conceivingofyou

The Letter from the clinic arrived yesterday. I’d had a busy day and when I pushed my bike through the communal entrance hall I’d almost forgotten to look for it. I dumped my bag in the flat and filled the kettle before I went back and sorted through the menus for pizzas and indian takeaways and envelopes. Most of the letters I leave for upstairs, so many people who have come and gone, I no longer know which surname is revelant.

There were just two for me,  a slight envelope and a large packet which, at first I assume is an extra essay the college want me to mark after the batch last week. A late submission. The first envelope distracts me. Its my regular from Virgin Media who write at least twice a month and phone numerous times, trying to convince me to install cable television to go with my broadband and phone. They do not believe me when I insist that I’m perfectly satisfied with my four channels and an often cloudy five, played on a portable television/VHS combi that I’ve had since Mum and Dad allowed me to have a set in my bedroom at the age of sixteen.

I recently looked after a friend’s six year old overnight, who’s first words on walking into my flat were “that’s a small television” and, anxious not to hurt my feelings, added that it was alright, he would just “sit very close to it”. His mother despaired that she did not know how I could expect my nephew to visit when he was older if I was unable to guarantee a decent-sized television. I suppose that goes for your own offspring too, that they could refuse to remain in your care without one.  I shall add ‘plasma telly’ and ‘call virgin’ to the list along with the buggy and muslin squares. If I even get that far. When Mum and Dad come to stay they ask if I’ll provide binoculars. With comments like that its become a matter of principle.

I’m back in the flat and pouring a cup of tea before I properly take in the large packet underneath the Virgin one and I notice that its not handwritten by the usual course administrator. In fact, its not handwritten at all. Its stamped ‘Private and Confidential’ in red. I then notice that its marked with the insignia of the hospital, which slightly undermines the confidential bit. I don’t open it right away. I feel slightly sick. Instead, I just look at it while I sip tea, then Dancing Queen plays on the radio, it temporarily lifts my confidence and I open it before I can think twice.

The first page letter says very little. It starts that they are writing in response to a letter from a Dr Porter. I am immediately confused and fearful that the letter is not intended for me. I do not know a Dr Porter. Then I realise that they mean Dr Marion, that they are not in the surgery’s inner circle of first name terms.

The letter goes on that they are aware that I am seeking treatment for my infertility. I wince at this. For all I know, ny ovaries, FSH levels and progesterone might all be functioning quite nornally. But, I realise that the very fact that I have no way without help, of getting sperm inside and conceiving, renders me such. I admire their forthrightness. Its the truth. I am infertile and I need assistance with this.

They offer me an appointment with Mr Xin next week. I am puzzled at this. I thought that I would at least be seeing a doctor. A friend coincidentally puts me right on this after her three year old son sees a ‘Mister’ prior to his grommet operation. Apparently it means that they’re more than a doctor. They’ve gone beyond it. A consultant. I am immediately reassured.

I quickly look at the date in my diary and see that its a Saturday and I’m relieved. I was worried that it would fall on a teaching day or an impossible to get out of appointments day and the guilt of phoning in sick would have proved too much and made me incapable of conceiving overnight. I had already feared that if I tried to phone to rearrange they would interpret it as an indication that I am not committed enough. Mr Xin, who is really a doctor, says that he looks forward to meeting me, and that’s it.

Along with the letter there is an information pack, with lots of forms I’m supposed to fill in prior to the appointment. My medical and family history;  consent to donor treatment for the recipient and the recipient’s partner; consent to take part in medical studies; confidentiality rights; the knowledge that any future child will not be able to trace their father until they are eighteen;  information on different forms of treatments, egg donation, embryo transfer, IVF, IUI. I feel an overwhelming uncertainty of which relates to me, I drop them all over the floor and think, what the hell am I getting myself into?

In the days waiting for the clinic to contact me, I start to wonder, question and doubt all over again. The phonecalls and the visit to Dr Marion briefly fill me with a tree-hugging, gleeful optimism that it might actually happen. But most of the time, I’m wondering how, if it’s successful, I’ll ever make it work and what the experience of my future child might be.

My worries range from the rational to the irrational. I worry that I won’t get through whatever assessment process that they put you through to decide if you’re suitable for treatment. That I might have some as yet unknown medical condition that means I won’t be able to conceive. Even if I get past the medical tests I worry that my body won’t be able to perform the procedure. I’ve never slept with a man. I came close once, when I thought I was straight and in love, but the whole ‘penis inside’ thing made me clamp-up, literally, and I knew that it wasn’t for me. I have similar trouble with speculums!

I worry that if I conceive that something will go dreadfully wrong. My parents lost two children as babies, events that remain unspeakable and I fear that I will be responsible for putting them through potential anxiety and pain all over again. I think of my younger sister Lucy’s pregnancy a year ago, how mum was desparate to take part, to be the mum that contributes to plans, but instead every trip to John Lewis was flooded by her own experience. Lucy coped as she always has done, sailing through, proud and optimistic of her growing belly. For me though, hyper-vigilant of my parent’s feelings and an anxiety to see them alright, I am unsure I will be able to do the same.

I think of my prospective child’s lack of a father and of my relationship with my own, a mostly bouyant Scot, who hails everyone in the street with his banter. How important it was for me as a child, in the small council estate community where I grew up, to know that I had a father who came further away than the Asda on the M5. I consider what it would be like for me not to have known him, and for my own child not knowing their father, a gaping hole that I’m not sure I’ll be enough to fill.

And, if I’m honest, I have doubts about any child being conceieved in this way. I predict the wrath of the liberal town where I live, where lots of women, single and in lesbian relationships, have produced wonderful, well-adjusted children. For me, however, there are moments when I just can’t quite get my head around the fact that my child could be conceived on a table in a hospital by a stranger.

Most of all I worry about money and how we’ll ever survive. I have a relatively well-paid job, above the national average, but a one bedroom flat is all I can afford. I’ll receive maternity pay but even if I work extra hours between now and then and save as much as I can, nine months off work is probably all I’ll be able to manage. After that, how will I meet mortgage payments and forty pounds a day child care?

I fear that as my child grows older we’ll visit my friends with their children in big Victoria houses, with stripped floors where everyone has their own bedroom, with piles of Crocs at the door and a trampoline in the garden. I worry my child will grow up with a longing to be part of some other family. I know that I can’t match what parenthood seems to have become.

I think of my extended family members that, if it works, I’ll have to tell. I’m from a working-class family where everyone, apart from me, still lives in the same community where we grew up. All my cousins left school at 16 and they now have good, dependable jobs, steadfast heterosexual relationships that have produced healthy, happy children. There is my ninety year old Nan who, phsyically frail, still stands psychologically tall and whose blessing everyone still seeks. I am grateful to know that they love me and I won’t be dramatically cast out and scorned, never to be spoken of again. I predict that they’ll probably say congratulations and on the surface, my baby will be like every one that has gone before it, showered with presents and passed around for hugs. But when I’m gone, they’ll probably mutter about it not being quite right. They’ll struggle with the language to talk to the child about how they were conceived, won’t mention it, suggest that I don’t say a word until the child turns eighteen or come  up with some tall story of a father who left before the child was born. I don’t worry about me in the midst of this, but my child, who I fear will be tarnished by the silence or made to live a lie or that they’ll be in a family they’ll never properly know or feel part of.

I start to wonder if, the fact that I’m questioning so much,  is a sign that I don’t really want this.

The moment that I think this is the one where I realise that I really do. I see that all of my worries are my own and won’t necessarily be my child’s. It might be naivety, that love will conquer all, that where there’s a will, there’s a way, but it feels right. It’s just going to be more complicated for me and it’s going to take compromise on my part, of the way that I thought and wanted parenthood to be. If it’s going to work, I have to accept that this is how it is. The way I was brought up won’t be replicated in the life I’ll create for my child, nor the way of my friends and their children, but something in between. And that will be okay for us both.

I decide to phone the clinic, just to check that they received Dr Marion’s letter.

It is five whole days since I wrote it in my diary. My working week has been unusual in that I have looked at my ‘things to do’ list and methodically accomplished everything on it. Apart from one thing – the phone call to the clinic.

Every day I have told myself that I will do it after one work related task or another, that I will wait for a quiet moment in the open plan office that I share with thirty others. In the slightly more private stairwell there always seems to have been someone lurking, dealing with calls about offspring or things to be fixed or fitted. The smoker’s shelter is packed with huddlers, and beyond the office perimeter, it’s blowing a gale and venturing out would involve shouting for all to hear.

In the fleeting moments when I feel like I almost might be able to make the call, I tell myself that I’ll do it after Paula’s done the 10.30 tea round, when Chrissie’s back from lunch, or after Karen’s gone for the kit-kats, I don’t want to leave them short. Before I know it, another day has gone and each night in bed I resolve that I really will do it the following day. 

When I do make the call it takes me by surprise. I’ve not thought about attempting it for at least ten minutes and I don’t have a pen or my diary with me. It’s my lunch break, the wind has dropped, the sun is out, and there’s a bench free in the park. No other human being is visible for a hundred yards and they’re all walking the opposite way.

I dial the number quickly, I know it off by heart, and it’s answered almost straight away. I immediately hear business, other rings and chatter in the background. It is a call centre. I wonder if it might be Bangalore. I am light headed as I realised that whoever it is I speak to, I probably never will again. A voice tells me that I am through to Jennifer and she asks how she can help. She sounds nearer than Bangalore and anxiety returns.

She asks how she can help again. I briefly consider telling her it’s my gall stones, but then I think that it’s Friday and, if I don’t say it now, another week will have passed. So I take a deep breath and, for the first time, I tell someone, another human being, what it is that I want to do. I want to try to have a baby. By donor insemination. Could she give me some more information please.

She gives no sign that she consideres my request preposterous. Instead, she tells me the cost. £150 for the initial consultation, £150 if they need to do a scan and £850 per cycle of treatment. I love her for her lack of hesitation and resolve I will add Jennifer to my list of possible names. The enormity of the sums don’t sink in, all I register is that it is indeed marginally cheaper to be inseminated in a coastal town than Harley Street. It’s all going so well, until Jennifer tells me that to make an initial appointment, I’ll need a referral letter from my GP.

I think of Dr Marion and shudder. At my doctor’s surgery all of the doctor’s referred to by their first names, Dr Gary, Dr Helen and mine, Dr Marion, as if this somehow denotes their friendliness. In Dr Marion’s case, it does not. She resembles a headteacher who once made me cry for talking when she did. The first time I saw Dr Marion, I’d had a cough for six weeks. It was not just a clearing-of-your-throat kind of cough. I was practically whooping. Dr Marion suggested something called buttercup linctus and dismissed me with disdain. Still spluttering two weeks later I readily agreed to see ‘the locum’ who, not yet afforded first name status, always seemed to have appointments. With time on his hands he took a full history, diagnosed asthma and prescribed an inhaler. One puff in the morning and the coughing ceased.

The second time I was churning with over-worked anxiety, so much so that to those who looked closely enough, I was shaking and had not been able to sleep or keep food down for days. Dr Marion did not seem to appreciate that for me, making an appointment was a sign of desperation. She suggested that I go for a run. Or perhaps a swim. The following day I specifically requested ’the locum’, a different one this time, who gave me a mild dose of diazepam and signed me off for a week. The reminder of the episode fills me with panic. Does once having been prescribed tranquilisers preclude someone from being a mother? For Dr Marion it surely will. That, or she will look at my notes and realise that I have been two-timing her with a locum and refuse to write the referral letter. Even if she considers my request, her diagnostic skills will probably mean she’ll pack me off to buy a real-life baby doll or lemon wool and knitting needles, as if that might salve the itch.

Jennifer continues to talk on the phone. She’s giving me the fax number of the hospital where Dr Marion is supposed to send the referral. I’m too embarassed to tell her that I’ve come out without a pen. I thank her as breezily as I can, as if saying “of course, that’s fine” and she is gone, before I have a chance to ask whether a referral letter from a locum might count.