In 2020, I thought a lot about fertility

Published on 3 December 2020

In the first week of lockdown, a phone call came from my doctor, following-up on some hormone tests. I suspect I had the virus early on, and, for a few months along with the ability to go up steps without wheezing, my period had slipped out of sync. I wasn’t hugely concerned but thought I’d get checked, given we’d been trying for a baby for almost a year.

I was expecting reassurance; I know babies can take time to catch.

Instead, I got an apology.

Sorry, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to conceive naturally.

Normally, there would be a recommendation for a battery of further tests. Action plans made. Hormones tabulated. Intimate spaces invasively vetted. Instead, there would be an ellipsis. You probably can’t conceive. But…

Like so many others this year who’ve been stuck in that bitter spot between news of a medical issue and lack of resolution, suddenly my future hung on that ambiguous ellipsis.

After allowing myself an indulgent thirty minutes to sob into my laptop, I let the pragmatic part of my brain take over. A work deadline was looming. The problem would still be there tomorrow. And the day after. And…

A few weeks later, after many interviews and panels, I scored an exciting new job. As I sat with my husband digesting the success, a little reedy voice peeped in my ear: people will say you picked your career over a family. It doesn’t matter it wasn’t your choice to not have both. Nobody will ask.

Time has dragged and blipped on. Announcements of pregnancies and houses to accommodate new babies have flashed up on my phone like popcorn kernels exploding in a hot pan. 2020, the year we all learned the power of the exponential, has put the circle of life on steroids. The first post-lockdown lunch with my local circle of girlfriends featured 2 pregnant pals. I did my best to telegraph my genuine excitement for them. Then, I said goodbye and stained my face mask with goopy mascara tears on the train home.

I tried my doctor again. Their voicemail redirected me to an app, which took 3 weeks to register me.

I made some sourdough. I hula-hooped. I overdosed on Zoom.

My periods came and I peed on test sticks and never got a positive.

I ate all the carbs I restricted in my twenties. I gained nearly a stone. My friends Instagrammed their bumps. I turned into dough.

Finally, I was sent for more blood tests.

You’re still not ovulating. We can refer you for more tests. How long will it take? A dry laugh on the other side of the phone. How long is a piece of string?

Where is the space to mourn for an intangible child? It seems the height of self-indulgence (gestures towards the bleak tableau of pandemic and inequality and vast swathes of things on fire), to mourn for a life that will never exist.

My mind goes back to my travels in Japan, where it’s common to see little stone statues adorned with red bibs clustered around temples. These are associated with a Buddhist ritual called mizuko kuyō, which gives parents a tangible cultural space to grieve miscarriages, stillbirths, and abortions. In place of that, I have a growing collection of tiki bar ingredients, because at least I can still drink, haha, as I text my friends, while they compare notes on caffeine-free herbal teas.

Conversations with the women I once shared everything with are trickier than they used to be. The growing disparities in our lives zing like a tuning fork whacked against a table. One choice opens up a tree of other decisions. I can empathise, but I can’t weigh-in on things the way other parents can. Where to live, how to work, how to clean baby sick from a designer coat. I know in time our paths may converge again, as little people become bigger, more independent people, but for now, chats run on parallel paths.

Still, luck aside, I feel the specific ache of the child-hungry (I loathe the word childless – the insidious reductiveness of the word), for the warm weight of a baby in my arms. The darting fantasies about what our baby would look like before I shut them down. I can’t stop the little face that could be popping into my imagination, like an accidental glance at your reflection as you pass by a mirror you didn’t know was there.

We all know that there is no clean-cut happy-ever-after in real life. No end destination, just new waves to surf. Even as I mull over blowing my savings to be pricked and scanned and probed for answers, I can feel my mind listing towards the sunlight of other lives I could lead. Increasingly, commingled with emergent curiosity, I’m feeling anger. Fuck anyone who says I should let what my body is or isn’t capable of doing define me. Any of us, for that matter.

I’ve recently joined Bumble, in the hope of replenishing my pool of female friends in the city. It’s telling, skimming through the profile bios, how many are in a similar boat; sifting through the possibilities of thirties and forties that might not end in a cul-de-sac, governed by the rhythms of a school calendar. Looking for a circle where it’s a path that’s fertile with its own potential, not a consolation prize for someone who was somehow less.