What if, because of the years lost to infertility, we miss important parts of our son's life?

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"Just gone?" I was standing on a footpath by the side of a road with Mr Bea, holding the handle of The Prata Baby's stroller, watching a red car disappear around a corner. The driver's last words - said with an eyeroll - had been, "You know how it is when you have a kid. Two years of your life - just gone!"

"It's not like twenty-four months are just sucked out of you for nothing," I complained.

"Yes, but, I'm sure you've noticed," Mr Bea replied patiently, "the first couple of years can be pretty all-consuming. You don't get much achieved apart from raising your child."

"I don't deny it, but at the end of those two years you have a two-year-old to show for your efforts," I persisted. "You haven't wasted those two years, you've chosen to spend them raising a child." Mr Bea patted me (rather condescendingly, I thought) on the shoulder, and sighed, and agreed that I was right, of course. We didn't have to delve further into it. We both knew I was comparing the act of raising a child to the years of failing to conceive one in the first place. There was no need to explain, to either of us, how infertility can eat up your time and energy and put your life on hold. How it can stop you from advancing a career, or experiencing that must-see travel destination, or renovating that house, or even just getting that dog, on the basis that the next cycle (or the one after that, or surely, at the outside, the one after the one after) will be the cycle that changes your lives forever - til one day, maybe two years later, maybe more, you look back and realise you've progressed more or less nowhere at all.

I say "more or less" nowhere. Of course, there is always one type of progress we can't avoid - the progress of time. We started trying at twenty-six years of age, not old by any means, but the end of my life only got closer during those years of failing to conceive, and that knowledge leaves me with a thought I can't quite shake, even now: infertility has robbed us of several years as a family. What if that means we miss an important milestone in our son's life? What if, because of those years lost to infertility, we miss the publication of his first book, his appointment to public office, or his graduation from Oxford? What if we miss his wedding, or never get to meet our first grandchild?

What if, because of those years lost to infertility, we're not there when he needs us most - during his mid-life crisis, personal bankruptcy, or marital breakdown? What if we're no longer there to see him through a life-changing medical condition - perhaps even infertility itself? We've no good reason to believe he's more likely than the next person to be the one-in-eight who suffers as we have - the fertility specialist guesses Mr Bea's ultra-low sperm count may be the result of a virus he caught as a teen, and The Prata Baby has already been vaccinated against that one - but infertility can strike randomly and without warning, so there's no reason it couldn't be our child, either. What if, because of those years lost, there's nobody to help him through, as only a parent can? There are some things you just can't get back.

But time is not only a thief. Whilst our lives were on hold, others were making remarkable progress in theirs, and I'm not referring to all those friends who managed to have two, if not three, consecutive children as we chalked up fruitless treatment cycles, one right after another. I'm talking about reproductive scientists the world over, who were working hard to try and fill our every question with an answer, even that pitiful one we cried during the dark hours after yet another loss: why me? I saw significant changes over the two years we spent with our clinic - new drug protocols to reduce the risk of hyperstimulation syndrome, improved embryo culture techniques, better pregnancy rates per cycle, new information on the causes and treatment of miscarriage. Because of this, as I gear up to transfer our remaining embryos sometime later this year, a new question dares to play in the back of my mind: What if, someday (soon?), assisted reproductive technologies just... work?

This week Resolve (U.S. infertility association) organizes National
Infertility Awareness Week. Get basic information about infertility here.

Mel enlisted the blogging community to give an insight into the various
ways infertility impacts people's lives, expressed so aptly by the two
words "what if?".
Part One of Project IF
Part Two of Project IF
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I want to tell you one last story before I go.

When we started IVF, there was a woman I knew of through a message board. Like us, she and her husband had started trying to conceive in their mid-twenties, and like us, they unexpectedly ran into male factor infertility. Unlike us, they ran the gamut of infertility treatments without result, and turned to inter-country adoption, which was no better. Ten years, they spent, pouring tens of thousands of dollars into a state-run system which invaded their privacy, tied up their lives, and then pulled the mat from under them just as they thought they were getting close, by suspending programs or simply shutting them down. With their fortieth birthdays looming on the horizon, they returned to their fertility clinic, half-hoping for a miracle, half-hoping for closure. They were battered and worn, and felt no closer to parenthood than when they'd started treatment over a decade earlier.

But after reviewing their history and running some tests, their doctor gave them this rundown: age had turned against them, so he couldn't guarantee anything, but a lot had changed since they'd last tried IVF, and he thought they still had a fair chance if they were willing to give it another go. As a bonus, IVF had also become more affordable since they'd last tried it - thanks again, to advances in technology - so they decided they had little to lose. Only a few years later they were a complete family of four - mum, dad, and two, consecutive IVF children, born two years apart, without complications. What a difference a decade makes. If I wasn't so busy trying to soak up what I have here and now, I would say I can't wait to see what the next one will bring.

Oh good, the year nine debating team has arrived, complete with their inexplicable viewpoint that infertility is not, in fact, a medical condition worthy of the same attention, funding, and level of treatment as any other medical condition.

Probably they will point out that infertility is not life-threatening (the role of pregnancy in significantly reducing the risks of breast and other reproductive cancers notwithstanding), whilst rather inconsistently giving the nod to treatment for a whole host of medical conditions which are merely debilitating, or in some cases inconvenient.

Those who cite overpopulation will no doubt balk at the idea of imposing restrictions on fertile couples, including forced sterilisation and termination/redistribution of extra children. Moreover they will not want to give up modern medicine, which saves and prolongs an astounding - nay, detrimental - number of lives each day. And most of them will see no problem with jetting off to Spain for their next holiday, or binning leftover food.

I can almost hear speaker number two warming up an appeal to natural selection which completely overlooks the fact that a society committed to this idea should be shutting down whole wings of the local children's hospital (for starters) before it touches a single fertility clinic, given the (relative lack of) heritability of fertility disorders (especially those aquired secondarily, possibly by accident, long after birth). Let's also not forget the forty percent of ART patients who have no fertility problems at all, heritable or otherwise (whose partners are infertile).

Sooner or later someone will wonder aloud why people don't "just adopt", revealing a deep-seated ignorance about adoption. Hint: "Annie" is pretty outdated now. And was fictional to start with.

But you needn't listen to me. After all, I'm dangerously obsessed, highly impatient, entirely selfish and/or just plain evil. I'm probably also career-driven and old. Or else childishly young, in dire need of a focus in life, and petulant. Or am I describing a perfectly fertile person? It's so hard to tell the difference.


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Through the magic of cut and paste, I'm looking forward to never having to expend energy on this argument again. Think it'll work?

Well, as you all know today is X's 13th birthday, although I should say it was two days ago, but that was a Thursday and not really a good day for a party, but anyway today is the celebration of X's thirteenth, and insofar as you can ever mark the passage of one life stage to another, well, that time might as well be now. X - so far you have been a child. Now you are coming of age. You are an adolescent. And for making it this far - congratulations. Although it was a pretty close-run thing last week I can tell you, but that's another story.

Now, way back before you were born, I learnt a very important lesson about parenthood, and it's this: I can't make my children turn out the way I want.

I learnt that lesson through all the embryos we lost before X came into our lives. I wanted each and every one of them to develop into healthy, lively babies, but they didn't. They just didn't. No-one could explain why.

Eventually, there was X. Now, you can call it fate. You can call it God's Will. You can call it the collective wills of all the individuals involved, working, miraculously enough, towards a common goal. I mean, I don't really care what you call it, I'm just glad we got this far. And I'm glad that X has turned out to be everything I hoped for, more or less. Just kidding - you're perfect, of course.

But, although I'd like to take as much credit as I can, I know I haven't made it happen, and I know I can't make things happen from here on in, either. So when you're throwing your teenage tantrum and talking about how I'm ruining your life by not letting you "be your own person" I want you to remember this, X. Mummy knows she can't make you turn out the way she wants. She does.

But here's the bad news. That's never stopped me doing everything I can. And I will keep doing everything I can to help you be the person I always wanted you to be.

So what's that person like? Well, that person is healthy and takes good care of themselves. They are kind, and thoughtful, and patient. Adventurous, yet prudent. Full of a sense of life's possibilities, and a willingness to go beyond the everyday to expand those possibilities. That person is prepared to work hard to achieve great goals, able to face setbacks and keep going, or make tactical retreats where necessary, but come back with renewed vigor along a different path. That person is not only knowledgable, but also capable of wisdom and imagination. Able to keep believing, beyond the point where others have lost their hope. And the desire to become that person - well, that's the gift I want to give today. Although we also got you a new bike.

X, at some point it's up to you. We can't make you become anything. But we'll be here. We'll be here doing everything we can.

I can't remember if speeches are customary at Christenings, but I'm going to make one anyway, because a lot of people have come up to me this morning to ask me about the cake.

First of all they want to know if it's our wedding cake, from all the way back in July 1999 - and yes it is so "ooh, gross, X-year-old cake, urgh" - I'll come back to that. Secondly people want to know why there's a piece missing. How intriguing - a missing piece.

Well, this morning I delivered the missing piece to Dr K's office. Dr K is our fertility specialist and we started seeing him in 2005. In 2006 we started IVF treatment, and I was in the unlucky 1-5% of patients who have the sort of complications that get you a month off work including ten days in hospital with tubes sticking out everywhere trying to decide if the side-effects of the morphine are worth enduring given that it only just takes the edge off the pain. If you like I can tell you all about it sometime.

Then we had to wait for some months until my body became reproductively capable again at which point we did technically get pregnant but only very very briefly. After that....

It was all pretty awful. Some studies have shown that infertility is almost as stressful as cancer, and other studies have shown it's worse. I really don't want to get into an argument about which is worse, and I'm not sure who's counting anyway - but my point is it was bad, and it's not just me saying it.

But it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Because it might not have worked, and it has. We would do it all again. Hell, we will be doing it all again. But anyway, you might be getting some idea here that I'm saying this for the sympathy or whatever, which I'm not.

The reason I'm telling you all this is simple. I want you people to eat some damn cake! And yes, it is X years old but you can pretty much suck it up, because if there's anyone in this room who wishes it wasn't quite so "mature" - then it's us. Nobody wishes that more than we do.

And I don't even care if you don't like fruit cake - I didn't like a single damn thing about IVF. So, you know - tough.

Here's what's going to happen. You're all going to be happy enough for us to eat the cake without complaint. Because I think we've earned it.

Hunky Dory?

Alright, well let's dig in.