womanly bits.

And if there’s one thing I have learnt about my dear wife, it’s that when we mess with her hormones, I will surely know about it.

* * * * *