I am lying face down holding the outer edge of my knickers between my fingers while Tom draws up some liquid into a syringe. We are amateur doctors, taking on big tasks with small knowledge but making up for it in how much we care.
It is winter, a couple of weeks before Christmas, and for over a month now I have been immersed in the process of IVF.
I have gone from someone who is terrified of having blood taken to someone who can inject myself in the toilet of a pub in between my soup and my salad.
‘Have you got it all?’ I stress. ‘Make sure it all goes in.’
Get in, progesterone, make a baby.
In it goes, to my bum cheek.
‘Now massage!’ Tom shouts at me, panicked that I may miss my post-injection massage window.
I furiously knead my bottom.
I stop and stand to take six tablets ten minutes later, my hand cramping, before inserting a suppository. Then I lie on the bed, still, for it to ‘stay in’ for the next hour. The last part isn’t on the instructions and were I to have a normal office-based job – seriously, how do people do this with a normal office-based job? – it would be impossible, but it makes sense in my head, so I’m doing it. I need to exert some tiny hint of control.
Work has ground to a halt. This is it. Making a baby is my job and I’m treating it more seriously than I have ever treated any job in my life. The biscuit habits of before have gone, the cupboards full of lentils and seeds and oats.
I go to 3 p.m. yoga with a teacher named Izzy and three fabulous retired Londoners, as we are the only ones available to do classes at 3 p.m. and the only ones who want a class that involves no sweating and is really just a bit of lying around and breathing.
They all know why I’m here. I treat it less like yoga, more like group therapy.
In my last class before the embryo transfer Maurice, who is seventy-three, has hair down his back and can do a headstand, puts a gentle hand on my shoulder. I turn to smile at him.
‘I’ll light a candle for you,’ he says and my eyes are wet. ‘Namaste.’
His hug is grandfatherly and warm and I wish I could pocket it so I could have it again later. We wave goodbye, yoga mats tucked under our arms, and walk in opposite directions.
The hope is that I won’t be back at class but instead will be heading off to big school or, as we know it, pregnancy yoga. To rub my bump and bounce on a ball and practise breathing for the birth. We all hope this is goodbye.
I take vitamins, and I call the hospital with facts and figures. I sit for half an hour twice a day and I meditate to an app on my phone. I watch, smiling, as Tom fills in my chart for me, to make sure we do every bit of medication at the right time, that we don’t miss a beat. I grab more blueberries because what if, what if, it’s the blueberries that make the difference? I drink more water. I go to bed early.
I don’t even consider Rachel, because there is no room in my head to consider Rachel. Unless Rachel is some form of progesterone that I need to inject myself with twice a day, Rachel is of no consequence.
Things are better with Tom. I decide to trust him and be loyal to him because I need him. I remind myself again that Rachel is no one; she is words on a screen. If injecting your own bum cheek is difficult, coping with the gruelling emotion of hormones and terror without someone who you love is harder. Sometimes you have to take a punt. I can deal with this later if I am wrong, but right now I am taking that punt.
Tom, too, takes a break. ‘This is the bonus of being freelance,’ he says. ‘Though on the other hand, kids do cost a lot of money …’
He winks. No irony. Because now, we are newly optimistic. We aren’t fatigued any more. This isn’t the twenty-fifth try but the first one. The odds are far, far better for this than they are for what we have tried before. In fertility terms, IVF is the big gun. We’re excited for what might be about to happen. I’m stoic about the bad bits. Tom tells me I’m brave and I feel it, like I could take on the world for this imaginary baby. I haven’t achieved much for a long time but this, actually, this I am acing.
And finally, all there is to do for two weeks is wait.
We wait asleep and we wait awake. We wait while we eat Christmas dinner at Tom’s parents and we wait while we talk about the news, or our Christmas presents, or what is coming back on TV in January. We pretend we are doing other things but really, we are always waiting.
We have a date, a Tuesday just after New Year, when we must call the hospital with the test result.
Until then I rest and relax, but not in a hot bath because I’m too scared that could damage the imaginary baby. I can walk but not too far, because what if that hurts imaginary baby? I can eat, but nothing risky, because food poisoning is the enemy of imaginary baby.
It’s a fortnight that doesn’t exist in the real world, which is going on around us as our imaginary baby does or doesn’t develop. I see people lifting heavy gifts or drinking champagne with their Christmas dinners, and panic for a second, before I realise they are not me. It’s okay. They don’t have to follow the rules.
And then, finally, it’s time.
I wake at 6 a.m. having dreamt of children and heartache and joy and everything.
I get out of bed and walk to the bathroom, shaking all over, to my knees, to my neck.
‘I’m going to do it,’ I say over my shoulder to Tom and he sits bolt upright. He’s not slept, either.
My hands shake so much that I wee all over my fingers, but this unpleasantness fails even to register.
Because already, I can see the result coming up.
There is no baby. We did all of that, we tried so hard, but there is no baby.