The unique nightmare of the miracle of life
On miscarriages and IVF
We’re in our fourth round of IVF and mates, it’s a slog.
I was first pregnant at 33. It was that quick montage you see in a movie - we fell in love, eloped and decided we were ready for the parenthood rollercoaster.
I thought the hard part was making that decision - phew, tick! We had the coveted double line on the stick a month later. It’s weird that such a joyous moment takes place in the loo. No greater symbol than the first sign of life on a toilet.
I have a series of thoughts that don’t grasp the enormity of growing a child. What was life without alcohol like for nine months. Should Charlie stop drinking too (yes). I’ll have to cancel a snowboarding trip. Bummer.
I call my insurance providers of over two decades to let them know I’m pregnant. They tell me there’s a 12 month waiting period. On pregnancy cover. I say, I hate to break this to you as I thought this was common knowledge but most babies come in 9 months. They said sorry, most people are organised and upgrade 3 months before conception.
I was now newly armed with the information that pregnancy cover under Australian private health insurance is only for psychics.
We go in for a routine scan at six weeks.
Time is deconstructed in pregnancy - gone is the system where weeks are grouped into fours, we’re back to counting one by one. While I’m pondering this mockery of time, our parenthood abruptly ends because there’s no heartbeat. This was our first step away from the montage – the next scene was to be me screaming at Charlie in the delivery room, while squeezing his hand too hard, saying “I HATE YOU LOL JK”. Just like the movies.
It was a missed miscarriage – my body didn’t clock that the pregnancy ended. There are three ways to deal with a missed miscarriage. Wait for the body to wise up, take an abortion pill or get a DNC surgery. I pick the third option and head off to a gig. I have long channelled all disappointments into comedy.
Charlie drops me off at the hospital at 7am for the surgery – he’s not allowed in because of COVID rules. I wait nine hours for the surgery in a room full of women in the same position. In a strange twist, DNCs get bumped down the list for emergency C sections. We wait and wait while hearing women whose bodies worked like they’re supposed to come and go. No one speaks. The deafening silence is broken once in a while by someone crying.
We “try” again. Trying is a form of sex work because the sex is work. There’s a roster, KPIs to hit and much like work, no one is having any fun. It also involves a lot of jizz. No one talks about how much jizz or scheduled, unromantic sex is involved in making a baby. You don’t see that in the movies.
We’re pregnant again, several months later. I go to dinner before my first big gig. Anne Edmonds is doing some trial shows at Comedy Republic - she’s thrown some newbies on the line up and I’m stoked to be one of them.
I head to the toilet half an hour before my stage time. You won’t believe it – here’s my second miscarriage, my body has clocked this one.
I’m a stubborn lady so I do the gig. I also hate making a fuss so I mill about after the show. Anne Edmonds invites me to dinner and I politely have to decline. Charlie nudges me and says - hey, you should go. I whisper, hey, so, don’t freak out but we have to go to the emergency room.
We have some words about how I really have to tell him about medical emergencies earlier. That was the second miscarriage. Five weeks. Not good. Not in the movie montage.
The medical term for a miscarriage actually makes it sound super fun – spontaneous abortion. Like I just woke up one day and went hey, it’s Tuesday! I’m going to have an abortion! I’m super spontaneous like that.
We see a fertility specialist and get tested for everything under the sun. Everything - I swear there was a test to confirm that I wasn’t a cabbage. Everything is fine, everything is normal, I am not a cabbage.
I’m pregnant again, several months later. I’m 35 now so it’s called a geriatric pregnancy. I argue with a doctor about this - I say we don’t do this with anything other than age. When someone is losing their hair, we don’t say – they have a geriatric head. We say they’re going bald, because it’s kinder. Why do we do this to women? No answer.
We have a third miscarriage. It’s the worst one because I’m put on bed rest. When they reach the boundary of medical knowledge, the best advice they can give is to lie horizontally to battle gravity stealing the embryo from your uterus. Comedy.
We are now in the recurrent miscarriage category and only 10% in this category find a reason for their misery. Our loving, supportive friends and family don’t know what to say or do. We receive all three categories of I’m so sorry gifts - flowers, sweets and alcohol. My brother and sister in law create their own category and send us an Oculus Rift. Legends.
We feel lucky to be loved but also, lost deep in our grief. I do the modern day version of a soap box caller in the town square – I put it on Instagram. I’m grateful for everyone who comes out of the virtual shadows, telling me about their story. An unseen, unheard army struggling to make or sustain life.
There is no guidebook on how to handle this invisible grief - it’s one of the few times I’ve wished to believe in a god, any god. There are many awful things religion brought to the world, but a place to go every week, to see your community, to sing songs, to heal from the woes and celebrate the wins. That sounds pretty magic, minus all the bad stuff.
This is our closure. One day we take three sunflowers down to the banks of the Merri Creek, just me and Charlie. It’s a sunny spring day and the banks are a lush green. We hold hands and take turns to speak – of what we wished with each pregnancy. Every hope. Every fear. We name everything we are grateful for, what we have learned about ourselves and each other from this awful experience. It helps.
We drop each flower into the creek, one by one, and watch them float away. The third flower immediately gets stuck on a rock and ruins the moment, Charlie finds a stick and tries to push it along. We laugh. It feels nice.
It’s now over two years later and I’ll admit, keeping perspective is a straight up bitch. We have thrown everything - physically, financially, emotionally - at the uterine wall to no avail. There’s an undercurrent of failure in every moment of joy. I feel a sense of relief with every transfer because it brings us closer to the end of IVF or a child.
What helps me greatly - and what I hope may help someone out there - is to take stock of what I have. Often we see only what we don’t have, what we’re lacking - a partner, a job, a baby, another baby, savings, a house, a car – whatever that thing is, that came into your mind when you read that. We chase it desperately and the moment we get it, we immediately reach for more.
I used to work as a refugee lawyer so I mean take stock of all of that I have – clean drinking water, a flushing toilet, a roof over my head, a warm bed – once I start listing the things I have, I can’t help but feel grateful.
That doesn’t mean I can’t grieve - I get to be upset, it hurts. I’ve had a long lie down on most floors of the house - usually every time there’s a pregnancy announcement or a shiny new baby on my socials feed. But when I’m ready to get back up, it helps me reframe what I don’t have. And find another path, if I must.
At every turn of my life, this helped when I wanted that one thing. When I was single, I got a tattoo on my wrist of something my grandmother always used to say in Sinhalese – this alone is enough. I used to come back from terrible dates, look at my wrist and know, I’m okay.
I have a life I truly love. I reach for more, as we all should. But I reach knowing that if I cannot grasp it – this alone is enough. I flat out refuse to be defined by what I don’t have - I hope you do too.
A sombre tone to end January but like I said, IVF is a slog. Back to the lols soon, promise
Big hugs
Sashi
P.S London friends, thank you for being the first to sell out not one, but TWO, shows of my 2024 tour - you lovely maniacs.
This is devastatingly beautiful. Thank you. 🙏🏼
Really well written. I teared up and smiled. I hope this round works in your favour, IVF is truly a slog.