Dr No-Sperm-for-You
After I got out of hospital, after the memorial service, after all the physio appointments, after I had started my transition back to work, after all the news and drama had settled down—I hit a wall. I had been so focused on ‘getting there’; coping, dealing with the basic survival tasks in front of me. I had imagined that this grief was something to be got through—a swamp, if not a mountain to be got over. I didn’t expect a great big wall of ‘my baby died’ staring me in the face every morning.
Worse, what I had thought was the whole wall was only one particular bit of it, because I’d been standing so close. I took a step back and blinked, and there was the wall; higher and wider than I could see, with no edge in sight in any direction. ‘Right. Wall. Wall as far as the eye can see. Shit.’ I thought of cartoons of people imprisoned for life, carving lines in the wall to mark the years, finishing with a skeleton leaning back against it.
Now that I could amble up the road to the library by myself, I decided this was my project. Surely others had scaled this wall before, or found a loose brick, a secret door. I would research my way right over this wall and away from it. ‘Stillbirth’, I typed into the catalogue. ‘Neonatal death’. ‘Grief’. I ordered books from neighbouring libraries, I waited for parcels of books ordered online. Tell me your secret, I whispered desperately into their dust jackets, how do I fix this? I had started researching and reading with the thought that I would find an answer, that I would ‘get religion’, or hear the secret from mothers who had somehow been ‘healed’ after their child’s death. This was what kept me going: the thought that there was a way through, that there was an answer to all my sadness out there somewhere—a key, a secret formula. I worked on it like it was a maths problem. I followed each line of reasoning carefully, and tried not to cry when they all led back to another spot with a good view of the wall.
I found three main answers. The first was boring old Time. Fat use that was. I needed to fix this pain right now! What was I supposed to do—put myself into a deep freeze until the requisite amount of time passed and I could wake up feeling human again? ‘Time’ did not involve me doing anything; it was beyond my control. The second answer I didn’t like either, because it suggested that, actually, this grief wasn’t fixable. Rather, it was me who would have to adapt to it and learn to live with it in time—taking me back to my objections to answer number one.
The third wasn’t exactly presented as ‘the answer’, but I surmised it from the fact that every book or story I read about perinatal death featured a subsequent child. Here was a nice, practical solution: have another baby. And while I couldn’t guarantee results, this was the only option I felt I could actually do anything about. I knew, of course, that one baby couldn’t replace another, that Z would always have a special place in our hearts, but I wanted a child I could parent, in the earthly, messy way of living children. I was impatient with the slow repetition of my grief. I needed a sweetener, a happy ending, resolution of the narrative. I stopped writing and went into waiting mode—waiting for a happy ending on which to finish our story.
•
I was at the Korean jewellers in a small arcade in Preston, handing over a small ziplock bag containing a fine, but heavy, chain. The woman opened the bag and laid the chain on a velvet board, poking it into a line with one little finger. This was the spot where the ambulance officer’s scissors bit, snapping the gold chain between their silver blades. The chain had run like a rivulet into his cupped hand. And, in its place, he negotiated a foam and plastic neckbrace behind my head, and velcroed it into place, careful not to catch my hair.
The chain had been broken for seven months now. I explained what happened, and that I’d like it mended but with a small gold heart to mark the mending spot. ‘I was in a car accident—they cut my chain—our baby died.’ It was enough for her to get it and she gasped, ‘Awww!’ and put her hand on mine. ‘Awww! We will make you happy!’
•
Happy and mended is what we wanted, and so, after waiting the minimum six or so months recommended by the obstetrician, we were in hot pursuit of the one thing that we imagined could deliver that state: a positive pregnancy test. But before we could have a shot at pregnancy, there was paperwork to fill out, and administrative hoops to leap through—police checks, child welfare record checks, applications to the treatment authority to import the frozen sperm from New South Wales to Victoria, counselling and consents. Many of these hoops we had already jumped when we started the process in Sydney, but because each state had its own fertility treatment laws, we had to repeat our efforts in Melbourne. When we explained our story and Z’s loss, the staff apologised but there was nothing they could do.
In the calendar, we’d circled August as the month where we could leap from the grief roller coaster onto the trying-to-conceive roller coaster; or, better still, perform some Evel Knievel feat of riding both roller coasters at once. August was the month that had been pulling me forwards, getting me through. We had diligently submitted all our paperwork; arranged for our donor, Jorge, to fly down from Sydney for repeat counselling; submitted to blood tests both for me and Rima. But when day one of my cycle arrived, and I called the clinic to work out the treatment schedule, I discovered that our euphemistically titled ‘samples’ had arrived from New South Wales, but without the requisite paperwork and without the requisite tests having been carried out on them. We carefully packed up our hopes and bundled them into the diary for September. By then, the tests would have all been carried out and we’d be able to press ahead with an insemination.
Sunday, 29 August 2010 Inside-out Day
Friday was the 27th—eight months since our accident. I was trying to figure out why it felt so much harder than seven months. We were in Singapore at the seven month mark, and somehow felt like we were ‘on holiday’ from the grief. I’d just given my conference paper and we had a little holiday ahead of us. I felt close to Z, but the grief felt distant, smoother. Eight months isn’t half a year, it didn’t make sense for it to be any harder than seven months. The answer was so obvious it took me a while to realise. She lived eight months in my belly, and from now on she would have been dead longer than she existed. I spent eight months gearing up to be a mother, and then the pendulum swung back, and I feared that my whole pregnancy has now unwound—that I’m back to where I started. We’ve now spent more time grieving her than I was pregnant. Babies that were conceived on the night ours died will be born soon.
I dreamt last night that someone was giving away a baby car seat and pram for free, and Rima and I were discussing—is it too soon to start buying baby things again? I woke, and she’d had a very similar dream—that we’d won baby things in a competition, and were toying with the idea of bringing them home.
Maybe this means we are ready to start again, to push the pendulum back in the direction of hope.
•
September arrived, and with it, dire test results about our frozen sperm samples. The same samples that had given our Sydney fertility doctor cause to wax lyrical about their vitality and motility were, when defrosted, only 7 per cent motile. The freezing process, it seemed, had turned our little Usain Bolts into Grampa Simpsons. I wasn’t giving up, though, and continued to call the clinic—even with lousy odds, could we still go ahead with an insemination, if for no other reason than so that I could feel like we were doing something? While the rest of the country was waiting to see whether Julia Gillard would be able to form government after a hung election, I was waiting for a phone call from our clinic.
When the phone call came, we eked out a little more hope. We would be able to go ahead with an insemination, but first we needed to make an appointment with the doctor, so she could explain in person exactly how lousy our chances were. I was happy to leap through another hoop, but when I called to try make the appointment, we found she was booked out for another four weeks.
It felt like torture by bureaucracy. No matter how many people I called or how many times I trotted out our sad saga, I couldn’t speak directly with any of the people who could change the decision. I knew there was something a little unhinged about my desperation, yet still I left messages for our doctor, both at her clinic and at her private rooms, furious that the one thing I’d been surviving for over the past eight months could be derailed by something as trivial as appointment availabilities. I was ready for a miracle, any moment now. I thought I could hope it into existence. I was furious with these delays. Don’t you know you are standing between us and our miracle baby!
Sure enough, an appointment magically opened up, and the next day, Rima and I found ourselves face to face with Dr No-Sperm-for-You. Yes, she knew how important this was to us, given our recent loss. Yes, there was sufficient sperm. But no, we couldn’t have it—not for a clinic insemination (because of the low motility) and not for a take-home insemination (because our donor had not specifically consented to that at the time of the donation, back in 2007). There would be no September cycle. Our consolation prize was a medical certificate. Given our history, she was willing to class me as medically sub-fertile, and therefore eligible for a Medicare rebate on IVF and ICSI treatment—something she would recommend, given the low motility of the thawed sperm. It was as though we’d taken our old Commodore to the mechanics for repairs, only to be told, ‘This one won’t work again, but we’ve got a very nice Mercedes we could sell you.’ I didn’t want a Mercedes, and I certainly didn’t want IVF; not if there was still a chance we could conceive via simpler means.
I moped for a while, but sparked up after a message from our donor that he was going to be back in the country in October, and was willing to make a fresh donation for an at-home insem, just as he had back in May 2009. There would be an October cycle, regardless of the pronouncements of Dr NSFU. The hope that we’d stretched back like a rubber slingshot, from August to September to October, could finally be released, catapulting our hopes into movement. Dear Universe, it happened once. Please let it happen again. I just wanted that feeling of small knees and elbows tapping out a message, that warmth and potential. I wanted to finish the story this time—not with a memorial service, and condolence cards and a small amount of ashes falling through our hands, but with a new little voice crying, and baby eyes that opened and moved.
By the time we flew home from Sydney after an October weekend of turkey baster-related activities, the broad beans I’d pushed into the dirt in the cool, weepy days of April were towering with flowers and ripening bean pods. We made our first harvest, slipping the bright green beans from their pods and wishing the fecundity might rub off on us too.
It’s day one again, and even though it is the first month we’ve tried since losing Z, it still feels like Groundhog Day. As philosophical as I can be in my head about percentages and buying our lottery ticket, flipping our coin and whatever stupid metaphor you want to use, I’m still crushed because I’m a dirty hope addict, and I really did think something miraculous might happen.