We started trying for a baby as soon as we were married.
The world felt like our oyster back then. I thought I’d snagged the best guy in the world, and we had such grand plans. This was back before we fell into the drudgery of married life – back when I couldn’t understand women who got frustrated with their husbands for not picking up the towels or making the bed. I loved to do those things for Graeme.
Through that first year I felt I was a child playing house. I shopped for trinkets and art and linen and Grae pretended to be interested in my purchases. I tried new recipes nearly every night and waited for that magic day when I’d suddenly be able to cook, and when that day never came, Grae usually pretended to like my meals anyway.
By the second year, he wasn’t pretending quite as well, but I was still trying. And I was watching the months coming at me, faster and faster it seemed, and beginning to wonder why my period was always on time. At first, Grae did not want me to see the doctor about our lack of success in conceiving. He was so confident that our baby was just around the corner, supremely confident in his ability to get me pregnant. And I was so determined to please him that even as the warning sounds in my mind became louder and louder, I did not mention my concern to anyone at all.
By the third year, I was getting annoyed with the wet towels on the floor, and I’d occasionally only made half of the bed in a gesture of defiance. Grae complained incessantly about my cooking, but was not unhappy enough to take the task on himself. And I had taken to noting down when my period was due and making sure that we had not planned anything social for that evening, as I’d inevitably be locking myself away with a glass of merlot and a box of tissues.
Grae suggested we see a doctor well into that year. We were both nervous – I was wondering who was to blame, and praying it wasn’t me. I wanted a baby more than anything – anything, except of course, Grae himself. If he happened to be infertile, I’d stay with him, but if I was infertile, I was sure that he would leave me. From our very first dinner together Grae talked about the children he wanted. Two sons and a daughter, he’d decided, probably in that order. And he wanted good, traditional Australian names: Bruce and Barry, and maybe our daughter would be Kylie. He’d even planned their sporting activities; the boys would play cricket and rugby league, and little Kylie would concentrate on her schooling and maybe learn an instrument.
Apparently Grae’s sperm count was exceptionally high, so the first round of tests absolved him of blame. At first, they thought I was healthy too and the doctors seemed bewildered as to why we hadn’t conceived. We tried some drugs, and I actually fell pregnant – I remember the breathtaking joy just like it was yesterday. It was only weeks though before the dream shattered. That first loss was the hardest, because I never even saw it coming.
Still, we dusted ourselves off, waited the long period of months the doctor recommended before we risked another pregnancy, and then I went back on the drugs and we hoped for the best.
And then we did all of that again, and again. If we weren’t failing to conceive, we were failing to stay pregnant – but there was always failure, seemingly at every turn. It took years before they put a label to my problem, hostile uterus, and even now, years and years later, I still don’t even really know what that means. The day the doctor finally told us, though, we sat down at our kitchen table for dinner and I stared at my plate and told Graeme to leave.
He was still young, and in spite of his terrible domestic habits, quite a catch. I knew he would remarry quickly, and within a few years he’d have the family he dreamed of.
Graeme pushed aside his (burnt) roast dinner and reached for my hand on the table. He told me that he was in this for life, baby or no baby. And that was that.
Grae isn’t really one to gush, but that night, I gave him an out, and he did not take it.
So then came two new dimensions to our relationship, dimensions which were equally unwelcome and confusing: gratitude and guilt. Maybe things had never really been equal, maybe I did all of the housework in spite of us both working, and maybe he tended to be bossy at times, but throwing into the mix the fact that I now felt incredibly lucky that he was staying with me, and guilty that he would never be a father because of me, I danced on a knife-edge every day. Every single time we disagreed about something, I would tense and wait for him to end the conversation with a shrug and a hasty exit, as if even an argument over the damp towels would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
No one used the word ‘adoption’ for a long time. When Grae finally did, I shot him down the instant he said it. Every now and again, he’d raise the subject again, but even considering it felt like giving up to me – and I was nowhere near ready to give up.
I didn’t just want a baby. I wanted my baby. I wanted the joy of the positive pregnancy test without the grief and misery that inevitably followed it for us.
If I couldn’t have my baby, then maybe I didn’t want a baby. Maybe I could live without one after all.
That was not the case for Graeme. He just wanted a baby.
He’d have begged, borrowed or stolen one, if that was at all possible.
And I’d have done almost anything for Graeme.