A Note on the Author
Jessica Hepburn is one of the UK’s leading voices on fertility, infertility and IVF. She is the author of the book The Pursuit of Motherhood and writes and speaks widely in the press and media on the subject of assisted conception and alternative routes to parenthood. In 2016, following her ten-year tenure as executive director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, she founded Fertility Fest, the world’s first arts festival dedicated to the science of making babies.
www.jessicahepburn.com
Also by the author
The Pursuit of Motherhood
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‘To me the sea is like a person –
like a child that I’ve known a long time’
Gertrude Ederle,
the first woman to swim twenty-one miles
across the English Channel
A Note from the Author
The events and interviews in this book largely took place in 2014 and 2015. It felt important to remain true to the story as it unfolded so they are recorded as they happened in the knowledge that the world changes and people’s lives move on.
Prologue
A List
Blue Monday
Horizontal Walking
Addicted to IVF
Can Rolls, Can’t Hepburn
Her Darling Child
AGONY!
Optimist or Pessimist?
Half a Biscuit
The Serpentine
Does Motherhood Make You Happy?
The Etiquette of Clothing
The Charity Worker
The Scientist
The Old Woman of Coniston
The Very Reverend
Mother Tallulah
The Ballerina
Molly
A Few Words on Jellyfish
Team Toe Dip
Frankenstein Dreaming
The Polar Explorer
Where’s the Manual?
The Ray, the Jellyfish and the Macrobiotic Mother
VO2 Max
The Internet Entrepreneur
Odi et Amo
The Businesswoman
The Solitude of Swimming
The Filmmaker
The Filmmaker, Part II
The Right Way Round
The Peter Pan Cup
The Iron(wo)man
The Politician
‘Ozymandias’
The Ice Queen Foster Mother
The Parakeet
Anonymous
The Publisher
The Restaurateur
Camp Eton
The Divorce Lawyer
Was It Because of the IVF?
So We Beat On
The Chief Constable
Beach Life
The General
Gertrude Ederle
The Gateway Woman
The Seven and Six
Ten Minutes
Dad and Mum
The One-Week Wait
Are You Asleep Yet?
Dear Peter
The Last Supper
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Patrons
Supporters
Copyright
I slide off the side into the deep end. My body feels weightless in the water as I start to swim. Breaststroke arms and legs pull me forward; it feels like my speed is strong. Could the duckling have turned into a swan?
My opponent’s mum nods admiringly as I reach the shallow end, as if she is impressed. My mum stifles a smile, I think, I can never be sure with my mum. Whoever wins today’s swim-off will compete in the inter-schools swimming gala. The teachers haven’t been able to decide which one of us is faster, so me and a classmate have been sent to the local pool to sprint it out, two girls marshalled by their mothers.
My opponent climbs down the steps into the water and now we are both poised, ready to start. Her mum says ‘Go!’ My mum stands silently watching. I’m not sure she would know what to say; she’s not like most people’s mums. I push off and swim, reaching ahead, pulling the water past me, kicking back. But I don’t feel as quick as I did on my first length. I’m fighting the water, I’m losing the race and the coveted place in the gala.
When you’re a child, life is all about speed. Who will be the first and the fastest? When you grow up, you realise that life’s really about endurance. Water would teach me that.
–––––
‘Can we have the works tonight?’
‘You mean starter and pudding?’
‘Go on. It is Christmas.’
‘But you know I don’t like puddings,’ Peter says. ‘I’m happy for you to have one though.’
‘It’s not the same eating a pudding on your own. Will you at least share one with me?’
‘If it makes you feel better, I’ll share one with you and you can eat it.’
There’s no point continuing this conversation. I’m not going to win.
It’s the night before Christmas Eve and we’re having supper at our favourite restaurant, just round the corner from our flat. The place is fairly quiet. Most work parties are over, and everyone is either doing last-minute shopping or staying home in preparation for the excess to come. The waiter comes over.
‘Shall we?’ Peter asks.
‘Why not? It is Christmas.’
‘Touché,’ he says, before turning to the waiter. ‘Two Negronis, please.’
The waiter smiles. Every waiter who knows their cocktails always does when you order a Negroni. It’s a drink lover’s drink.
I order the food. Crab on toast, followed by seven-hour lamb and a bottle of the Douro. It’s what we always have.
‘Any sides?’ the waiter asks.
‘Greens definitely,’ I reply. ‘Do you think we need potatoes?’
‘Depends how hungry you are. The lamb’s for three so it’s going to be a big portion for the two of you anyway.’
‘It’s OK,’ Peter says, ‘She likes big portions.’ He smiles at the waiter.
Peter likes food too. Not quite as much as me, maybe. But I could never have stayed with a man for twelve years who didn’t like to eat. Having said that, my perfect partner would share my love of carbohydrates – Peter thinks they’re boring.
Our Negronis arrive. ‘Here’s to Christmas,’ he says as we clink glasses. ‘And to a great year ahead.’
‘You say that every year and we still haven’t had one. I’ve been thinking about doing my own version of the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day – 2013: my annus horribilis. I might think it was something to do with the number thirteen, except that every year for the past nine years has been unlucky.’
It was Christmas day nine years ago that Peter and I first decided to try for a baby. I had just turned thirty-four and the topic had been under discussion for a while. I’ll always remember him looking at me across the dinner table, surrounded by our family, and mouthing: ‘Let’s do it!’ But nine years later we still haven’t had one. This is the first Christmas in years that we’ve spent at home in London. We usually escape somewhere hot, somewhere we’re not reminded of the children we haven’t got.
‘It is going to be great,’ Peter says in his most encouraging voice. ‘This is the year you officially become a writer.’
‘Yeah, but who’s going to want to read a book called The Pursuit of Motherhood that doesn’t end with a baby?’
‘Not yet. There’s still hope.’
‘Peter, I love you for your optimism, but I’ve just turned forty-three. Haven’t you heard that’s the age a woman’s fertility jumps off Beachy Head?’
‘Why Beachy Head?’ he says.
‘Well, I would say “falls off a cliff”, but apparently good writers steer clear of clichés.’
He laughs.
‘Mind you,’ I continue, ‘clichés are clichés for a reason. They say it how it is. There’s nothing active about the decline in my fertility. It’s falling, not jumping.’
Peter gives me that look which I know means he’s afraid I’m heading down the path of despondency. ‘I don’t know what you’re worried about,’ he says, trying to turn the conversation around, ‘misery memoirs are all the rage these days.’
‘Yeah, misery memoirs that have a happy ending. I know I didn’t manage it by the end of the book but I was at least hoping that by the time it came out I’d be able to announce I was pregnant. It would have made a perfect real-life epilogue.’
A month earlier, just before my forty-third birthday, we had undergone another round of IVF. As usual, everything seemed to go well. Three high-quality embryos that had been fertilised ‘in vitro’ were put back into my womb, and we were due to find out whether I had got pregnant just before my birthday. Talk about timing: my book about our long struggle to conceive is due to come out in the new year, and it ends with me saying that I am going to continue trying for a baby until I reach the age of forty-three. This is based on the philosophy of a good friend of mine from university who’d once said to me: ‘It’s all about the number forty-three. If you haven’t had a baby by then, you can get on with the rest of your life.’ It had become my mantra, and on the eve of said birthday it felt like we had been cast in our very own version of The Truman Show and someone somewhere had decided to give us the most climactic happy ending. I was convinced it would be twins. I could do twins. I could even do triplets. But the cycle was negative. All we added to our family was another fifteen grand of debt and disappointment.
I pick up my glass and take another sip of Negroni.
‘Let’s face it,’ I say, ‘there’s basically no chance of Julia Roberts playing me now. Who would adapt a book into a film about a woman who desperately wants a baby, does everything possible to get one, and fails?’
‘Isn’t she a bit old?’
‘Who?’
‘Julia Roberts.’
‘No. Celebrities are the only people who are never too old to have babies.’
Our crab on toast arrives. Peter does his usual, picking off the meat and leaving the bread. It’s such a waste, but with lamb for three (plus potatoes) on the way, eating his toast would be, well, greedy.
‘So while we’re working out what to do next, why don’t you focus on all the incredible women who didn’t have children?’ Peter says. ‘You know, like Virginia Woolf, Frida Kahlo …’
He’s doing that optimist thing again.
‘Virginia Woolf killed herself, remember,’ I say.
‘A minor detail. The important thing to remember is that history is full of women who didn’t have children and no one thinks about whether they were mothers or not. We think about what else they did in their lives.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ I reply, ‘but it is true that if I can’t be a mother I’m going to have to do something big instead. Something really impressive.’
Peter sighs. ‘That’s not what I meant. You don’t need to try and become the next Virginia Woolf or Frida Kahlo if you don’t have a baby. Why don’t you just start by planning the other things you want to do in your life – like that trip you’ve always wanted to take on the Trans-Siberian Railway, something like that.’ He pushes his plate away, toast untouched. ‘God, I wish I’d never mentioned them now.’
‘Trans-Mongolian,’ I say pointedly.
‘Pardon?’
‘Trans-Mongolian Railway I want to go from Moscow to Beijing, not Vladivostok.’
‘Well, Trans-whatever-it-is. What I mean is you don’t need to change the world just because you can’t have a baby.’
‘So what’s the point of being here then? If you don’t have children and your only purpose is to serve the economy and maybe have a bit of fun from time to time, is it really worth it? Unless you do something Big.’
He gives me a weary look as the waiter comes over to take our plates.
‘I’ve always fancied becoming prime minister,’ I say, pouring us each a glass of wine. ‘PM Hepburn, that would be pretty cool.’
‘But you don’t know anything about politics. You didn’t even vote in the last election.’
‘Yeah, well, that’s because I don’t know whose side I’m on any more. Maybe I could be an independent. There are definitely a few things I’d like to campaign for: three-day weekends, free public transport, the death of Starbucks …’
Peter laughs.
‘The problem is,’ I continue, ‘I’m not sure anyone would vote in an “infertile” to run the country. Not when babies are what win elections.’1
‘I hate that word. I wish you wouldn’t use it.’
‘What word?’
‘Infertile. You’re not infertile, you’ve been pregnant lots of times.’
‘I’m not sure it counts if you don’t end up with a baby.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’ll think of something.’
I’m thinking as our main course arrives.
‘Maybe I could write another book?’
‘What about?’ Peter says as he starts to dish out the lamb onto our plates, well practised in putting more on mine than his own.
‘About what happens next. A bit like the “Katy” series?’ I say. ‘You know, What Katy Did; What Katy Did Next – the books by Susan Coolidge? Didn’t you read them?’
‘I’m a boy. Boys don’t read books about Katy.’
‘Oh yeah, they prefer pictures of Katie Price.’
He gives me a look of disdain. I take two potatoes and push the bowl towards him but he ignores it.
‘So, that’s it,’ he says. ‘Write a book about What Jessica Did Next. Maybe she can even go to Beijing …’ he says. ‘But here’s the deal: this book. I’m not in.’
‘What do you mean?’ I say, picking up my fork.
‘I mean what I just said, I don’t want to be in it.’
‘You’ve got to be in it. Otherwise people will wonder what’s happened to you. You can’t just disappear.’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘But everyone that’s read a proof of my book says you come across as a really nice guy. That’s the beauty of fiction.’
‘I am a nice guy. Your book isn’t fiction. It’s non-fiction. It’s about our life.’
‘Yeah, well you can’t say that and then say that scene I wrote where we had a row is embellished.’
‘Well, it was.’
‘Well, maybe that’s the thing about reality. It’s subjective. You think that row is embellished. I don’t. I chose to write you as a nice guy. It doesn’t necessarily mean you are one.’
Peter looks at me. ‘Either way, I still don’t want to be in it. I agreed to be in your first book because you needed to write it. But that’s it. In book terms, we’re getting a divorce.’
I’m quiet for a few moments.
‘OK, I get you. How about a dessert instead, then? They’ve got Christmas pudding ice cream on the menu. If we’re going to get a divorce, surely you can’t deny me a scoop of ice cream?’
1 ‘The problem is,’ I continue, ‘I’m not sure anyone would vote in an “infertile” to run the country. Not when babies are what win elections.’ In July 2016, Theresa May became the UK’s prime minister following the resignation of David Cameron. May is childless. She has said that she and her husband wanted children but couldn’t have them. Ironically, her appointment was aided by comments about her childlessness made by her rival in the Conservative Party leadership campaign, Andrea Leadsom – a mother of three. Leadsom said: ‘I am sure Theresa will be really sad she doesn’t have children so I don’t want this to be “Andrea has children, Theresa hasn’t” because I think that would be really horrible, but genuinely I feel that being a mum means you have a very real stake in the future of our country, a tangible stake.’ There was a considerable backlash against these comments. Leadsom apologised to Theresa May ‘for any hurt’ she had caused, and withdrew from the leadership campaign shortly after.
[‘Andrea Leadsom Apologises to Theresa May over Motherhood Comments Row’, Independent, 11 July 2016.]
Jessica Hepburn writes: thankfully, my prophecy was proved wrong but perhaps the furore proved my point.
On 1 January, I take out my New Year Resolutions Book, open a fresh page and write at the top:
1. Give up IVF and do something big instead.
I love lists. I collect them like other people collect stamps. I keep my most prized lists in small colourful notebooks stacked carefully by the side of my bed. I’ve got lists of all the books I’ve read, all the films I’ve seen, all the countries I’ve visited. And this: my New Year Resolutions Book, which I write in ceremoniously each year.
I think for a moment and then add:
2. Achieve (and stay at) my target weight of just under ten stone.
This resolution is a making a repeat appearance. For someone who loves food as much as I do it’s a constant struggle. Some of the greatest moments of my life have involved me and a plate. But like many women I also long to be thin, so it goes on the list every year. And I do mean thin, not slim. Slim has always seemed to me to be on the slow slide to voluptuous – maybe it’s something to do with the curvature of the letter ‘S’ – and everyone knows that voluptuous is only a doughnut away from being fat. Quite what I would do about this perennial resolution if I did manage to get pregnant, I’m not sure. But welcome to my confused world, where success has been all about getting fat and staying thin.
–––––
Since our supper before Christmas, I have been thinking a lot about women who have done something big with their lives, and on the afternoon of New Year’s Day I decide I’m going to start a new list: a list of twenty women who have changed the world. When I’ve done it I’m going to look up whether they had children or not. It’s like my own private game. The rules are that there will be no peeking until I’ve finished. It beats watching football on the telly.
In order to hone the list I have had to make a few decisions. First, I’ve decided that to make it on you’ve got to be dead. I’ve always thought those magazine articles and TV programmes detailing the ‘One hundred greatest something-or-others of all time’ are misleading because they often include people or things which are just fashionable. Right now, for example, you’ll find that Kate Middleton appears on a lot of lists of the most important women in history. I don’t want to make assumptions, but surely it’s a bit early to confer this status on her? Besides, she’s alive. I told you: alive people don’t count.
I’ve also decided to have different categories. By that I mean I’m not allowing myself too many women who’ve done the same sort of thing. When you start playing this game, you realise that there are so many more famous female political leaders and writers than there are, for example, composers and scientists. Arguably, those people who have made a mark in fields where women are under-represented have done something even more significant. Not that this list is about value judgements, but you’ve got to have criteria, otherwise how do you begin?
Oh, and there’s just one more thing before I do the big reveal: I’m allowing myself to include both Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo, even though I already know that neither of them had children. They would probably have made the list anyway – especially Frida Kahlo, as visual art is another area where there is a dearth of famous historical female figures. But as this is my list and I’m in charge, I’ve made the decision to give myself a golden hello. After all, I don’t want to find out that my list of top twenty women changed history and they were all mothers – that’s just not going to help my state of mind right now. I need at least a few women who I know I can rely on.
–––––
By teatime the list is complete:
Writers
1. Sappho
2. Jane Austen
3. Virginia Woolf
Artists/Designers
4. Frida Kahlo
5. Coco Chanel
Composers/Musicians
6. Ella Fitzgerald
7. Édith Piaf
Actresses
8. Hepburn, Audrey and Katharine
9. Marilyn Monroe
World Leaders
10. Cleopatra
11. Boudicca
12. Joan of Arc
13. Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria
14. Margaret Thatcher
Political and Social Activists
15. Mary Wollstonecraft
16. Emmeline Pankhurst
Humanitarian Figures
17. Florence Nightingale
18. Mother Teresa
Scientists
19. Marie Curie
Cooks/Chefs
20. Isabella (Mrs) Beeton (well, the world’s got to eat!)
OK, I realise that there are a couple of cheats here: I’ve included two names at number eight, but as Katharine and Audrey regularly top best-ever actress lists and both share my surname, I’m going to take author’s ancestral licence and include them as a single entry (not that we’re directly related, but there must be some kind of link). And, yes, number thirteen, too, but if you’re going for a British royal, how do you choose between these two?
With the list complete, I start to research who had children. The good news is that my two cheats actually cancel each other out, so I don’t need to feel bad about those. Katharine Hepburn didn’t have children but Audrey did. Likewise, Elizabeth, the virgin queen, had none, and Victoria had nine. Sadly, I think I’m going to have to omit the ancient Greek writer Sappho – not from the list, per se, but from the statistics. Some sources say she had a daughter but so little is known about her life that’s it impossible to be sure. The fact that she is one of the first known ‘lesbians’ – she came from the island of Lesbos, the origin of the term – is irrelevant. It certainly doesn’t preclude the ability, desire or right to become a mother.
Also cancelling each other out, or at the very least making things complicated, are my two musicians. Ella Fitzgerald never had children herself but adopted her half-sister’s son, whom she named Ray Brown Jr after her husband and then gave to another of her sisters to bring up. And Édith Piaf did have a daughter, Marcelle, who was taken away from her as a baby and died of meningitis at just two years old.
So where does that leave me? Well, on the writer front, Jane Austen, like Virginia Woolf, never had children. And Coco Chanel, like Frida Kahlo, didn’t either. Nor did Marilyn Monroe. In terms of world leaders, Cleopatra did. In fact, sources say she had four, which bemuses me because I always think of her doomed love affair with Antony, which had no hope of any progeny. Boudicca (or Boadicea, as I was taught to call her) apparently had children too, despite her warring preoccupations. As did Margaret Thatcher (who had twins). But Joan of Arc, who was about nineteen when she died on that stake, was way too busy saving France and making sure she became a saint to think about motherhood. Mary Wollstonecraft and Emmeline Pankhurst, two of the leading figures in the women’s movement, both had children; in fact Mary died as a result of complications during the labour of her second child. But notably Florence Nightingale and Mother Teresa, who were arguably much more maternal figures, did not (although admittedly Mother Teresa was a nun). Marie Curie was a mother. So was Mrs Beeton. Of course she was. What else would you expect from such an archetypal homemaker – a mother of eight, she adopted her husband’s four children from his first marriage and then had four more of her own.
So the results are in. After I’ve eliminated the don’t-knows, the cancelled-outs and any other complications, I discover that over half of the women on my list didn’t have children. Given that the vast majority of women in the world do – and the percentage was even higher in the past – it’s a staggering statistic. In fact, on the basis of my list, you could go so far as to say that if you’re a woman and you’re going to do something big, you’re more likely than not to be childless.
For a moment I feel excited that I’m in such good company. But then I feel something else: a pain all too familiar. Because what I really want to know is whether it was enough for these women that they did something with their lives which has resonated for generations to come. Or did they, deep down, wish they had been mothers?
Monday morning, mid-January. The weather is cold, grey, resolutely Januaryish. I get on the tube to work and open the paper to see an article that says it’s officially the most depressing day of the year. Blue Monday, it’s called. I look at the people sitting around me. The obligatory person listening to music too loudly on their headphones. A woman playing a game on her phone in which she seems to be doing something, I don’t know what, with colourful shapes. Another woman with electric-blue eyeliner staring into space. And a man sitting opposite me who is reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The cover looks new; perhaps he was given it for Christmas.
I wonder how they’re all feeling inside. Are they depressed? Are they dreaming of doing something big with their lives too?
The tube pulls slowly into Hammersmith. I’ve been coming to the same station for over a decade, longer even than I’ve been trying to have a baby. I run a theatre here. Not an operating theatre – one with a stage where people perform. This distinction has become important over the last few years, given the amount of time I’ve spent with fertility doctors, lying on trolleys with my feet in the air. Whenever they ask me what I do, their eyes light up in recognition, until I correct them.
I know that the people I work with will be surprised and shocked at the lengths I’ve gone to to try and conceive. Publicly, I am a successful ‘career woman’ (that terrible term which is never used to describe men) but privately I’ve been desperately trying to become a mother. For years I’ve done my utmost to avoid detection, arranging clinic appointments wherever possible before and after work. Even when going through IVF treatment, I’d have my eggs collected under general anaesthetic in the morning and be back at my desk by lunch. I know I can’t be the only woman to have done this. They say that around one in six couples struggle to conceive. I don’t know how they get these statistics but if it’s true it’s happening on every street in every town. Yet most people don’t talk about it, not openly or often anyway, because infertility is a stigma still shrouded in secrecy and shame. And now I’ve gone and written about it and everyone is going to know the full horror.
I walk out of the station, cross the road with the crowds and head into Pret to pick up some breakfast. I hover by the fruit salad for a moment and then think, bugger it, and get a croissant and a coffee.
My first meeting of the day is a long and tedious one. We’re building an extension to the theatre and the costs are getting too high. We are going through each item, line by line, to try and bring the budget down. I’m surrounded by men in suits who work on the management side of the construction industry and are getting frustrated with me because I refuse to compromise on how nice I want the new toilets to be. Unfortunately for them, I raised the money for this project and am paying their extortionate fees, so they can’t ignore me. As they tap on their calculators, comparing the cost of full-height versus half-height tiling, my mind wanders,
I can’t help thinking that feminism has a lot to answer for. Of course I wouldn’t say that if Mary Wollstonecraft or Emmeline Pankhurst were in the room. But they’re not, they’re dead, so I figure I’m all right. Nor do I want to seem ungrateful for everything they did to help liberate women from being seen only as wives and mothers. It’s because of them that I am educated and have the right to vote (even if I’ve not always been very good at using it). In fact, you could say it’s because of them that I am sitting here now and these men are ultimately going to have to listen to my views on tiling, because I already know I’m not going to compromise. But even though Mary and Emmeline unquestionably achieved something big for me and all of womankind, I do feel there is something that they never fully grappled with, and that is this: nature is not a feminist.
Like many women of my generation, I didn’t ever consider that I would have a baby before my thirties. I went to an all-girls comprehensive school in north London renowned for turning out independent, go-getting young women. We were all encouraged to attend university and get on the career ladder in our twenties. The limited sex education we received was mainly focused on how not to have a baby. Teenage pregnancy equalled disaster, or so we were led to believe. No one was supposed to settle down with the first boy they kissed, it was good to be picky, and every girl was looking for the perfect modern man. In fact, motherhood wasn’t much discussed at all. It was certainly never presented as a career path, and for those of us who knew we wanted to have children, we just assumed it would happen as and when we were ready.
This would be fine if everything went to plan. But if you’re a woman and you get to your thirties before deciding to have a baby, and you then find that getting pregnant isn’t as easy as you thought it would be – as you were told it would be – time is suddenly running out. Because the thing we’re not told at school, or at least not explicitly, is that a woman is born with her lifetime supply of eggs, and day by day, from puberty, these eggs diminish in number and quality as she gets older. This essentially means that the longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be to conceive. It doesn’t mean you can’t and won’t get pregnant – in fact because so many people are leaving it later, the average age of first-time mothers is increasing, and there are definitely social and economic benefits to becoming a parent later in life. But any good doctor will tell you that the optimum biological age for a woman to have children is around twenty-five; if you leave it until your thirties or forties, it might not happen as easily, and there will be less time to sort out any problems if you have them. Because even though life expectancy is increasing – another reason that later parenthood is not necessarily a bad thing – the average age of the female menopause has not changed, and around ten years before a woman reaches it, her chance of giving birth to her own biological baby massively diminishes. That age is generally around forty-three, but the hard truth is your fertility has actually been falling off Beachy Head since puberty; that’s just the age when it hits the sea.
Forty-three is a prime number. It has its own Wikipedia page. It is also a centred heptagonal, a Heegner and a repdigit. Forty-three is the atomic number for technetium, a silvery grey metal. It is the international dialling code for Austria, the name of a Spanish liqueur and the number of the bus route that goes from Barnet to London Bridge. Now I am forty-three, and like all prime numbers I seem to be divisible by only one, and that one is me. Like I said, nature is not a feminist. And maybe that’s why the number of women entering their forties childless has doubled in a generation. If these women are anything like me, it’s not necessarily because they’ve actively chosen not to have children – many of them probably assumed they would be mothers too, and now they’re left wondering what the hell they’re going to do.
–––––
It’s hard to explain the pain of losing something you never had. Something that was never more than an expectation, a dream or at most a cluster of cells. It’s not like I’m dying or we’re on the verge of a humanitarian disaster. People don’t need to start having sex to save the human race because I can’t have children. I know it’s a hole in my life that society finds difficult to understand. I call it the pain of never, and these are its symptoms. If you’ve got them, you’ll know.
Never feeling like a real woman because you can’t do what every other woman seemingly finds so easy to do;
Never being able to feel happy for someone when they announce they’re pregnant without feeling sad for yourself at the same time;
Never being able to admit that you’ve been in the loo crying about it because you don’t want people to pity you;
Never being invited to a baby shower, christening or children’s party without it hurting;
Never not being invited to a baby shower, christening or children’s party because people are trying to spare your feelings without that hurting even more;
Never being able to make a pregnancy announcement to your family and friends and have them throw their arms around you in warm congratulations;
Never being able to legitimately eat for two or buy a cool maternity dress or go into a bookstore and buy What to Expect When You’re Expecting (although I did once and then I miscarried and felt like a fraud);
Never feeling the first kick of life inside you;
Never being able to say, ‘I think my waters have broken’, or ‘Bring me gas and air.’ Is that what people really say? Never knowing that;
Never having a baby placed on your chest and saying ‘hello’ for the first time;
Never being able to breastfeed and use your body for what it was built for;
Never being able to write an ‘out of office’ that says ‘I’m away on maternity leave’;
Never being able to see your child’s first steps;
Or first words;
Or first day at school;
Or first anything;
Never being able to share these things with your friends, and growing distant because of it;
Never seeing someone else’s photos of their children on Facebook without wishing you had photos to post too;
Never hearing anyone call you ‘Mum’
That’s the pain of never.
–––––
Later in the day, when I’m back at my desk eating lunch, checking my emails and feeling good that I won the War of the Tiles, I overhear some colleagues chatting. Someone they know parachuted out of a plane over the weekend to raise money for Cancer Research. Everyone starts comparing personal fundraising challenges. Someone says they want to run the London Marathon next year; someone else wants to walk the Coast to Coast.
‘Hey, Jessica,’ they shout across the room. ‘What would you do for charity?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I’ve never done a sponsored anything.’
‘You should do a sponsored swim,’ someone says.
Everyone laughs.
‘Pardon?’ I say, my mouth full of ham and cheese.
‘A few lengths up and down the pool, surely you could manage that?’
Everyone laughs again.
‘What’s so funny?’ I say. It’s true I’ve never been known for my athletic prowess and I don’t look good in a swimming costume, but who does?
For the rest of the afternoon I can’t get the conversation out of my head. It’s reminded me that several years ago, when Peter and I were away on holiday after another IVF failure, I’d started a new list book: my Bucket List Book. Top of the first page was ‘Become a mother’. But there were other things on the list as well. Positioned between ‘Get a cat’ and ‘Learn to stand on my head’, I’d written something down that had been a long-forgotten childhood dream. I hadn’t thought about it for nearly thirty years when I wrote it and, if I’m honest, I hadn’t thought about it again since. If number one on my bucket list had come to fruition, then it would probably have been consigned to list history.
Yet in that moment, on Blue Monday afternoon, as everyone laughs, it suddenly comes back to me. It’s big. It’s not the sort of thing you could do with a toddler in tow.
That will teach them, I think.
I pick up the phone to call Peter. And then I remember. I’m not allowed to here. He doesn’t want to be in this story.
‘Hi, is that John?’ I say into the receiver.
‘Yes.’
‘I found your details on the internet. I was wondering whether you might be able to help me?’
‘I’ll try,’ he says gamely. His voice is positively plummy.
I take a moment before speaking.
‘I think I want to swim the English Channel …’
‘Do you?’ he says. ‘What makes you think that?’
‘It’s a childhood dream,’ I say and then add: ‘Turned mid-life crisis.’
He breaks into a chuckle. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, how old are you?’ he says.
‘Forty-three.’
‘And are you a swimmer?’
‘Well, I can swim. I wouldn’t call myself a swimmer.’
‘Did you swim competitively as a child? For your county or a club?’
‘No.’
‘Have you ever done any open-water swimming before?’
‘No.’
‘Well, how many times a week do you swim?’
I pause, wondering whether this is the sort of moment that justifies a fib. I don’t want him to write me off already, but since I started trying to get pregnant I’ve all but given up exercise. There’s a theory that doing too much isn’t helpful when trying to conceive and, whilst I don’t think this means you’re supposed to abandon it altogether, up against all the other things you’re told to give up – alcohol, coffee, etc. – this wasn’t a hard one for me. In fact, it was really rather easy. I’ve never been very good at sport, and the only thing I really like about exercising is feeling virtuous when it’s over. At school, I was the sort of person who had to suffer the ignominy of being last to be picked for the rounders team. But I did enjoy swimming when I was a child, and not just because we always went to McDonald’s on the way home. For years I attended a swimming class on a Wednesday night at the Prince of Wales Road baths in Kentish Town. The instructor, Max, in his black trunks and red terry-towelling T-shirt, would line us all up along the pool in speed order. I was always towards the back. Everyone used to joke that my best stroke was breaststroke legs.
Then one day, when I didn’t get into the school swimming team (again), I found myself consoling my dad. It was always harder managing his disappointment than my own, so I told him that it didn’t matter that I hadn’t got in, because one day I was going to swim the Channel instead. I think I must have read about someone doing it in a newspaper, and I figured you didn’t need to be fast to swim all the way to France – you just needed to be able to keep going. I’ve always been good at keeping going. That’s probably why I’ve done eleven rounds of IVF. (Yes, that’s right, eleven. I didn’t want to mention the number before because I thought it might appal you.)
I refocus my thoughts on the question at the other end of the phone line. ‘Maybe once a week,’ I say and then add, ‘on average.’
This is a semi-fib. I can up my average if I include holidays, but it’s probably more like once a month (if that). Sometimes I don’t even swim between holidays.
‘Can you crawl?’
For a moment I’m confused by the baby reference before I realise what he’s asking.
‘I can do the crawl. Well, a few lengths. I’m much better at breaststroke.’
‘The problem with breaststroke is you’ll have to be in the water longer. One of the main challenges of the Channel is the cold. The aim is to get over to the other side and out as quickly as possible.’
‘Doesn’t a wetsuit help with the cold?’
‘I’m afraid you can’t wear one of those. Not if you want to be an official Channel swimmer.’
This is news to me, and it isn’t good. I hate the cold, possibly even more than I hate exercise. In fact, one of my main mottos in life is: ‘You can never be too cosy.’
John goes on to explain that wetsuits hadn’t been invented in 1875 when the Englishman Captain Matthew Webb became the first person to swim the Channel. The rules state that you have to remain true to that tradition today, and can only don a costume, hat and goggles.
‘Right,’ I respond slowly, taking in all the information he’s given me. ‘So how far is it and how long does it take?’
‘Twenty-one miles. It takes around fifteen hours on average. But you’ll be adding another five to ten hours if you want to do it breaststroke.’
There’s a beat of silence.
‘Fifteen hours?’ I say, trying not to sound too incredulous.
‘That’s right. It’s a long way to France.’
I pause as I take in the enormity of what he’s just said.
‘Well, I guess at least I can stay in a nice hotel when I get there and have croissants in bed for breakfast.’
He chuckles again. Actually, it’s more like a guffaw.
‘You can’t stay in France,’ he says.
‘Why?’
‘You don’t go through passport control when you’re swimming the Channel. As soon as you touch land, you pick up a pebble and then you’re back on the boat to England.’
‘You mean I won’t even get a croissant?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘But I wouldn’t worry about that. If you do swim the Channel, you won’t want to move or eat anything for at least a week.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘That bad, huh?’
‘That bad.’
I don’t quite know what to say next. I’m starting to think this wasn’t the right big idea after all. I half-heartedly enquire about the training camps John organises for aspiring Channel swimmers, which were the reason for my call. He tells me that he’s running one in Formentera, a little island off Ibiza, in a couple of months for people who are doing their six-hour qualifier. I tentatively ask what this means, dreading the answer, and he tells me you need to be certified as having swum six hours in water below sixteen degrees Celsius before you can attempt the Channel.
‘You mean you can’t just go down to the south coast on a nice day and start splashing?’
He laughs. ‘Why don’t you come along and see how you get on?’
‘OK, I’ll have a think about it,’ I say. ‘It sounds good.’
I’m just saying that. It doesn’t sound good. It sounds hard. I put down the phone feeling slightly sick but then do what I can to rally myself. I’ve been on a six-hour walk. Surely swimming for six hours is just the same thing, but horizontal. How hard can it be?
One of the things that is not on my bucket list is seeing my legs in a tabloid newspaper. But I woke up this morning and there they were.
I’d agreed to do the article as publicity for my book. They’d been very specific that I had to wear a dress to the photoshoot. No dark colours. No patterns. Three different people had rung over the course of twenty-four hours to remind me. I’d picked out a red dress I’d bought in an M&S sale a few years ago, one of those great buys that cost twenty quid but in a good light (I like to think) looks like it could be Chanel. When I got to the location of the shoot the photographer looked me up and down.
‘Nice,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid you’re going to have to take those off.’
He pointed at my black tights.
‘What?’ I said, horrified.
‘The paper only does bare legs.’
‘You’re joking?’
‘Didn’t they tell you?’
‘No. They told me to wear a dress. Three times. They didn’t mention anything about tights. Once.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘No can do, I’m afraid.’
‘But you don’t understand, my legs never come out,’ I said. ‘They haven’t seen sunlight in over a decade.’
‘It will be fine,’ he said, trying to placate me. ‘We’ll airbrush them if they look a bit blotchy.’
To say I was mortified would be an understatement. The whole dress business was sexist enough. The only time something similar had happened to me was when I was doing a temping job in a city law firm during my university summer holidays. At the end of the first day my boss had come up to me and said that I could come back tomorrow as long as I didn’t mind wearing a skirt. If she’d been a man I might have thought it was sexual harassment, but it was just company policy. Even twenty-five years ago it seemed archaic. But this is the new millennium – is there really a national newspaper that will only photograph women in dresses (no black tights)?
I suppose, in a way, I should be pleased. After all, a dress says ‘woman’ in the same way that infertility says ‘failed woman’. In tabloid terms the most ‘womanly’ woman is always a mother. They must still think there’s hope. Otherwise, surely, they would have put me in a black trouser suit. On the double-page spread to the left of my head are the words: ‘Addicted to IVF’. I suppose going through multiple rounds of treatment and having nothing to show for it but a cleaned-out bank account does seem like a pretty extreme habit. I look at the picture, all legs and smoky eyes, and can’t quite believe it’s me. For years I’d kept my struggle to have a baby a secret and now, suddenly, I’ve become the poster girl for infertility. It’s not even as if it’s going to be tomorrow’s chip paper. The article is on the internet, indelible forever.
A few days ago I made a pact with myself that when the article came out I wouldn’t look at the online comments. Nobody should go into that lion’s den. But of course I immediately do. I scroll down and the first comment reads: ‘I want a baby, kinda sums her up.’ I kinda have to agree. I do want a baby. One that I have made with the man that I love and who, with any luck, will inherit the best bits of both of us. I want to introduce them to the world: read them The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. I want to organise birthday parties with pass the parcel and musical bumps. I want to open stockings at Christmas and plan egg hunts at Easter. I want a reason to go to the zoo and make fairy cakes for tea. And on the subject of food, I want to encourage my children to love shellfish and sprouts from a very young age.
Throughout the day I watch in fascinated horror as more and more comments appear and people anonymously press the arrows beside them to indicate whether they agree or disagree. For the first time in my life I have a tiny taste of what it must be like to be a celebrity, shaped by the opinions of people who have never even met you. But overall I come out of the den fairly unscathed; sympathy for my story seems to be strong. The lions are licking my wounds, not eating me.
TV and radio interviews follow. A girl could get used to being picked up in a chauffeur-driven car. But, all things being equal, I’d much rather be singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus’.
It’s an extraordinary and surreal few weeks. But the most overwhelming thing of all is the messages of advice and support I start to receive from all over the world, from total strangers. They tell me about miracle doctors and recommend clinics in Spain, Greece, India and the Caribbean. They suggest I try alternative treatments I’ve never heard of, such as Qigong, tapping and the Peruvian maca root. In one email someone writes to me about a powerful man of God from Uganda called Brother Ronnie Makabai, who prays for infertile couples and women who are past childbearing age and then they miraculously give birth (the email adds in parenthesis, ‘providing their husbands are still alive’). They share heart-lifting stories involving egg donation and adoption. And about women who have got pregnant in their mid-forties with their own eggs – one woman tells me she is forty-five and has three children under the age of five, all of whom were conceived naturally, and none of them twins. Several people even offer to be a surrogate for me. Above all everyone urges me not to give up hope – that some way, somehow, I can and must become a mother.
The concern and encouragement from so many people who have never even met me but have taken the time and trouble to write is humbling. But at the same time, as more and more messages pour in, I feel myself becoming increasingly anxious. I’d thought I’d already done everything I could to become a mother. I’ve been to nearly a dozen clinics and had every test known to woman and doctor in a bid to work out what’s wrong. Besides multiple rounds of IVF, I’ve tried numerous complementary therapies including acupuncture and Chinese herbs. I’ve even been on an intense therapeutic process to release my ‘inner child’ in the hope that it would help me to conceive. Yet now I’m wondering if I’ve tried hard enough. Maybe I haven’t tried everything. The world still believes I can be a mother, even if I’m not sure I can myself. And nobody, not a single person, writes to me and says: ‘You’re forty-three, go and do something big and have a fulfilling life without children instead.’
–––––
One evening, in the aftermath of the article, I’m in the kitchen making myself a cup of tea. As I wait for the kettle to do its thing I think back over the last few bewildering weeks. I feel like I’m a rope in a tug of war: pulling me from one end is motherhood, the thing I’ve always wanted but had almost given up believing I could have, and on the other end an alternative future doing something big and finding meaning in motherlessness. I feel taut with fear at giving either one of them the advantage.