Women can have it all

Considering I spent my entire adult life believing that falling pregnant would spell the end of all of my dreams, hopes and desires, it is a little surreal to find myself fearing that if I don’t fall pregnant now it will be the end of all my dreams, hopes and desires.

There’s a lot of smug journalism about this very personal dilemma of mine, because it is also the dilemma of my generation – women who thought they could have it all and realised perhaps too late that they have run out of time to cross “family” off that great list of things to do. I can’t help feeling there’s a trace of malice in some of this reportage – a strong undercurrent of “silly women, they should have known better”.

This infuriates me. The fact that women have a limited biological window for giving birth can’t be ignored, which is precisely why societies should help, not hinder, women’s career progress. It comes down to maximising talent, imperative for any knowledge-based economy.

Scandinavian countries have got it right, with parental leave for both partners and workplace flexibility. In the developing world, women of some means can get ahead because the cost of labour is so low that they can afford full-time nannies and household help. Of course, poor women in these countries are consigned to leaving their own children unattended or with family while they spend all their time caring for another family.

In the US, the UK and Australia, the new norm is for both parents to work and divert a huge chunk of their income into childcare – even a professional couple earning good salaries can be stretched to the limit, just meeting payments on their home, schools and healthcare. Is this all we want from life? Where is the quality of life that our parents’ generation grew up with?

The question of whether a woman can “have it all” is economic, not gender-based. Any woman can have it all if she has means, or lives in a society that supports her career with decent childcare and education options. Girls’ schools should be putting a huge emphasis on business, finance and entrepreneurial skills – if our governments are failing us, girls can at least learn from the very start that financial independence is the path to freedom.

Snide articles about successful women who are now fretting over whether they can have a baby are not just cruel and mean-spirited, they entirely miss the point. These women should be applauded – they belong to that heady generation who dreamed it was possible, and forged ahead accordingly. We should be asking governments why they have failed us – and by us I mean husbands, partners and children, not just women. In the US, as the wealthy get wealthier, the “middle class” is being subsumed into a growing working class. It’s sneaking up on people – middle-class aspirations and desires, such as owning their own home and being able to afford a good education for their children, are increasingly out of reach. They are working class, they just don’t know it yet.

That’s the big picture. If we come back down to the micro level, where women like me are desperately hoping they haven’t left it too late to have children, it is even more complex. Yes, we were among the first women in history to plan our lives around career aspirations rather than acquiring a man and bearing children. But as any man can tell you, wanting to have a career does not mean that you don’t want to have a family.

In my case, I pursued my chosen profession, and never seemed to find the right partner to consider having babies. If babies had been my main objective, then perhaps I would have “settled” for one of my old boyfriends years ago, or devoted more time in a ruthless hunt for the right man.

I wish I had met the right man earlier, but I don’t regret my career or my experiences traveling the world. The thought of having stayed put in my home town all of these years without those adventures or those opportunities to advance myself fills me with a kind of creepy horror.

So here I am, one of those 30-something women trying to get pregnant. I’m thinking of this as my latest adventure.

This past week I went to the doctor three times for intrauterine ultrasounds to figure out exactly when I would ovulate, so that we could in turn figure out exactly when to have sex. Having a doctor prescribe sex in the next hour or two sent me into fits of giggles. “Rufus, meet me at home asap!” I texted madly, or words to that effect.

The doctor, a cool guy whose years in California seem to have given him an “I’m ok-you’re ok” mentality, always wears an “I heart OB GYN!” button on his white coat and is immune to embarrassment. A squeamish OB GYN is no use at all, I guess.

This week I learned that an ovary is about as big as an almond and looks like a black blob on ultrasound. One ovary usually releases an egg each month when it swells to around 17mm-22mm (although mine had not got around it even at 22.3mm). The doctors says it’s best to have sex only every 36 hours to 48 hours during the fertile days surrounding ovulation – although googling reveals a healthy debate about this. The idea is to give the man time to rejuvenate his sperm, and as sperm lasts in the body for several days, this ensures you have some swimming about constantly while the egg is being released.

So we have now made love at the prescribed times and are dutifully waiting now to see if we hit the bull’s eye.

What’s normal?

Have you ever tried to understand a sperm analysis form?

The one I looked over yesterday before seeing the doctor was a pastiche of Latin medical terms, percentages and figures down to three or four decimal points. Finally, at the very bottom, I found the word “normal”, and heaved a little sigh of relief. One thing cancelled out, a million more to go.

But it was not to be that easy. Once in my doctor’s office, going through the form line by line, I discovered (I took notes) that of the 22m sperm collected in the sample, 15 per cent moved rapidly, 30 per cent moved slowly, 35 per cent just kind of jiggled about aimlessly and 20 per cent were dead. Which broke down to about 9.9m extremely determined sperm, and the rest not so much. This was a normal sample, the doctor said, but it was on the “low” side of normal.

I could theoretically get pregnant, but his shoulder shrug seemed to suggest it would be touch and go.

So what to do? We are off to give another sample at a different laboratory, just to check that the result is indeed representative. And if so, then Rufus will have to go see a urologist, and possibly after that they might “wash” his sperm and inseminate me.

Washing means basically picking out the very best sperm, according to google, wikipedia and all of those other websites doctors hate so much.

Meanwhile, I am off to have a bunch of blood tests (blech) next week to check various things – more Latin names. I HATE blood tests. The last and only time I gave blood I fainted, legs in the air.

I was worried Rufus might be upset to hear about the “low side of normal” finding, so I made sure I mentioned how visibly impressed the doctor had been with the volume of the sample. But I need not have worried, he was not thrilled to have to give another sample, but ultimately he was much more concerned about the three days’ abstinence required beforehand. We’ll get around that by going straight from the airport to the laboratory when he comes back on Saturday – the silver lining in his travels.

My man

swim, little guy!

I just said good-bye to the man I love.

It’s not forever, but it is for the five or six prime baby-making days in August, according to every calendar variation I try out online or on the phone. Drat and double drat.

Before he left, the man and I raced across town to deposit a sperm sample at a laboratory – the first test ordered by the doctor to begin working out if we have a problem, and if we do, what it is. I’ve heard lots of stories about men refusing to have their sperm tested, or feeling as if their masculinity was being questioned. My man was thoroughly good-natured about it, even though we had to squeeze in a funeral beforehand, which was a bit too much life and death for me in one day. Any minute now, he and his sperm will be leaving on a jet plane, and I am here wondering how long the little swimmers can survive in the body (my doctor advised sex every 36 hours to 48 hours during my fertile period, so that must be about it). Do your work, guys. Please, please, please, please, please, please.

My man deserves a look-in on this blog, considering he is the other half of this unfolding story, and so I am going to have to give him a pseudonym. I thought about Felix, Sebastian, Oscar, Oliver, Jack and Harry, which are all names I would think about calling a son. But that would be weird. So let’s call him Rufus.

Rufus is not at all like the picture of an ideal man I had built up in my mind. He is slightly hippyish, in that he has longish curly hair that he wears loose, wrists full of leather and textile bands, and a leather necklace with a tree of life insignia. He also likes incense – these would have all been extreme red flags even two years ago. I like passion in a man, and ambition, and I have to admit I was also looking for a measure of success. Not in that awful ruthless way I witnessed in Manhattan bars where lycra-clad girls draped themselves over banker types, but I wanted a man who had enthusiasm for life, and who had proved he could excel in some field; someone who cared about what he did.

I met Rufus in a valley of ancient pyramids in a South American country that I had just moved to. We were both there working, and I had only minimal Spanish, but as we chatted in a broken kind of way, drenched in that golden late afternoon light, I felt like jumping on him right then and there. We saw each other periodically at work meetings and there was always an attraction, and later shameless flirting. A year after meeting we went to lunch, and so it began. I didn’t make it easy for him – I was convinced that as a Latino he was almost certain to cheat on me, or think that cheating was not a bad thing. Apologies to any Latinos reading this who might think this racist – it was, and I was wrong. I have never been happier than I am with Rufus – he is totally calming and positive and affectionate and wonderful. I want our baby to have his curls and beautiful mouth, my green eyes, cheekbones and lashes, his sense of joy, my sense of adventure… and so on.

So here I am, Rufus-less, and in 48 hours, spermless. Barring extreme good luck, August will not be the month we conceive a baby. I am headed to the doctor on Tuesday however, to see what the lab has to say about his sperm, and see what tests I should have done. Wish me luck.

Patience is a virtue

I am not so sure

There are two schools of thought on waiting.

Andy Warhol (and no doubt millions of masochists out there) thought that anticipation could only enhance experience. I have to agree that this can apply nicely to sex, chocolate cake, tropical adventure holidays, airport reunions, the latest episode of TrueBlood and a nice cup of tea and a blazing fire after a walk in the rain.

Yes, waiting can intensify that frisson of discovery and heighten that shiver of pleasure that runs through you when your lips touch your lovers’ after a long absence; it can make a warm dark chocolate pudding a mood-changer and the sight of your parents waiting by the airport gate one of the happiest moments in life.

But when it comes to babymaking, I subscribe to the other view of waiting: that it is nothing more than pure, unadulterated agony.

My period is due today. The fact that it has not arrived could mean nothing. It could arrive at any moment, in which case life will hit the reset button and I will be sitting here in a month’s time doing EXACTLY the same thing.

This is completely maddening to me. In this space between knowing and not knowing, my head is flooded with bouncy, badly behaved thoughts of possibility. Could I be pregnant? If I am, maybe I should not have drunk seven coffee the other day? They say foetuses look like beans – oh god, maybe I have turned mine into a coffee bean. Could coffee mutate my foetus? Maybe we could go with a coffee theme for the name? Sara Jane Ristretto? Hugo Machiato? Or a coffee region? Quindio? Jack Jamaica Blue? Is that why Gwyneth Paltrow called her child Apple? Why else would you? Did I remember to take folic acid every day ?(I know I didn’t). Would the baby have my eyes, eyelashes and cheekbones and his mouth, curls and skin tone, which really would be the ideal combination?

I would really like to stomp these thoughts down into a small dark place because a) they are ridiculous and b) I know that each of them represents a small ratcheting up of my excitement levels, which will only in turn mean more sadness when it turns out that I am not, after all, pregnant.

My best strategies for taming the flow of expectations have been a) work, b) transferring my emotions onto other objects of desire – eg, the aforementioned chocolate cake, travel plans, TrueBlood episodes and books. But none of them really works, and I could end up being quite fat if I go too far down the chocolate cake path. Nature can be cruel and perverse. Really the only thing to do is wait.

Drat

A lot like The Man Who Got Away

When you want a baby, it seems the whole world has one (or several) but you.

At 38, it’s not surprising that many of my friends now have children – in my hometown most of my friends now have two or three, and even the single friends I made in big cities are starting to succumb. T has adorable twins in Denmark, R has two girls after almost 10 years of trying, E, who once considered becoming a nun, has a pair of girls in the Australian countryside, K has two boys and a girl after activating her baby plan with military precision at 33, EII has a curl tousled sweet natured boy and a long lashed baby girl, A, a batty sexual amazon with fake breasts and a clitoris ring, even has a sprog by a three-night stand in New Jersey. So I am used the girls.

But today I was chatting with The Man Who Got Away, a fairer, cleft-chinned, square-jawed Cary Grant type, and he told me he and his girlfriend are expecting a baby in November. “Et tu, C?” Was all I could think. Having successfully morphed into friends – time, a lot of distance, shared profession and skype make this possible – my heart was unscathed by the news. I could even go so far as to say I was pleased for him, as I think he might be in with a chance of a healthy relationship. (He is a serial cheater and rogue)

But if there was anything I thought I could rely on him for, it was that he wouldn’t be joining my friends in the race to parenthood. I know there is no point focusing on the things one does not have in life, especially when I have so much. But maybe I am not such a big person as that – there is this terrible childish squeal inside of me that just bubbles up at such times, and says “Why not me?!”

The very nice thing, I realise as I write this, is that this voice is a lot more reedy and thin these days. I am happy right now – so happy to have found the kind of man who will glue together the fragments of a shattered ceramic dish I have been carting about the world for years, because he saw how sad I was when it broke. He touches my heart in a myriad of small ways, and he wants to have a baby with me. That gives me more heart than any research on follicles, cycles or sperm.

Meet the doctor

Note to self: don’t have the sex just before you go for a gyno apointment.

This seems entirely obvious and logical in retrospect but it hadn’t occurred to me until yesterday when I went to the doctor to tell him that I officially want a baby. And when the doctor began my physical exam, I was mortified.

I have never taken much notice of my cycle and on previous visits had clearly exasperated the doctor by never knowing when my last period occurred. In the past six months of privately trying to get pregnant, I have taken note for the first time – I have a 26 day cycle that runs like clockwork.

“Which days are you having sex?” he asked me.

Most days, as it happens. But I told him I was definitely having sex on the days my telephone told me to. It has this great little programme where you put in the date of your period and the length of your cycle and it charts out in red the days you should be having sex and then highlights in green the optimum day. My iTouch also has an application that does pretty much the same thing.

I had thought this was a great leap forward and felt quite proud of myself, but the doctor was less impressed.

“You mean, your method for having a baby is the telephone?” he asked, a little incredulously.

I showed him my programme and then he showed me an old fashioned calendar and how to count back the days from Day one of my period to the most fertile part of my cycle. I think we both learned something.

We’re waiting to see how this cycle turns out and if I’m not pregnant at the end of the month we’ll embark on some tests.

My boyfriend insisted on coming with me to the appointment, something that made me nervous but ultimately very very pleased. I am used to being a strong independent kind of women that I am touched deeply by him looking after me. He was totally calm and natural and happy to have his sperm tested next month if need be. Basically a very good foil to me, a bundle of nerves and insecurities.

Action stations

If I was in a spelling bee, the word gynaecology would get me every time. So for this blog’s purposes he shall be known simply as the doctor. Possibly a more inventive handle might occur to me given time, but that’s it for now.

So I booked my doctor’s appointment for tomorrow morning, 10.30am sharp, and the whole conversation with the receptionist felt very weird.

“Is it just a check-up?” she asked.

“Well, kind of,” I mumbled.

“Ah, are you pregnant?”

“Well no. But I want to be.”

Obviously she has versions of this conversation every day, but for me it was loaded with emotion. It is ridiculous, at 39, I suppose to wonder if I am grown up enough to have a baby. But I do. And the thought of sitting down with a doctor and saying it out loud all over again makes me squirm. It makes me feel as though I am back in school going to the principal’s office. Will he pull out some kind of quizz and find me lacking? Am I really old enough/responsible enough/worthy enough to have a child? He once told me to “love myself” after I had rushed in for a set of sexual health checks when I first started seeing the man who I now want to be the father of my adorable offspring. All the way home from that appointment I had a mental conversation about whether I did indeed love myself – I was sure I had before I went to his office. God knows what he will say to me tomorrow. Waaaah.

A friend I confided in told me today that getting pregnant and looking after a baby was actually the gentle part of a slope that turns into more of a cliff around the time they turn two. Whoa Nelly! I thought, that is getting way ahead of myself. If I could just coax my lovely uterus and egg store into action to put me on that gentle slope I would be very, very grateful. Thinking positive thoughts of angels and friendly ducks and a whimsical world to speed the process…

Oh Brad, I think I forgot to have a baby!

I think I may have forgotten to have children. Well, not forgotten exactly, just never realised the urgency of the situation, even as my anxiety ratcheted ever upwards amid a maelstrom of articles about the generation (my generation!) who thought had this very silly notion that they could have everything.

At the age of 30, celebrating my birthday with friends in a dark wood-paneled old pub on the River Thames, it was on my mind – something to do in the next few years, when I found the right man.

I thought I’d found him four years later, but no. What can I do? I thought to myself, as I choked back yet more tears on a miserably cold train station in south London after the breakup. I can go on dates, and to parties and picnics and plays and concerts, I can make eye contact with promising prospects over mounds of shiny eggplants in the markets, or linger a little longer over tea in my favourite cafe… but I can’t MAKE the world offer me up the right match. I had never felt so angry, nor so helpless.

And what is the right match exactly anyway? The older I got, the more detailed the list in my head appeared to be. Romantic notions were slowly being superceded by rational considerations – is he handsome versus is he successful? Is he kind and funny and affectionate versus does he have any assets to support me for a year if I did want to have a baby?

I have always been fiercely independent – like many of my generational sisters from the 70s, I really did think I could have everything. I never imagined that I could one day be a spinster! How could this be? I am educated, attractive, interesting, adventurous, fun-loving, warm-hearted – I was a catch! And yet I seemed to stumble from one awful experience to another – along the way I had some fun, learned some things about myself, and had shared moments I will always cherish. But my self-confidence took a battering, and my faith. Not religious faith – just the simple faith I had always had, unquestioned, that one day I would grow up and as well as my job that I had worked so hard for, I would have a man who loved me and children I could nurture and see grow.

Around 36 I started to think that maybe I would have t forget a man altogether, and have a baby on my own. Or maybe freeze my eggs, but somehow that cruel hope lingered in my head, whispering that I still had time to do it the traditional way.

Two international moves and several romantic mishaps later, I landed in an unexpected corner of the world with that faith all but spent. I did not speak the language. I did not know a single person. I was sad and beaten and very afraid that actually my life was not going to work out after all. This was another throw of the dice, a big leap into the unknown.

I hated the city, I hated feeling like an idiot every day as I struggled to speak a foreign language, I hated feeling alone all over again, even though the move was entirely of my own doing.

But bit by bit I learned new verbs, made new friends, relied on old friends via the phone and facebook and email, and learned to find the beauty in my new home. I had a few more false starts romantically, born out of loneliness. And then I met a man who did not fill any of the top requirements on my mental checklist, and somehow fell in love again.

And we want a baby. Maybe it is too late. We have been “trying” for six months now, and nothing. Everything I read says the average couple takes a year to conceive, but older women, like me (38), should consult a doctor after six months if nothing happens.

I am writing this on the eve of my next expected period, hoping and hoping an

Oh Brad, I think I forgot to have a baby!

d hoping that it will not come, but knowing that it will. And I need to talk about it somehow, because it fills me with sadness, and I am sure there are a lot of other sad women out there like me who are also trying.

So let’s see what tomorrow brings – a happy little blue cross on a test stick, or a call to make my first appointment at the gyno.