Twisted Ovaries

And That Is What It Feels Like

On Saturday we had lunch at the pub with a man that Aidan and I both used to work with at different points in our life in what feels like the great distant past. I get on well with the guy, a Swedish man named Per. It was my first meeting of his wife and children, also Swedish, who moved here 6 weeks ago to live and work.

We got there early and had a pint while we perused the interesting menu. When they showed up it was hugs all around with the adults, and there were two extremely blond children in tow who had a hello tinged with reserve. The eldest, a 7 year-old girl, decided that I was cool and so took up the seat next to me. The youngest, a shy little girl under 4, decided it was a bit much to meet us just yet and so sat away from us.

We talked and laughed, and as the lunch progressed the two little girls talked more and more to us. Even the little one with her big green eyes decided that Aidan was ok enough to help her with her puzzle, and so the two of them went, speaking in a mishmash of Swedish and English. Lunch came and went, the 7 year-old talked to me a great deal, and the lunch was relaxed and happy. Come dessert time I actually ordered some dessert, which is something I never do. The waitress brought us two large pieces of fudge cake-one for me, one for Per's wife, and the two girls wound up eating half of mine, which didn't bother me in the slightest.

The little girl, May, spent more time after the dessert with Aidan as they played the Swedish version of The Itsy-Bitsy Spider and the English version of This Little Piggy. It put paid my theory-I swear that kids know when they are around people that want children. They gravitate to people with throbbing ovaries and lonely arms. Somehow, they just know.

May came and sat on my lap and asked me to help her with her puzzle. As she sat there and guided my hand around the puzzle, both of us speaking Swedish as we tried to finish it with great laughter, I was hit with a memory.

I remembered the last time I'd met Per while I was still working with him. We were at a meeting in Aachen (Germany), and we were sat around a table in the shape of a U. I remember being cranky, being tired, feeling hot and uncomfortable. I reached into the bag behind me and the bottle of Lupron I was on rolled out.

I was going through my first round of IVF at the time, and it was so amazingly difficult.

Per picked up the bottle, looked at it, and handed it to me. "Are you going through IVF, Vanessa?" he asked quietly.

"How did you know?" I asked, shoving the Lupron back in the bag.

"My wife is also going through IVF again, we cannot have children without IVF. She's doing another cycle right now, too, and we have that same bottle in our kitchen. She's going through her round in Gothenberg."

"I'm doing mine in Stockholm," I breathed. "It's so hard."

"It is. If you need to talk, I'm around," Per said, smiling.

I remember that day. And I looked at May and remembered the introductions that Per and his wife had given us-May was 3 years and 4 months old. I did some math in my head and it fit exactly-May was born from that cycle his wife was doing. The cycle that I was cycling through at the same time.

May was born from the exact cycle that I conceived Egg and Bacon on, before I lost them. My twins would have been the same age as May, older by about 2 weeks. I know that Aidan doesn't think that my Egg and Bacon cycle counted, as I was only pregnant for a few weeks, but it really upsets me to think that they should be discounted-I'd never felt anything so real in my life.

And what happens if that's the only time that I ever feel that?

I look at May on my lap, a beautiful bundle of blond hair and bright green eyes. She was what I would have had. She is from that time in my life, of rolling Lupron bottles and pleas to God over New Years to just make the bleeding stop, to let me keep my babies.

But more than that-to my knowledge she is the first IVF baby that I have met. Of course, IVF is more common these days and it's entirely possible that I've met many IVF babies, but she is the only one that I KNOW is an IVF baby. She is the first bundle of chocolate-smudgy-hand proof that I can hold and laugh with and know that it can work.

There are bloggers that get pregnant. You hear of others conceiving. Hollywood is rife with IVF success. But I have to say-actually meeting a little one from IVF is amazing. It's incredible. You want to hug them tightly to your chest and cry, as you just can't believe that something so beautiful is the result of all these drugs, all these bargains with the soul, all these needles, all these tears.

Posted by Vanessa at February 20, 2006 03:17 PM | TrackBack