meet them. Teenage daughters who dawdle all the way to school are a perennial hazard.’ She rolled her eyes to garner our sympathy and returned to the file. ‘Please bear with me …’
I exchanged a glance with Luke, noticing his eyebrow cocked pointedly. I ignored his rubbish Roger Moore impression. Yes, yes; I had presumed that the consultant was childless, but instead, she had older kids. Hence the pristine appearance. I shrugged tetchily. The consultant was still a slow reader. Dee’s daughter Tilly was faster with The Faraway Tree.
Luke tightened his grip on my hand. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he whispered firmly. ‘This time, everything is going to happen the way it should.’
I nodded. It was one of life’s ironies that the only fly in the ointment, the only tiny but irritating flaw that prevented us from being complete, was that we were here in this office, waiting for a consultant we didn’t know to tell us if our baby might stick around this time. A tedious but excruciating fact: we couldn’t conceive a baby. Not one that stayed put for longer than twelve weeks, anyway.
One in four women experience a miscarriage at some point in their lives and one in five pregnancies end this way, but having eight of them had eclipsed everything else in our lives. We hadn’t conceived a baby naturally for years … at least … no, wait. We didn’t talk about that. We never, ever talked about that. It was the one thing that had caused a major rift between us.
Losing so many babies had changed us irrevocably. ‘Character building,’ Luke used to say bravely, tears streaking down his face as he gathered me up and held my heartbroken body in his arms for the umpteenth time.
Yes. Character building. We had done much of that over the years.
A few years ago, I remember Luke playing with Dee and Dan’s youngest daughter Frankie in the park, using her as a human Subbuteo, swinging her chubby legs and roaring with laughter as they scored a goal. It was an image I still held in my head, although I was no longer sure that it would become a reality for us.
The clock on the wall ticked steadily, mockingly, echoing my biological timer. In my ears, the rhythmic ticks gathered pace, rather like sand slithering at high speed into the bulb of an egg timer.
If only they had been able to find something wrong. But Luke had superb sperm by all accounts, and my ovaries, womb and fallopian tubes were perfectly ripe and healthy. Yet somehow, the stench of failure had been firmly but unfairly placed at my door, or rather, at my womb. Because if I couldn’t conceive, it must mean that my body was at fault. Terms like ‘foetal rejection’ and ‘hostile environment’ had been carelessly tossed on to the table as explanations.
‘Hostile environment’ – have you ever heard such a thoughtless, cruel term? It made me want to scream. It was an onslaught to my womanhood and everything I felt I should be capable of, but what was the point? Everyone would just think I was crazy or hormonal. Or both.
And so it had begun. Three bouts of IUI – intrauterine insemination – that hadn’t worked and, due to my age – thirty-seven, ancient in baby-making terms – we had started IVF immediately afterwards. Hormone injections, accompanied by the dreadful side effects everyone talked about, multiple ultrasound scans to check the size and maturity of my eggs and injections to ‘ripen’ my eggs. The best ones (Luke liked to call these the ‘Eggs Benedict’ of my offerings) were mixed with his sperm (spun, washed and carefully selected, Luke would comment in amusement, as if describing a washing cycle) and these were then hopefully fertilised before being placed back inside my body.
Smear tests had nothing on IVF treatment, I thought ruefully. I’d spent more time with my legs in the air and my parts on show than I cared to admit. Ultimately, all dignity and modesty had been annihilated. My womb had been discussed and scrutinised in such intimate detail over the past few years I almost felt I should give it a nickname. Luke had a choice few, all unsuitable for general consumption, but they made me laugh.
Speak, I pleaded with the consultant mutely. Tell us it’s all right. I pulled at an unravelling thread on my trousers, feeling an affinity with it. We had missed out on the magical moments most parents surely revelled in, such as the deliciously important task of choosing names. (For the record: Jude for a boy, Bryony for a girl.) But such a thing had fallen by the wayside, as had daring to have a preference when it came to the sex of a baby. A preference? Pure self-indulgence. Healthy, that was all that mattered. Just … healthy.
I bit my lip. Recently, instead of flattering talk about what incredible parents we would be, friends and family had mentioned egg donation and surrogacy and, astonishingly, buying a dog. Yes, obviously, we should forget about babies and get a chihuahua. Dee … even Dee, had even suggested giving up. Giving up. It had caused the only major row we had ever had, and it had taken a while to forgive her.
It was difficult for me to explain, but I yearned to carry Luke’s baby. I had this inner ache that I felt only our own child could fill. Luke understood, I thought, although I did have a sense deep down that he might have been more than happy to discuss other options, should we have needed to. I couldn’t think that way, though. I had to believe that this would work.
The consultant finally sat back. ‘Well, everything looks healthy this time round,’ she remarked rather cheerily. ‘Obviously we’re not out of the woods yet and you’ve had quite a journey, but this is the furthest you’ve come, so there is every chance that this pregnancy will develop as it should. Fourteen weeks … this is fantastic.’
The consultant’s gaze softened. ‘Regular scans and check-ups, of course. But that’s all part of the process, as I’m sure you’re aware. Here you are – another set of scan photographs for you to keep. Lovely ones. Look at this one of the baby’s feet.’
I took the photos. I was shaking.
‘Really? Everything looks all right?’ Luke’s elation was evident; his heart on his sleeve, as ever. He crushed my hand accidentally and I loved him for it. My own euphoria tended to be rather more contained these days – a casualty of the process – but Luke was endearingly positive.
The consultant gestured to the test results in the file. ‘It does. The baby is healthy, the heartbeat is strong and all of your tests came back with great results.’
‘A perfectly good oven, as it turns out. I bloody knew it.’ Luke snaked an arm around my neck and spoke into my ear. ‘I told you that old guy didn’t know what he was talking about, Luce. I knew it; I just knew it.’
I burst into tears. An aged, male consultant had once breezily described my womb as a ‘broken oven’ some years back and I had never quite got over it.
‘Let’s just get through the next couple of months, shall we?’ The consultant’s professional demeanour was firmly back in place. She headed for the door. ‘Good luck, both of you, and I’ll see you again soon.’
Was that ‘good luck’ because we needed it, or was she just wishing us well? I caught myself. Would the ball of tears in the back of my throat, caught like a frozen waterfall, ever thaw? I just wanted to feel normal. I wanted to be able to glance at doll-sized babygrows pegged on a washing line without dissolving into tears. I wanted to be able to hand a lonely-looking teddy bear I’d found on the supermarket floor back to its owner without biting my lip until it bled. The sweet scent of downy peach fuzz on the head of a friend’s newborn as I cradled a tiny body? Instant hysteria. Snot, heaving chest … the works. Cue awkwardness all round and cautious comments about it being my turn soon. Yes. My turn.
I traced a finger along the baby picture, outlining its perfectly formed leg. Perhaps this
