The Mother Project

So to Mr B, mixing his sperm with some strange woman’s egg also feels a bit gross. It’s like the result of some clinically supervised cheating.

Right now, at around eleven in the evening on D-for-diagnosis-day, there is no reasoning or rational thinking or room for debate. There is just infertility and exhausted, reluctant acknowledgment. And so we fall asleep

By five the next morning, when I wake up in that delicious second of peace and calm before reality whooshes in, I have an indeterminate tingle in my belly. Just a tiny one. But is it revulsion or rapture? Revulsion, definitely. But also something else. Something like … wonder maybe? And then it is gone again.

When I was first sick and very, very scared, Mr B and I would sleep holding hands. Night-time was the most distressing time for me, it’s when the worst fear settled in and I’d always dread waking up with that same awful realisation every day. So Mr B would hold my hand until I fell asleep and we’d stay that way until I woke up.

I instinctively reach for his hand now, and I realise that this is really quite bad actually. This is not my rightful prize. I should be awarded something pretty epic after beating cancer, successfully growing all my hair back and re-establishing someone resembling my old self in this new life. Not infertility for fuck’s sake. Not familiar middle-of-the-night fear for my future. I should’ve forgotten what that feels like by now, surely, rather than be right back in that place again.

Mr B doesn’t stir, but he squeezes my hand back, out of some sad muscle memory, and eventually I fall asleep again, like that, until we wake up the same position.

It is a more godly hour of the morning when I wake up properly (ahh, a new day! WHOOSH, oh yeah. Infertile), and there’s that tingle back again. Definitely more erring away from revulsion this time. Definitely leaning more towards marvel at the wonder of modern medicine. That there can be such amazing options for people like me. Imagine! Imagine if someone cut off your arm and then said, ‘Here, take mine, I don’t need it,’ and then you went through a protracted process to clip it into place and voilà, a working arm, but with someone else’s fingernails and hairs. Different. Not the arm you were born with, but you wouldn’t say no, right? Really, it’s quite incredible. The fact that my poor, lonely womb could welcome this unusual result of a passionate petri-dish rendezvous. Wow. It’s like not actually being infertile at all, right? If I can be pregnant, have a viable pregnancy, feel kicking and morning sickness and let my DNA merge with my baby – oops! I said MY baby. It’s happening without me even trying, I’m coming to terms with the idea! The petri-dish rendezvous part I could definitely do without. It is possible – in case you were wondering – to have pre-emptive relationship jealousy about your husband’s sperm. But then I am a Scorpio, so maybe being a bit extra in that department is to be expected. Would having another woman’s gamete mixing with my husband’s sperm be all that bad? Would it? Yes. Yes it would because it’s not fair that it can’t be mine. So OK, I’m not quite there yet. I need another bout of crying and to mainline some Malbec, and then we’ll see.

It’s only the next morning, when I’m gazing lovingly at my cat Woody, that something shifts. Woody insists on nestling into my armpit when I sleep. He’s not allowed in the bedroom, but he howls his way in because he needs to be next to me. It’s the sweetest thing, and I can’t resist, and so I get a bad night’s sleep while he intermittently stomps across my chest to get to the other armpit, and Mr B remains blissfully oblivious. It’s because Woody chooses me. He loves Mr B, but for some reason he needs me more. And just to be clear here, Woody is a cat. An entirely different species, who I would run into a burning building to protect. He doesn’t have my genes, he doesn’t have my eyes or my character traits. Or my language skills or the requisite number of legs to qualify him for this next statement, but I love him more than is humanly possible. He isn’t even made up of half of my husband and I feel that way, so how the hell could there be any revulsion about the idea of carrying and nurturing a human person who is? Ding! Oh my God! I excitedly shake Mr B awake and tell him I am IN LOVE with the idea of egg donation. And I genuinely mean it. The wonder! The marvel! The RAPTURE. I can suddenly and clearly imagine leaning into a cot in the room next door and scooping up a little person who looks something like him. I can actually joyfully picture my future, and so therefore I must be psychic and this must be the way it will be.

Infertility needn’t be the full stop we all presume it to be. It doesn’t have to spell prolonged heartbreak and ruin lives, and it sure as hell is not a patch on cancer in the misery stakes. Not three days after this diagnosis in my case, anyway. We can and will do this and it is going to be wonderful because there is no space in my battered heart for anything else. Kübler-Ross, I win. I’m at the acceptance stage and I didn’t even dawdle in depression.

Really, it’s quite simple. Cancer stole my fertility, and so I am on a mission to steal it back. Sort of.

I will use someone else’s eggs, and I will be excited about it. I am excited about this, medicine is fucking amazing. Let’s go.

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