Maybe Baby #3: When the ground gives way

This is the third in a series of posts reflecting on our [in]fertility journey and how it intersects with the assumed scripts of life and faith.

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In my last post I discussed our entry into the world of fertility treatment after periods of avoidance followed by years of waiting, and the complicated feelings about self that can arise in this kind of situation.

In many respects my internal emotional world was surprisingly stable during this uncertain time. There were a lot of things going on in our lives and on some days it seemed like being unable to fall pregnant was a long way down the list. Perhaps this seems a little strange in hindsight, but I think this was also a convenient way to avoid the uncomfortable feelings that would arise when our own circumstances were allowed to rise to the surface.

In early 2015 we entered into our first round of IVF. We had no idea what to expect or how we would cope with the physical and emotional demands, but we are generally resilient people and so we approached it with our typical low-key low-drama mentality.  

It turns out that the process itself was more intense for my partner Hannah than I ever really anticipated. Constant injections with hormones; hormones to stop her natural cycle, hormones to stimulate her cycle artificially, hormones to stimulate the release of numerous follicles at once. And blood test after blood test after blood test.

So. Many. Needles. 

And then scans, scans and more scans.

It is a profoundly invasive process for the woman going through the treatment and my part in the process, as awkward as it felt, was minimal in comparison. But Hannah handled it all with courage, grace and tenacity. We were also fortunate that she responded relatively well to the treatment itself; for some people the hormone changes can be highly disruptive, uncomfortable and difficult to navigate.

As this first round built to its crescendo, the eggs were collected, sperm was provided, and the fertilisation process was initiated in the lab. But while Hannah had produced a large number of good quality eggs, for some reason there was only one egg that fertilised in the expected timeframe. This was pretty disappointing, but we felt faintly hopeful that this one little embryo might make it!

We were not sure how strongly to hope, but when we got the call from the nurse to tell us that we were pregnant, we were stunned. It was such a liberating and remarkable feeling – it had worked! We had waited for so many years, but here we were in our first round of IVF, with our first embryo transfer and we had success!

I was surprised how quickly the joyful emotions surged to the surface. Of course we knew that many pregnancies – IVF or otherwise – don’t make it through the first 12 weeks, so we were cautious; but we were cautiously excited. We went into a scan at 7 weeks pregnant and saw the little flicker of a tiny human heart beating; pulsing with life, possibility and hope. It was a truly remarkable thing to see after so many years of disappointment. When my best mate called a couple of weeks later to say that he and his wife were pregnant with their first child too, I was even more overjoyed.

Toward the end of the first trimester we had truly started to relax. I could see Hannah easing into it as she began to buy clothes that would have enough room for her to grow into them as the pregnancy developed. She was excited, I was excited – it felt so good to be excited for a change. We had an ultrasound scan scheduled towards the end of the first trimester and this would be a significant milestone. However, when the day came, I was sick with a fever and flu that meant I just could not get out of bed, no matter how much I wanted to. I hadn’t missed any of Hannah’s appointments throughout the IVF process, and I was really disappointed. I wanted to be there to support Hannah, and to experience seeing something on the scan that was more than the little flicker of a heartbeat that we’d seen several weeks earlier.

Hannah’s mother went as support in my place and I lay in bed waiting for the phone call from Hannah to let me know how it had gone. I knew that it was possible for things to turn out badly, but in no way was I expecting it. When the phone rang I answered, and all I could hear was Hannah crying. She eventually squeezed out the words that neither of us wanted to hear, and I was overcome. All I could muster was a stream of “no, no, no babe, no.”

We talked briefly and then arranged to have Hannah’s mother bring her home as I was still unable to get out of bed. I hung up the phone, and then immediately erupted with grief. I’ve never been an overtly emotional person, at least not externally. I’m not really a crier either. I’m not opposed to it, but when you come from good British stock you’re not really taught how to have a good cry.

But in this moment I had no choice. It became immediately obvious how much I wanted to be a Dad, and the extent to which I’d already allowed myself to enter into the reality of love for a child that was no longer going to find its way into the world. I sobbed uncontrollably for over an hour. Waves and waves of grief and emotion pulsing through my body beyond my control. 

I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was primal anguish and grief, it was years of disappointment that had been overcome in joy and then cruelly taken away in an instant. It was as though the ground gave way beneath my feet. Hannah arrived home and we wept together; something I don’t think we’d ever done before – not with me joining in anyway.

The next few days involved the two of us collapsed in heap, exhausted and at the end of ourselves, and then Hannah had to face surgery to complete the process of miscarriage. We buried the remains of our little unseen bubba in a small heart-shaped box in the soil beneath a newly planted lemon tree; with loving words from family and close friends inscribed on the inside of an old wine barrel.

I know that I’ve had a relatively privileged life, and I know that many people have experienced much worse than me, but in those few days none of that mattered. The collision of hope and love, with devastation and trauma are a unique and potent fusion of the human experience. And in those moments we become aware of how frail life can be and how much of it is truly beyond our control.

In the weeks and months that followed it was amazing to me to discover how many others around us had also been through the grief of miscarriage. And although the intensity of our experience was uniquely shaped by our particular journey, it is still astonishing to me how many people live with a level of grief and trauma that remains in the background. People who carry stories and anguish with them in secret, even as they continue to participate in the day-to-day demands of our bustling and busy modern lives. Reality can suddenly feel very harsh when you are raw and exposed, and the further along this road we have travelled my empathy for others has increased profoundly.

It is usually at this point in my blogs that I finish with a rhetorical flourish; with a little insight and reflection about meaning and spirituality. In this case I think it is fair to say that I can only do so with some distance from the experience itself. It would be a grand lie to suggest that I was sitting around pondering some insightful commentary on my own experience as I lay on the bed wracked with grief. 

As someone who has been immersed in the Christian tradition, I do find myself reminded of the experience of the Christ, who in the climactic moment of his story, the epicentre of the historic Christian faith, cries out in abandonment as he participates in our suffering. And his words are not his own, they are the words of an ancient Hebrew poet: “Eloi Eloi lema sabacthani?” … “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” They are words that capture the dilemma of the human experience; the question that asks, “if this is what life is like, then maybe God is a bastard.”

Are Jesus’ words supposed to tell us that God turned his back on him?  I don’t think so - I don’t think that’s what God is like; but the feelings of abandonment and loneliness are not so hard to believe. And I find this strangely comforting. If there is anything true to the Christian claim that divinity is found uniquely in this Jesus story, then whoever and whatever God is, the hope is that the divine is present even in the experience of feeling abandoned and alone. This does not lessen the pain, nor does it explain it. But perhaps solidarity is the best salve to our wounds, if there is such a thing.

What I can also say now is that I am glad I had already embarked on my deconstruction before I hit this point in the road. I no longer saw God as the grand puppet-master in the sky manipulating every step on the road, and this allowed me to express my anger and grief without feeling like it was God who was to blame. I’m not saying that those feelings would not be justified, simply that they were not my experience. I was also able to acknowledge that somehow God was present for me, in the generosity and grace of friends and family, and in some mysterious and mystical way that reminded me that we’re not alone and that God does not abandon us to our pain. So if I’m to offer you something from this part of our story, then let it be the reminder of the possibility of presence that can enter into our experience of loss and absence.

Click here to read part 4.