Jay-Jay Feeney is one-third of New Zealand’s most popular morning breakfast show, ‘Jay-Jay, Mike and Dom’ on The Edge, along with her husband (and bestselling author), Dom Harvey. She is also an ambassador for Fertility New Zealand.

JAY-JAY FEENEY

Author's note: Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

First published in 2013

Copyright © Jay-Jay Feeney 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Allen & Unwin

Level 3, 228 Queen Street

Auckland 1010, New Zealand

Phone: (64 9) 377 3800

83 Alexander Street

Crows Nest NSW 2065, Australia

Phone:   (61 2) 8425 0100

Email:    info@allenandunwin.com

Web:      www.allenandunwin.com

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the National Library of New Zealand

ISBN 978 1 877505 29 4

eISBN 978 1 743435 34 2

Illustrations on ♣ ♥ ♠ † ♦ by Jo Rodwell

Set in 12.5/18 pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Contents

Introduction

Family background

Getting to know Dom

Dom’s medical emergency

Facing infertility

Why do we want children?

Dom’s job

First IVF cycle

Second IVF cycle

Third IVF cycle

Instant parenthood

Fourth IVF cycle

Time to reassess

Recovery

Alternative treatment

Preparing for our fifth IVF cycle

Dom’s delivery

Fifth IVF cycle

What next?

Artificial insemination

Inspermination

Postscript

Acknowledgements

Introduction

I’m 39 years old, happily married and my womb has never been inhabited.

I want a baby but not in that crazy, desperate way where I cringe whenever I see someone else with one, or I think nasty, evil thoughts about people who are pregnant, but a child of my own would complete my life and make my husband extremely happy.

I am the legal guardian to my ten-year-old nephew, but I’ll get to that later.

My husband, Dom, and I have had five failed attempts at IVF.

I have always taken my fertility for granted, mainly because everyone else in my family seem to have had no issue with it at all.

Family background

My mum, Robynne, was only sixteen when she had me. She was a rebellious teenager in the seventies, living in Auckland with her mum and three older siblings. She went to a party, met a charming man and, next thing she knew, she had the uncomfortable task of telling her mother she was pregnant. Unsurprisingly, the news came as a shock to Nana, who was a single mother of four, and discussions were had as to who would bring me up. Firstly, abortion was suggested but, luckily for me, Mum was against it. My grandmother was going to bring me up as her own child, which was a fairly common way of dealing with the problem. If that had happened, I would have grown up thinking my actual mother was my sister. Because we are so close in age, people think this anyway!

In the end Mum decided she would keep me. And she has no regrets!

While mum was pregnant with me she met a man I’ll call ‘Gavin’, a friend of her older brother Poul. They dated for a few months and, with their parents’ consent, married when I was just three months old. Gavin became my dad. The one I grew up with. Soon after the wedding, Mum was knocked up again. She and Gavin moved to Hamilton and had two children together.

My family life is really complicated. You will get a fair idea of these complications while reading this book, but due to sensitivities I have changed a few more names—like my siblings, for example. Mum and Gavin had Melissa and Matt, and divorced when I was about four. So, for a while Mum was single with three kids to look after.

Soon after separating from Gavin, though, Mum met her next partner. For the purpose of this story, I will call him Peter. They had a daughter together—Jemma. Mum was 22 and had four kids.

Peter was very sweet in the beginning of the relationship but that changed after only a few months. He became very violent and we were all emotionally and physically abused for about seven years. Just like the families on those antidomestic violence advertisements on TV, we would often be cowering together in a bedroom crying and listening to Mum and Peter screaming at each other, and then we would hear Peter hitting her.

He punched holes in the walls, he kicked holes in the doors, he broke windows and cupboards and he left Mum battered and bruised on too many occasions.

He used to hit us, too, and his blows were hard—there was always a lot of force behind them. I managed to avoid most of it because I was a ‘good girl’. I tried hard to do what I was told and keep to myself. I did not want to remind him I was there, so that I could avoid the bashing.

Unfortunately, my sister and brother who weren’t Peter’s copped a lot of his cruelty. My brother, who was just two at the time, was still wetting his bed. Peter would flip out and poor Matt would hide his wet sheets under the bed, but Peter would always find them and rub Matt’s face in his urine-soaked sheets.

There was no end to his cruelty. We had a couple of dogs—a German Shepherd named Duke and a Doberman Pinscher named Sheba—and Peter trained them to attack anyone and anything that came on to our property uninvited. The dogs never hurt us but they hurt other people and animals.

When I was six I had a pet rabbit in a hutch. He was adorable—probably a bit bigger than a guinea pig with beautiful, sleek grey fur and sparkly eyes. The movie and book Watership Down were big at the time, as was the theme song, ‘Bright Eyes’ by Art Garfunkel, so that’s what I named him. One day, I went outside to feed Bright Eyes, and found Sheba eating her. It was a horrifying sight.

His violence wasn’t just targeted at Mum and us kids. I remember one day some friends of Peter’s came over and it was obvious he had had a disagreement with them. Peter started a fight with the man outside and the fight moved inside. Peter was slamming him up against a wall and I hid behind a door to get out of the way. Unfortunately, Peter slammed this guy against the door I was hiding behind and gave me a pretty painful squashing.

There was blood everywhere and then, in his rage, Peter went outside and threw an axe through the windscreen of the man’s car. His girlfriend was sitting in the car. I don’t know why the neighbours hadn’t called the police by then, but it wasn’t long before the bloodied man scrambled into his car and drove away with a smashed windscreen and a hysterical girlfriend.

Mum left Peter many times, and she always took us with her. We used to run, on foot, to get away. Sometimes, we travelled out of town to different friends’ and relatives’ houses and sometimes we even stayed at women’s refuges.

Women’s Refuge is a truly remarkable organisation—it’s a lifesaver for many women and their children. All the people we met at the different refuges were really kind and incredibly supportive, especially of us kids. We slept in bunks and wore borrowed clothes. We were fed. I remember one house was quite dark and musty smelling. The women who stayed in these safe houses were encouraged not to tell anyone where they were, so I don’t know how Peter found us but, one time, he found us at a refuge and, once again, convinced Mum to go back to him. We were dragged back home with her.

Another time, in 1980, we ran and Mum was screaming at me to keep up. I was wearing Jandals and couldn’t run as fast as her. I think she was running as fast as she could from fear. She had four kids in tow—my four-year-old sister and I were on foot, and she was carrying my two-year-old brother while pushing my baby sister in her pram. We crossed railway lines and seemed to be running for ages until, finally, she stopped at a phone box.

She called a friend who said Mum could stay with her but she didn’t have room for all of us kids. This was not ideal. Mum was 22, with four kids, running from her abusive partner and with no support. Her mother lived in Auckland, but she wouldn’t dare burden her with this, and she was only close to her brother Poul, who was busy with his own family in Auckland. Her friend said she could accommodate two of the kids. Which two kids would Mum take? What would she do with the other two? This impossible situation and the decision Mum made proved to be a turning point in all our lives.

She decided she would keep my baby sister Jemma and me with her—because Jemma was a baby, and because I was at school. That meant my brother and sister, Matt and Melissa, would have to go somewhere else. So she called Social Welfare and asked them to find somewhere to place my brother and sister until she figured out what she would do—she had no other choice.

Mum had to take Melissa and Matt to a place called The Nest. Run by the Salvation Army in Hamilton, it provides a range of services and community ministries—Melissa and Matt ended up at the children’s home part. As soon as Gavin heard about it, he got angry and went and picked them up first thing the following morning. So, my brother and sister spent one night at the home and, although I’m sure they can’t possibly remember it, they both have different accounts as to what went on in there. I don’t know what to believe, but I know for sure that Mum had to make an impossible choice at the time and it remains one of her biggest regrets.

I think my brother and sister grew up believing that Mum abandoned them. They didn’t understand and it seemed to me that as they got older they became more and more bitter. They have always had that niggling question, ‘Why did she choose Jay-Jay and Jemma over us?’ I’ve always defended Mum, because I know what she was going through and I know how much she has hurt because of that decision, but I guess I will never understand completely what it has felt like for them. Mum has only just started to repair her relationship with my brother, and her relationship with my sister has been on and off over the years. Both of them have suffered long-term consequences from this experience and I believe they have both grown up with serious emotional issues because of it.

For years, I felt like the only person in the family who had to make the effort to hold our family together. Taking on the role of peacemaker has been hugely stressful—I’m the type of person who always cares for other people. I cared for my younger siblings when we were living with Peter. I cared for Mum when she was running from Peter. I felt mad when the family fell apart and I continued to try to get everyone to make peace with each other.

I can’t stop myself from taking on everybody else’s stress and I swear my family lay it on me because it makes them feel better having someone else feel as shitty as them.

My brother lived with Gavin until he left home. My sister moved between Gavin’s and Mum’s a few times but Mum found it hard to cope with her on her own, so asked Dad to look after her again, since he was now in his second marriage and also had Matt in his care. He and his new wife were better equipped to deal with Melissa than Mum was.

Reading this, I realise we all had a pretty horrible upbringing. People respond to circumstances differently according to their personality and, unfortunately, in my opinion my brother and sister always seem to blame the world for their problems. Even as adults, they don’t want to take responsibility for the poor choices they have made.

On the other hand, I choose to move forward and always try hard to make tomorrow better than yesterday and today. But, honestly, I often feel the weight of the emotional and psychological damage from my childhood circumstances.

My seventh year on this planet was the worst year of my life. Two major, devastating things happened that have determined my mental state since. The first was learning that Gavin, who was the only dad I knew, was not my biological father. I remember sitting on my bed one day when Mum came in to talk to me. I don’t know why she decided this was the time to tell me such huge news, but she did. I’m actually really glad I found out while I was young and not when I was an adult.

Mum told me my ‘real’ father was a guy called Malcolm. So, my brother and sister are really half-siblings. After Mum and Gavin broke up I always lived with Mum and had the occasional holiday visit to Dad’s.

I have to admit, I cried and felt confused. Later, I was okay about it, but Mum told me it was a secret that I had to keep. I kept that secret until quite recently, when she helped me find my real father.

The second major thing to happen to me is something else I have kept secret all my life. I told a couple of friends and a psychologist, but it’s something that’s not easy to talk about for fear of being judged. In fact, as I type this I feel nauseated, and I am literally shaking over the keyboard.

I was sexually abused as a child, and keeping that secret all these years has affected me every day of my life since.

It makes me sick just thinking about it and hearing the man’s name makes my skin crawl. Whenever I meet anyone with the same name, I can’t talk to him because I am reminded of my abuser. It’s really hard writing about this now, but it is one of the things that shaped me as a person, so it seems important to include it here. I swear it’s why I carry so much stress and anxiety, and why I have such low self-esteem.

This pervert often came into my room at night. I don’t want to share specific details, and I’m sure I have repressed much of the memory anyway. I used to be so scared of him that I would always pretend to be asleep when he crept into my room. Every time he came in—which I now guess happened many times over the course of about a year—I always hoped he would go away, but he didn’t. He would whisper to me, ‘Ssshhh. Go back to sleep.’ I hated what he was doing to me and it always hurt so much, but I was scared that if I did anything or told anyone, he would cause real harm to the rest of my family. I was six years old. Six! I really wanted to tell someone so that it would stop. I knew he was doing something that was wrong, but I was terrified.

One day, at Frankton Primary School, I came very close to telling my teacher. I must have looked a bit sad or worried as I walked past her and she asked me if I was okay. I said I was tired. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say—to tell her how awful things were. I was scared I would get into trouble. I have always regretted not being able to speak about it then and I often think about that moment. What happened to me was disgusting and it’s disgusting that it continues to happen to children all around the world. It makes me so angry I could scream until I lose my voice.

Over the years, I’ve blocked out a lot of what happened and that’s supposedly expected but it has taken its toll on me. I have spent most of my life in public putting on a front, wearing a happy face. All the while, I’ve been feeling dirty, insecure and guilty on the inside. Every year that passed, I felt more and more that it was too late to tell someone.

Being abused is one thing, but harbouring the secret of abuse is another—it causes the keeper of the secret major anxiety. I was very depressed through my teenage years and I let lots of people take advantage of me. Not necessarily taking advantage sexually, but I was a victim. People would take advantage of my good nature, my generosity, my loyalty and sometimes my body. I would do anything for anybody if they asked, because all I wanted to do was make people happy. As a result, I was unhappy.

Sometimes, I’d be so low that I would sit in front of my mirror screaming at myself. I’d be abusing myself, telling myself what a horrible piece of shit I was and asking how on earth anyone could like me. I wanted to die and I often thought of ways I could kill myself that wouldn’t hurt. But then I would think about Mum and I didn’t want to leave her here without me.

I’m sure the abuse is also where my body image issues stem from. I have the worst self-esteem when it comes to how I feel about myself. I am not what you would call ‘fat’, but I feel fat. According to all the BMI charts and info you see and hear, I should be around 57 to 62 kilograms as a healthy body weight. Whenever I get past this, I obsess over it and hate myself more with each extra kilo. I got up to 70 kilos this year, and was at my lowest point.

I don’t eat a lot. But I love carbs and I hate exercise. Since Dom is a runner, he makes me feel guilty every day when he puts on his shoes and heads out for a run. He even says to me repeatedly, ‘Calories in, calories out. You need to exercise.’ Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know! But instead, I feel more self-loathing and less motivation.

I hate seeing myself in photos and on film, because all I can see is chubbiness. Double chin, flabby arms, muffin top, wide thighs, no box gap! I want a box gap!

I don’t mind being a size 12 or 14 but I hate not being in proportion. I swear if I was 3 centimetres taller I’d be okay. Damn short legs!

I hate wearing tight clothes, I hate wearing togs and I hate being naked. Of course I’m okay being naked around Dom, but only when I walk from the bathroom to the bedroom. I don’t like doing it with the lights on if you catch my drift! And I could never video myself having sex. It’s not something I think would be an attractive sight at all.

In fact, I don’t even find myself attractive. I look in the mirror and all I see is a frumpy, middle-aged woman. Plain Jane. No fashion sense, no sex appeal. It can be quite depressing, because everyone wants to be sexy every now and then.

I’m always on a diet. And I go through phases of motivation. I’ll have three-month bursts when I’m into diet and exercise and I’ll lose 5 kilos and feel good about myself, and then I’ll go back to my normal routine and pile the weight back on again. It’s a never-ending cycle and I get so mad at myself for not having the willpower to control it.

Due to my depression and anxiety and the ongoing dramas with my family, I am constantly stressed with not just my own stress, but theirs too. I think this is one of the biggest dangers to my fertility.

I have been advised many times by counsellors and doctors to relax and let my stress go, but it’s impossible.

The toll our upbringing had on my siblings is undeniable. My brother has had drug problems and has been to prison for drug-related crimes. This is not a secret—it has been in the newspaper! It’s quite a sensitive subject but I think people often self-medicate to try and make up for the bum deal they had early on.

When I was about 11, Mum met a new boyfriend, Kirk, and four years later had another son, my little brother Poull. So, she had five kids—the last was born when she was 31 years old.

We lived with Kirk for about a year or two in his house but never referred to him as a stepfather. He ended up leaving when Mum was pregnant with Poull, and he hasn’t been a part of our lives since.

When I was seventeen, my fifteen-year-old sister, Melissa, announced she was pregnant—and she had the first of her four children to four different fathers. Like Mum, Melissa had her four children by the time she was 22. My other siblings have been nearly as productive—Justine has three kids, Jemma has two, Matt has one and even my youngest brother, Poull, now has a baby. I always assumed getting pregnant was as easy as being in the presence of penis.

Having a teen mother was hard. Mum didn’t work and, after her marriage broke up, for many years she was a struggling single mother on the Benefit. Consequently, I was determined not to follow Mum’s footsteps and I fought against my teenage hormones for as long as I could. When I did start having sex I made sure I was well protected! So I went on the pill at sixteen and hid the tablets in my top drawer, under my bikini.

I was very good friends with my mother—being close in age helped, but it also caused a few surprises. One day I came home from school to see Mum in the backyard, hanging out the washing wearing my bikini. Crap!

I casually cruised into my room, trying not to raise any suspicion that I might be feeling panicked, and opened my top drawer. To my horror, there staring back at me, in full sight of anyone who cared to open the drawer, was my pill supply. For me, it felt really awkward, but I never said anything to Mum and she never said anything to me.

Despite the early start, over the years I have had many problems with personal relationships. I have a lot of sexual hang-ups and I know they frustrate my husband—they frustrate me, too, but I am too far gone to do anything to fix them now.

Really, though, I have been the lucky one from my family. I have a great job that I enjoy and pays well. I have been able to afford different treatments, including cognitive therapy at $200 an hour. I went to therapy for months, but I felt stressed by Dom’s constant digs about the cost of it. He doesn’t understand that the therapy is valuable to me because, having had a fairly normal upbringing himself, he thinks stress is a choice and that if I really try hard enough I can make all my problems go away, without the help of an overpriced therapist. I wish this was the case.

Actually, Dom thinks he has the answer to all of my problems—to ditch my family. It’s frustrating that he doesn’t understand this side of me. It means I often suffer alone. Anyway, I never thought about having children myself. I was afraid I would be a bad parent. I was afraid a child of mine would inherit my stress. I thought I already had too much to worry about. Until I met Dom.

Getting to know Dom

Dom has changed the way I see the world and my place in it. He changed the way I feel about life. I want to have his children.

Dom and I met properly in 1999—I was 25 and he was 26. I knew then that he was the one for me. I had met him twice before—once, about five years earlier at a radio conference, and the second time at the 1995 New Zealand Radio Awards. We had talked a bit on each occasion but I thought he was a bit goofy. At the awards he was wearing a bow tie, which didn’t excite me, he had big hair and a girlfriend who didn’t like me.

My radio co-host at the time was Butt Ugly Bob—real name Brian Reid. He gave himself the nickname Butt Ugly Bob when he entered the Miss Waikato pageant as a stunt and didn’t win. He had flatted with Dom a few years before and they were still friends. He’d often say to me, ‘I know someone who likes you . . . Dom!’ I thought nothing of it. Besides, I lived in Hamilton and Dom lived in Palmerston North.

Unfortunately, Butt Ugly Bob took his own life in 1998. It was a very upsetting time and I considered giving up my radio career because I did not know how I could carry on without him. But the night he died, my phone rang and it was Dom.

‘Hi, Jay-Jay, it’s Dom here,’ he said in a very cheerful voice. I thought it was very strange that he could sound so happy when he was calling to pass on his condolences.

‘Hi,’ I replied with curiosity. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Oh nothing. I just thought I’d call and see what you’re up to!’

This seemed very unusual—I’d never spoken to Dom on the phone before. He sounded very chirpy and I soon realised that he did not know Bob was dead.

‘Butt Ugly Bob died today,’ I said.

Long pause. And a quieter Dom replied, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.

I had no idea.’

I said to him, ‘I can’t really talk right now. Can you call me another time?’

He agreed and then hung up.

In hindsight, part of me believes that Butt Ugly Bob set us up and sent Dom to me that night. I realise that’s a ridiculous thing to say, but I often wonder about the timing of Dom’s first phone call.

Soon after, Dom started emailing and asking for relationship advice. He said he was going through a rough time with his girlfriend. I thought it was very strange that he would email me out of the blue to ask me for my opinion on this matter. I really did not care much, but part of me also has no tolerance for people who are in a relationship they are not happy with. I gave him some blunt advice. Basically, I told him if he wasn’t happy he should leave her. Eventually he did.

I didn’t hear from Dom for a few months and then he called me again.

‘I just wondered what you’re up to next weekend?’ he asked me.

‘Um . . . no plans,’ I told him.

‘I’ve got two tickets to the Bee Gees in Auckland on Saturday night. Do you want to come with me?’

I thought about this for a few seconds. I was single. I liked the Bee Gees. I did admire Dom’s courage. It isn’t often that a man has the guts to ask someone out that they don’t know very well.

‘How much for the ticket?’ I asked.

‘Nothing! As long as I can come up on Friday and stay at your place.’

Oh . . . now I see. I knew exactly what this was about and I wasn’t going to fall for that old trick. But I agreed to the concert and a kip on the couch because I had nothing to lose.

Dom was supposed to take another girl to the concert but she pulled out on him the week before, leaving him in the lurch. If you were to ask him why he asked me to go instead, he would tell you that he heard I was a ‘sure thing’. That’s a reputation that’s hard to shake and I don’t know why people thought that about me—just because I was a friendly girl!

So Dom arrived at my house on the Friday before the concert and as he was walking up the drive, I thought, ‘Woah, he looks different!’

He had a shaved head, was wearing a tight, white singlet and shorts and had nice arms. I did not remember Dom looking like that! We went out that night and clicked. We got on well and there were no uncomfortable silences. I had planned on blowing up the airbed when we got back to my place but I was too drunk and tired to do so.

‘You can sleep in my bed, but don’t you dare touch me!’ I warned him.

We got into bed and went to sleep and Dom did not touch me. He would tell you that he thought I wasn’t keen. And I was thinking it was because he respected me! Men and women really do think differently.

The next day Dom was more relaxed. Much later, he told me it was because he thought I wasn’t interested so he stopped trying so hard to impress. This made me like him even more. We had a fun Saturday and a great time at the concert.

After the concert we went to a bar on Ponsonby Road, Auckland. We were drinking and talking and as Dom was talking I was watching his lips move. I’m a sucker for nice lips. I thought to myself, I really want to kiss those lips. And then I thought, What am I waiting for? And then I said to myself, ‘Just do it!’ So I surprised Dom by lunging at him and kissing him smack on the lips. It was good!

Because we were up in Auckland, we stayed at my nana’s house, so Dom was on the couch downstairs and I was in the single bed upstairs. The next day we drove back to Hamilton.

Dom was going to drop me off before heading home to Palmerston North.

Dom helped me carry my bag inside and noticed a wedding invitation from my former flatmate Paul and his fiancée Shirley pinned to the wall. It was made out to ‘Jay-Jay and partner’. He asked who I was going to take to the wedding. It was being held in three weeks’ time in New Plymouth—about halfway between Hamilton and Palmerston North.

‘I hadn’t thought about it yet,’ I told him.

‘I’ll go with you,’ he announced.

I did want to see Dom again and this would be a good opportunity to get to know him better.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You’re on!’

So we met up again in New Plymouth, all frocked-up for a wedding and at the celebration we were more loved-up than the bride and groom. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other!

We had a long-distance relationship for the next two years, travelling between cities most weekends. We nearly broke up because we couldn’t see how we could ever be in the same city. Dom was a host on the most popular morning radio show in Palmerston North and I was a host on one of the most popular radio stations in New Zealand, The Edge.

Fortunately, I was offered a job at a rival station in Auckland and they told me I could work with whoever I wanted. I told them I wanted to work with Dominic Harvey. We were hired. Dom and I were so excited thinking about finally being together in the same city, and to add to the excitement I had always wanted to move to Auckland. We both went in to see our managers and hand in our resignations.

Our radio stations were owned by the same parent company. Steven Joyce, currently a cabinet minister, was our boss—at the age of 21, he had started his own radio station. He did not want to break up the best morning show in Palmerston North and he did not want to lose me from The Edge but we left him with not many choices.

He agreed to let Dom move to Hamilton to work with me on The Edge. But he made it clear he wasn’t happy about it.

‘I don’t think you’re worth this money,’ he said even though he agreed to match the salary offer I had received. ‘And I hope this relationship works out,’ he told me. Way to put the pressure on, Steve!

Instead of us both moving to Auckland, Dom moved to Hamilton a month later and I have to say it was a nerve-wracking time. We had never lived in the same city before, let alone at the same address. Plus, we were going to be working together—that’s a lot of time in each other’s company.

I was scared. What if it didn’t work out? Would I look like an idiot? I know I would have ruined both of our careers in the process. It proved to be a risk worth taking. Eight months later The Edge studios were relocated to Auckland, so we moved to the big city. We got engaged the following year and married in 2004. Fourteen years later we are still working together, the show is number one and we are still happily together!

Dom loves children and he’s such a kid magnet. When Dom walks into a room and there are children there, they swarm to him. I don’t know what it is about him, but kids love Dom and Dom loves kids.

Whenever little kids come to our house, they go straight to Dom and ask, ‘Marshmallow?’ Ignoring protests from their parents, Dom takes them to the pantry and lets them slip their hand into the marshmallow jar. It’s a winning strategy for him—he loves being the kids’ favourite adult.

I knew Dom wanted to be a father early in our relationship. He talks about having kids all the time. After we married in the snow, in Queenstown, I went off the pill. We weren’t trying, but we weren’t not trying either. After about a year, nothing had happened.

Was it because we weren’t doing it enough? I mean, it’s true you do it less when you’re married, but . . . ?

We went to the doctor, who showed me on a calendar that there are basically four days in each menstrual cycle when a woman has the best chance of getting pregnant. She gave us a few tips on how to work out which four days were the ones and told us to romp like rabbits at that time. A few months passed, and still nothing. I wasn’t too panicked because I still felt young enough, although I also knew I didn’t really want to be an old parent.

Given my family’s past success at breeding, I had full faith in my reproductive organs. I was never fat or overweight as a child but from a young age, people often commented on my ‘child-bearing hips’, so I knew I was built to breed! Dom also came from a big family. He only has three siblings, but his mother, Sue, is one of fourteen children to her worn out Catholic parents so I had every reason to have faith in Dom’s reproductive organs, too.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—GETTING TO KNOW DOM

Kids were always part of the plan. Always. When Jay-Jay and I got together we had a general idea of when we wanted them to come along and how many of them we would create. I think I was probably more enthused about the idea of kids than Jay-Jay, but she was prepared to go along with it and risk getting stretch marks for the cause. What a trooper.

I assumed my sperm was such good quality that it was like a dangerous poison that could impregnate any woman who came into contact with it. I think most guys think like this. I think we all like the notion that some poor unsuspecting female could end up pregnant just from using a towel that has a recent sample of our DNA on it.

Ironically, because of this assumption I spent my late teens and pretty much my entire twenties absolutely petrified I would get someone pregnant. Yes, I wanted kids. But I also wanted kids precisely when I wanted kids—when I decided the time was right.

At the beginning of 2005 Jay-Jay and I gave each other the nod and thumbs-up—we agreed it was time to crank out a baby. I was on the cusp of turning 32—she was 30. She would chuck out the pills she had taken religiously for years now we’d decided we were ready for breeding.

Then life returned to normal. We didn’t give it much thought—if it happened, it happened. We were not in any real hurry figuring that, at 30, Jay-Jay still had a fair few tick-tocks in her biological clock. And, since I am a bloke, I assumed I’d be firing out lethal bullets from the old meat-gun for as long as I can breathe. Look at Rod Stewart—he must have been 93 years old when he got Rachel Hunter pregnant the first time.

Dom’s medical emergency

Dom is a runner. He loves running. Hardly a day goes by that he does not go out for a run. He even loves running in the rain. On a day when it’s hosing down outside with possible thunder and gale-force winds, most of us would get into our pyjamas and curl up in front of the heater. Not Dom. He gets excited. ‘I’m going for a run!’ he says. I think he’s absolutely bonkers but he really does love being out there in the wet and wind.

Running is in his genes. His mum, Sue, who is 61, runs marathons. She is planning on running the Gold Coast one this year, although she says she has got slower and may downgrade to a half marathon. Dom’s older sister Bridget, who is 42, hasn’t run any marathons but runs for fun, and his younger sister Charlotte, who’s 35, ran her first half marathon last year.

Dom has been running since he was at Riverdale Primary School in Palmerston North. He used to participate in all the local 10-kilometre runs and ran his first half marathon at twelve years old. He has run so many half marathons that he doesn’t even remember where his first one was!

He does remember the day he completed a long-distance run in bare feet, though. When he was nine he was in the car with his siblings and his parents as they drove to Feilding to drop Sue off to run the annual Feilding to Palmerston North 18-kilometre run. When they pulled up to the start line, Dom got caught up in the excitement and begged his parents to let him run too. Dom didn’t have any shoes. He didn’t anticipate being able to run because his parents had told him that the run was for adults only, but when Dom saw other kids participating he wanted in on that action. His dad, Stuart, gave in and said, ‘Fine, if you want to run, you run.’ So Dom ran the entire 18 kilometres from Feilding to Palmerston North barefoot.

As he crossed the finish line he felt chuffed with himself and that the huge blister that took up his entire right heel was worth it.

Dom really got the bug and completed his first full marathon in Wanganui at the age of fourteen. He stopped running not long after because he had better things to do as a teenager (chasing girls kept him fit enough), and then as a young adult he got caught up in the party scene, preferring to drink with his mates all weekend. He started running again in his late twenties but didn’t do another full marathon until he was 32.

It was the 2005 Gold Coast Marathon and he ran it in 3 hours 53 minutes. Not bad, considering he was not well but didn’t know it yet.

Dom entered the Adidas Auckland Marathon to be held on Sunday 30 October 2005 and he began serious training in July, straight after the Gold Coast marathon. The training wasn’t without its difficulties.

One Saturday morning, after only six minutes of running, Dom found himself doubled over, vomiting horrible bile into some poor old lady’s front garden. The colour had drained out of him and he was ghostly white. Since he’d only been running for six minutes he managed to walk slowly back home, although every step felt like hard work. Once he’d made it home he hopped into the bath for a relaxing soak and after 15 minutes he was back to normal.

Over the next four months, the same thing happened six or seven times. I used to worry about him when he went out for a run, making him tell me his exact route and how long he would be. Dom made light of it—he put it down to getting older and not being as fit as he used to be. He thought it only happened on runs when he pushed himself too hard.

I was more concerned than he was and made him go to see a cardiologist. He had to run on a treadmill with little things dotted around his chest. He was made to run faster and faster to try to trigger one of his vomiting episodes. You wouldn’t bloody believe it—in front of the cardiologist, everything was fine!

That was as far as we got with testing to see what was causing the problem. There was something wrong but it would have to remain a mystery for now. And, anyway, since it only happened when he was out running the solution seemed obvious—stop exercising! (But that wasn’t happening!)

Race day arrived and Dom was pleased to make it to the start line after all the hard work. The starting gun went off for the 6 a.m. start. Just ten minutes into it, Dom started to feel one his episodes brewing. When running marathons, everybody expects to be uncomfortable by the 40-kilometre mark, but at only 2 kilometres into it most people haven’t even gotten into their stride. With 40 kilometres to go, Dom knew he was in trouble.

At 3 kilometres he was reduced to a walk. Fortunately for us, he saw a St John’s ambulance at the first drinks station and he introduced himself to the officer and explained what had been going on. The ambulance officer checked Dom’s blood pressure while he drank a couple of cups of Powerade.

The guy read the gauge, pumped the thing up again to check the reading then mumbled something under his breath. It sounded like, ‘That doesn’t seem right.’ He got his supervisor to come and check it.

By then Dom was starting to feel okay again and was feeling ready to re-enter the race—he was still hoping for a reasonable time. The supervisor confirmed the first guy’s results. At that stage, Dom knew nothing about blood pressure monitoring so the numbers they rattled off didn’t mean anything to him.

We learned later that 120/80 is normal, and the ambulance crew had recorded Dom’s at 290 over something. (They said 290 mm Hg systolic, but I had no idea what that meant.) We were told an unfit person would not have survived. The only reason Dom probably did was because he was so fit.

Suddenly, Dom had become an emergency, which he found a tad embarrassing. Made to lie down in the back of the ambulance, in his tiny running shorts and singlet, with sirens blaring and an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose, the whole thing seemed comical to him because, by then, he felt fine.

He was rushed to North Shore Hospital and after a series of tests it was decided that he had probably had a heart attack or a stroke. The doctors wanted to keep him in hospital to run some tests to try to find out what had happened and why. Dom was, at that stage, way more blasé about this than he probably should have been.

After two weeks of full-time testing—MRI and ultrasound scans and numerous other tests—the doctors had found the cause of all the drama. Dom was diagnosed with noradrenaline-secreting paraganglioma.

It was a tumour in his abdomen, a big bitch, about the size of a coconut! Fortunately, it was successfully removed in a seven-hour operation. It was tangled in between his aorta arteries, so the surgical team had their work cut out removing the tumour without damaging his aorta. If they had damaged Dom’s aorta, he could have bled to death or had a massive stroke on the operating table. It was pretty serious.

Post-op, Dom had a couple of days in bed and felt getting the old catheter out was a happy milestone for him—those things really are unpleasant. When the surgeon came in to see him on Day Two, Dom’s mother and I were visiting and the surgeon awkwardly asked us to leave so he could have a private word with Dom. Outside, our minds were racing as they talked—what could be so wrong that the surgeon couldn’t talk about it in front of us?

IN HIS OWN WORDS—DOM’S MEDICAL EMERGENCY

I have to admit, in hindsight, I am a bloody idiot for not listening more carefully to the warning signs my body was giving me as I trained for the marathon. Alarm bells were ringing at full volume and I ignored them, learning to live with the noise.

As soon as Jay-Jay and Mum had gone, the surgeon told me that as a result of the surgery and the tricky placement of the tumour, I may have something known as retrograde ejaculate. He said this means everything works exactly the same as always, but when you have an orgasm nothing comes out. The sperm comes out later, hitching a ride with the next departing stream of urine.

Apparently, it’s pretty common in older men who have had heart surgery, but they have usually fathered any children they want so it is no big deal. The surgeon went on to explain that Jay-Jay and I would need in vitro fertilisation (IVF) to have a baby. He said it is incredibly straightforward and easy these days. That’s it. I was released from hospital and went home to get better.

After Dom’s near-death experience, I was relieved to have him back home. When he went back to work the 13-centimetre-long scar that runs the length of his abdomen proved to be a big hit at show-and-tell time in the office—attention seeker that he is!

Dom got back to running and, no surprises, he got faster and faster and could run further and further without any trouble.

Once things got back to something we call normal, we began to think about what the surgeon had told Dom. We set about finding out what retrograde ejaculate really meant for us, and also how we could get the fertility treatment he had been told we’d need.

Facing infertility

We made an appointment with FertilityPLUS at Greenlane Hospital to discuss our fertility options. It was here that the doctors confirmed we would need to have IVF to have a child.

I don’t really know what I expected but, given the way Mum and my sisters had had so many babies without really trying, I absolutely did not expect to be told I would need to have IVF in order to conceive. I had never heard much about IVF before this and I didn’t know anyone who had been through it. I was completely shocked and frightened as I left the hospital.

I don’t remember the walk back to the car, but I remember sitting in the car and just bawling my eyes out. I cried harder than I can recall ever crying before. Even though Dom was there with me, I felt so alone, and needed to talk to someone else. Through my tears I trolled through my contacts list, but there was no-one I felt would understand how I was feeling so I called the one person who is always there for me, no matter what. When Mum answered the phone, I couldn’t talk. My mouth was open but no words came out.

‘Oh God, what’s happened? Are you okay?’ she asked. All I could do was sob. I tried to get the words out in one smooth sentence.

‘I have to have IVF.’ Finally, I got the message out and Mum said she was sorry and she didn’t really know what to say. Mum had no idea about IVF either. How could she console me when she didn’t even know what I was about to go through? I hung up and sat in the car and cried and cried. I don’t know why I was so upset. It wasn’t the end of the world—Dom was alive and he was going to get better. There was still hope for us to have children, but I was terrified of the unknown and I felt very, very alone.

You know that saying, ‘A problem shared is a problem halved’?

Well, that’s why women talk about their problems and dramas—we feel better releasing all that anxiety and being comforted by our friends. We also like to be able to comfort our friends in times of need.

I needed to tell all my friends and family that we had to do IVF. I couldn’t keep it to myself. It was an important part of my healing and coming to terms with the whole idea.

Dom couldn’t understand why I was so upset. How could he be so cool about it? Did he not realise the pain that was ahead? Admittedly, it takes a lot to upset Dom. I had only seen him cry twice so far in our six-year relationship.

Dom and I talked about it on the air, although not too much because it’s not exactly a happy and entertaining topic for the morning—or any other time, really—and our job is to get people revved up for the day ahead.

I blogged about it on my personal website and people started reaching out to me, including people who had been through IVF—that was awesome. Finally, I had people I could share my fears and feelings with, and I could learn from their experience. I felt really lucky.

I got hundreds and hundreds of emails and messages. People even sent me presents in the mail—there were aromatherapy oils, fertility books and, even, booties! I went on fertility forums and, even though I didn’t post much, I read loads of posts and stories from women who were going through what we were about to go through. It made me feel as if it was normal and I wasn’t so scared anymore.

In the beginning, we qualified for government funding for two cycles of IVF. That was huge relief because each round of IVF costs over $10 000 and the cost, alone, can cause a lot of stress in a relationship—never mind the infertility. If it doesn’t work or people don’t qualify and have to consider funding cycles themselves, things get tough. When you’re desperate for a family, it’s really hard to say no. We were lucky and didn’t have to worry about that so we happily jumped on the publicly funded waiting list and agreed that we were both committed to having a baby.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—FACING INFERTILITY

Our priorities went back to planning our family. Retrograde ejaculate is a funny old thing. Everything does feel exactly the same but nothing comes out at climax. I was producing sperm but it was travelling back into my bladder and coming out when I wee’d. From a hygiene perspective, I can see a list of benefits to this condition, but for the purpose of family planning it’s not ideal, for sure. I’d never had my sperm checked before my medical emergency so it’s impossible to know if the tumour messed with my sperm and killed it or if it was always bad. I just knew we needed help now.

Before starting any kind of fertility treatment you have to attend a counselling session. Dom and I did this and realised that there were no underlying issues and that we were ready to crack into it. We got a fairly glowing report—aside from the fact that the counsellor could tell I suffer serious anxiety. Like I told you, I have a lot to be anxious about. Once you get started, the counsellor is always available if you need her, but I didn’t feel the need to see her again.

Because we were eligible for funded treatment we were referred back to the fertility clinic, FertilityPLUS at Greenlane Hospital. There we were told we’d need a procedure called ICSI—pronounced ‘icksy’, which stands for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. You could call it EIVF—that’s extreme in vitro fertilisation. ICSI treatment involves a single sperm being injected directly into an egg. If the egg fertilises and continues to grow in a Petri dish under the watchful eye of laboratory technicians, it gets placed back into the uterus where it will, touch wood, keep on growing.

Dom was feeling a bit gutted and guilty because our difficulty was caused by his problem—he felt his involvement in the whole icky ICSI process was a walk-on role only. He felt bad that I was going to have to jump through all sorts of horrible hoops. IVF is pretty much a series of blood tests and injections and drugs and prodding and scans. I don’t like needles in my veins so the blood tests were going to be the worst for me. I can’t even look when I’m getting them done so the whole thing was certainly going to be a challenge for me.

Before we could begin we had a whole lot of tests done to check our fertility levels and general health. We had blood tests to check for rubella, hepatitis B and C, HIV and sexually transmitted infections. All the blood tests came back fine.

I also had a hysterosalpingogram (HSG). That’s an X-ray of the uterus and fallopian tubes. I had to lie down and have dye squirted up my fallopian tubes to see if there was a blockage. My left tube was fine, but when they got to my right tube I was in agony. It was the most pain I’d ever felt—an excruciating cramp that almost caused me to faint and throw up. So, they determined my right tube was either blocked or had a spasm. Either way, I wasn’t prepared to go back and finish that test. It was horrific.

We already knew our main problem was Dom’s sperm and getting it delivered to where it needed to be for us to conceive. We were told there were two ways to get his sperm out. When he ejaculates, instead of shooting out the end of his penis like most men, Dom’s sperm travels backwards into his bladder. So he could either masturbate then urinate and his sperm could be washed, or he could have his sperm surgically removed from his testes.

Dom’s sperm count was low, real low—in the hundreds when it should be in the millions. And of those hundreds, not many looked great under a high-powered microscope. So we had not a lot of sperm and what we did have was crap quality and not that easy to access.

The doctors and nurses who had had a hand in making IVF babies reminded us that it only takes one sperm and one egg—we didn’t need millions anyway. That was reassuring and gave us hope. If there is one thing you need a lot of when doing IVF, it is hope. The fertility business is based on science but also on hope, and we were hoping to make the best of our situation.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—GOING TO THE FERTILITY CLINIC

When we first rocked up to the fertility clinic, we were told the odds were something like 30 per cent. So we figured that, in theory, even if we were unlucky the first time, we should be parents by the third round for sure.

Maybe this was making some assumptions about baby-making stuff and just what a breeze it was going to be. We quickly learned the surgeon who told us IVF was ‘straightforward and easy’ knew fuck all about it. Even if IVF is successful on the first attempt, I don’t think anybody who has been through it, even only once, would ever say that. We were in for the ride knowing it wasn’t going to be as easy as drinking a bottle of bubbles, watching a Julia Roberts rom-com, lighting some candles and letting nature take its course.

Why do we want children?

Finding out we needed medical help to have a child made us really question why we wanted kids. For me it was about the stage of life I had reached. You’re born, you go to school, you’re a teenager, you become an adult, you find love, you marry, you have children, you retire, you die. But I have never been an overly clucky person.

When I was a little girl, I refused to play with dolls and would much rather read a book instead. I decided early on I didn’t want children because of all the drama Mum had with her kids and I didn’t want that for myself. Meeting and marrying Dom had changed the way I felt about all that. I wanted to have his children. I wanted to be able to share the greatest gift with him, to have a wee person that we had created together. I had reached the ‘you have children’ part of my life.

When we found out we couldn’t have kids as easily as we’d thought we could, we both felt desperate. We began to panic, fearing we may not be able to have children at all.

We’d love a baby from scratch—one born of my egg and his sperm, that I breastfeed and we nurture together and teach about life, who would grow up and become an awesome person who makes a difference to this world. And we were about to embark on IVF to make it possible. I was excited and optimistic, but also nervous and apprehensive. It’s a wild ride.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—WHY DO WE WANT CHILDREN?

The stock-standard answer I usually give is something very vague like, ‘Dunno really. I just do.’ The truth is, I don’t know all the reasons. I think a lot of it just comes down to a natural yearning, a paternal instinct at a certain age.

But there are the selfish reasons, like this niggling fear I have of being old and outliving all my mates and having nobody in my life who cares if I live or die—not that kids are a guarantee you will have visitors at the nursing home!

And then there are the unselfish reasons, such as just wanting to experience that unconditional love that is bigger than anything else.

If we can’t have our own children, it’s going to feel like my life is incomplete. For the rest of my life it’s going to feel as if there is a big part missing and that’s a big thing to deal with. Although I’ve always wanted to be a father, now that it may not be possible I realise just how much it means to me.

Dom’s job

In preparation for our first round of IVF, Dom opted to have his sperm washed. He went to the clinic and was sent to the specimen room. Later, he wondered if the staff call it the ‘wank room’ when no patients are within earshot. He was given a small plastic jar with a screw-on lid to take with him, and instructions to masturbate and wait until he was ready to urinate. Then, he had to collect his midstream wee plus sperm in the jar, seal it and deliver it back to the nurse. Job done—Dom delivered 80 millilitres of urine and sperm to the checkout.

After that, the urine would be washed—they put the urine in a high-speed spinny machine that separates the sperm from the wee. There were only five sperm in the 80-millilitre specimen and they were non-motile—that means they didn’t move. It wasn’t looking good for our baby production.

To put it in perspective, generally only half of a man’s sperm is motile, and half of those are mutant—without heads or tails. In other words, only about 25 per cent of sperm is good for fertilising eggs. So, when most men would have about five million usable tadpoles, Dom will have just twenty-five.

Three months later, which is the time it takes to grow new sperm, Dom tried again as soon as he was able. Another 80 millilitres of urine mixed with sperm backwash was collected and checked. This time, the clinic told us that there were reasonable numbers of non-motile sperm and that made the sample unsuitable for ICSI. Then the kicker came in the report we were given:

‘Advise that a testicular biopsy is necessary.’

A testicular biopsy is a procedure otherwise known as a TESA—‘testicular sperm aspiration’. It’s where the doctor slices into the testicles to collect sperm direct from the vas duct. In plain English, Dom’s sperm was shit and it would need to be extracted by surgery.

Another three months later, Dom’s fears were realised as we arrived at FertilityPLUS and he was asked to take off his clothes and put on one of those sexy hospital gowns that tie at the back.

He lay down on the bed and was given some paracetamol. Soon after, he had a shunt inserted into his hand to administer IV drugs. He was wheeled into the operating theatre and I was allowed in, too. I can’t recall exactly how many people were there but I’d guess about five others. One was administering pain relief, a nurse was assisting the doctor who would perform the TESA. There was also an embryologist and probably one other person in the room.

I sat next to Dom’s head, much like a husband might sit next to his wife while she was giving birth. He was very docile and numb by then. He tells me he has absolutely no recollection of what happened in there. The doctor stuck a long needle into Dom’s testes and he wailed loudly at the pain. Like I said, he doesn’t remember so that’s okay, but I was cringing for him.

The doctor was happy to show me what he was doing up close, even though I could watch some of it on a screen. He had sliced into Dom’s right testicle and pulled out the vas deferens—the tubes that move sperm towards the urethra in other men. He cut a small piece off and put it in a dish that the embryologist was holding. It looked gross and painful. Dom was going to have very sore nuts after this!

The operation only took about 20 minutes and then Dom was wheeled back into recovery. He was awake the whole time but he didn’t realise what was going on until about half an hour after the procedure had finished. He felt tender down there and looked down to see he was wearing a sanitary pad! I couldn’t help laughing, but he didn’t find it that funny.

He was ordered to wear a sanitary pad and tight undies for a couple of days and to avoid exercise and lifting for two weeks. As I’ve already mentioned, Dom runs marathons—he runs almost every day and he was not thrilled to be couch-ridden. The next day he was pretty much back to his normal self, no swelling or infection. He was just a little bit sore and said it felt as if he had been kicked in the balls.

Dom’s TESA had resulted in five straws of sperm and some of it was motile! The team at FertilityPLUS decided they had enough to work with and his piddly amount of sperm was frozen for later.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—DOM’S JOB

On the one hand, the nurse was asking me to perform a sexual act on myself, which was quite a titillating thought. On the other hand, there was absolutely nothing sexy about it—nothing flirty at all as I sheepishly walked towards the wank room with an empty jar in hand. Luckily, the specimen room is private—only one wanker at a time.

The room had a La-Z-Boy chair with a hospital sheet draped over it and a selection of well-thumbed magazines that looked as if they had been motivating men for decades. I resisted touching the magazines and used my imagination.

I also decided to stand and deliver. I was sure the sheet over the La-Z-Boy must have been changed on a fairly regular basis, but you never can be too certain, can you? In a matter of a few minutes I had managed to fulfil my obligations. A good game’s a fast game. At least I think that’s the saying.

It was surreal. Being male means spending quite a bit of time avoiding being caught playing with yourself—first by parents or siblings, then by flatmates and girlfriends. With IVF you are thrust into this situation of going into a small room with everybody outside knowing exactly what is going on in there. Still, that few moments of possible embarrassment is a small price to pay. The lion’s share of the work is forced upon the lioness.

First IVF cycle

It was a new year, 2007, and we were ready to get going. All the testing had been done, we had sperm in the freezer and now it was my turn to get involved. Like I said, it’s mostly about needles and I’ve never enjoyed being used as a pin cushion. Some days it didn’t hurt much; other days it felt as if the needle had gone through the vein, the muscle and out the other side of my arm. The pain shot through me like an electric shock. But nothing could have prepared me for the hormone injections that I had to give myself. In order to stop my cycle (to prepare it for IVF) I had to inject buserelin acetate into my stomach every day for ten days—I actually had to learn to jab myself on a daily basis! Buserelin is supposed to put the body into a menopausal state so the timing of a cycle can be artificially controlled.

I collected my chilly bag of medicine, which I had to store in the fridge at home, and a box of syringes from FertilityPLUS on 6 February 2007. Every night at 6 p.m. I had to fill a syringe, squeeze a bit of fat around my belly and stab the needle in. The first time I did this was frightening. I had never stuck a needle into anyone before. I gripped my tummy fat with my left hand and with my right hand held the syringe above the bulge. They say the harder you squeeze your tummy fat, the less it hurts. I was prepared to give myself a good bruise.

I stood there with the needle hovering for ages, desperately trying to psych myself up to stab myself. So many times I started to thrust and then would pull back just before the needle made contact. It was horrible. A lot of women ask their partners to do it for them but there is no way I would let Dom stick a needle into me—he’s very clumsy and I can just imagine the mess.

I heard of one woman who was so scared she drove herself across town every night to see her friend who was a nurse and could do it for her. Some women choose to drive to the clinic every day so the nurses there can do it for them. I decided I would harden up and do it myself.

Eventually, I just did it. I took a deep breath and stabbed myself in the stomach. There was a slight sting, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated. And it was all over in a few seconds. The first time is always the worst and it didn’t take me long after that—just a few deep breaths and I was done.

After almost a couple of weeks of buserelin injections, I started on another drug called Gonal-F to grow my eggs. I then had three internal scans over the course of a week to see how many eggs were growing and how big they were getting. The internal scans are invasive. They are similar to a smear test—you lie back on a bed with no pants on, just a sheet covering you, your legs up on leg rests while the doctor inserts something into your vagina. A long wand-like instrument is pushed around your ovaries on each side so they can be seen on a screen. It’s not comfortable. It feels like they’re playing tennis in there!

When the doctors were happy with the size of the follicles, I was declared ripe for the picking. The follicles hold the eggs that are too small for the human eye to see. Unfortunately, they don’t always collect a viable egg in each follicle, but the more follicles the more chance of eggs.

The night before the egg collection, I had to give myself a trigger injection of Ovidrel to prepare the eggs for harvesting. By then, my insides were so swollen and tender I felt as if I had two rugby balls inside. I couldn’t even do up my jeans because I didn’t like anything pressing on my tummy. I only had four follicles, but I felt as if I must be housing hundreds. Eight is about average, but this was my first cycle so they kept the drug doses low.

The odds of getting pregnant in your first cycle of IVF are small. In fact, they say the average is about three cycles, but I was holding out hope that, like the rest of my family, I was super fertile and with this little bit of assistance I’d be knocked up in no time.

Egg collection is a full-scale operation. You can’t eat or drink beforehand and you can’t wear make-up or perfume. I arrived at the hospital and had to change into a very unattractive gown. I was given painkillers and a shunt was inserted into my hand. I walked into the operating room and lay down on the bed. I was given amnesiacs and a mild anaesthetic, so I would still be awake through the procedure. They can’t anaesthetise your ovaries so they anaesthetise all of you. The amnesiacs were supposed to make me really drowsy and make it so I would not remember what happened in that room—just like when Dom had his TESA.

The difference is I remember what happened. My legs were open and I was naked under the gown. The doctor inserted a wand with a needle guide on it. The wand went up my vagina and the needle went through the wall of my vagina and into my ovaries to collect an egg. This was repeated until all the mature eggs had been collected. I felt each egg being collected and remember sitting bolt upright and wailing at the pain—it was like the most crippling period pain you can imagine. It hurts just thinking about it.

Later, I learned that access to my right ovary is difficult because it is hidden behind my uterus. I decided there and then I would be knocked out if I had to go through that again.

From the four follicles that looked good to go, three were collected and injected with Dom’s thawed sperm. Sadly, we didn’t get a great report from the single straw that was defrosted for this occasion. We took it to mean ‘we’ll be lucky if this works’.

I was sent home to recover. I felt sore and tender while my eggs and Dom’s sperm were meeting in a set of Petri dishes. We had to wait overnight to find out if the eggs had been fertilised.

In the morning the hospital called to tell us just one egg had fertilised. We had to wait a couple more days to see if it would continue dividing and become an embryo. Luckily, it did and I was primed and ready for implantation! This cycle, we had one chance but we were feeling positive.

The embryo replacement is a fairly simple procedure, very similar to a pap smear. No drugs are given, but once the embryo was inserted I was given progesterone pessaries to poke up into my vagina three times a day to provide the right amount of hormones needed to sustain a pregnancy. I went into the hospital again, this time with a full bladder so the doctor could have the best view of my uterus. Embryos are too small for the human eye to see so they are placed gently onto the wall of the uterus using a long tube that is put up the vagina. The whole process can be seen on a screen.

It was amazing to see a tiny little blip get released from the end of the tube and float over to the wall of my uterus. There, it nestled itself in and I was done. Free to pee and free to leave. That was that. The hospital’s job was done. It was now up to me to make this baby grow.

The next two weeks are known as the dreaded ‘two-week wait’. They count it from the day of egg collection. We had to wait two whole weeks before I could have a pregnancy test to see if the embryo transfer had been successful. A positive result would mean I was six weeks pregnant already! The two-week wait seems to take forever. And it’s all you can think about.

It felt like the longest two weeks of my life stretched out in front of me.

However, it was worse than that because I didn’t have to wait that long. Nine days after the embryo transfer, I started bleeding—two days short of my pregnancy test.

Sadly, the embryo did not make itself at home in my uterus. I was devastated. It was at this point that I wished I hadn’t told the world I was having IVF. Now I had to tell everyone it was over. I started with my family and close friends. Everyone felt for us, of course. We were all so hopeful and excited. People kindly sent us flowers. I mentioned it on my website, radiochick.co.nz, and got the most amazing support back from readers who helped get me through. I was able to pick myself up again fairly quickly because of all the incredible support and advice I was given by friends, family and complete strangers. If I had been going through this alone, I wouldn’t have been able to cope.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—FIRST IVF CYCLE

I probably wasn’t thinking about the full repercussions. You hear about IVF and it sounds like a fairly simple thing to do. A lot of people our age talk about it and say things like, ‘Oh, well, if I can’t have a baby, I’ll just have IVF.’ It always sounded like an easy option. When you start getting into it, you realise there’s more to it than meets the eye and there are no guarantees it will succeed.

Second IVF cycle

Disappointed but not put off, we booked in for our second round of IVF straightaway. Luckily, the waiting list was quite short and we got a place in July. We still had some of Dom’s frozen sperm available, much to his relief!

The best things about the second cycle were that we knew what to expect and we knew some of the staff at the clinic, so they knew us and what worked and what didn’t last time. This time, we felt quietly confident.

I started injecting buserelin again, at double the dose of my first IVF cycle. Instead of Gonal-F to stimulate egg production I used Puregon. I don’t really know why that was changed—I just took it!

I was booked to go to Queenstown for a girlie weekend with my friend Sarah the night I had to start Puregon. I arrived in Queenstown, beautiful scenery with snow all around, and I realised I’d come without the Puregon. Panicking, I called FertilityPLUS and spoke to my favourite nurse, Penny Lewis. She was my saviour and told me she would courier the Puregon pen to me. It arrived just in time to keep our plans on track. Phew! I could relax and enjoy the break from everyday life.

Despite the fact that I couldn’t imbibe the delicious local wine, Sarah and I had a great, sober time. We took full advantage of the hotel’s amenities, wandering around in our robes and slippers, ordering room service and in-room movies. During the day we did a few tourist activities that didn’t involve leaping off high ledges. We stuck to indoor mini-golf and riding the gondola. We knew how to rage it up!

As soon as I got home, I was back into full-on preparation for the IVF routine again. As I promised myself the first time, I was not going to go through the pain of the egg collection again awake so I asked to be given a general anaesthetic. It is a far more intense procedure and they don’t always recommend it. Maybe it’s cost related—it’s all over in about 20 minutes but you need a full team on deck to make it happen to give a general anaesthetic.

Once again, I was nil-by-mouth the night before. Once again, I had to put on a hospital gown. Because I was going into a surgical room this time, I also had to wear covers over my shoes and a cap that looked a lot like a shower cap—I was definitely not dressed for a beauty pageant!

Looking around the room reminded me of a scene from ER. There were machines beeping and tubes and trays of instruments. There seemed to be about ten people in the room. I can’t even tell you who they all were or what they did but there was the anaesthetist, the doctor who would remove my eggs, a nurse to assist, the embryologist, and a few others—it’s a bit of a blur. I think they may have even had a student or two observing! My recollection is vague because, within about 20 seconds of me lying down, they had the oxygen mask on me and the drugs down the tube attached to the shunt in my arm. I was asleep in about ten seconds.

Next thing I knew, I was being woken up by a nurse in the recovery room. I was incredibly drowsy and wanted to be left to go back to sleep, but for some reason they insisted on getting me up and awake and out of there as quickly as possible. I was still in the hospital gown, with the addition of a giant sanitary pad shoved under me. There is no dignity in hospital!

The nurse told me to get up, put my clothes on and go and sit in a chair. I really just wanted to go to sleep—my eyes were heavy and I felt weak. My insides hurt. But I did what I was told and as a reward I was given a cup of tea and a biscuit.

I chose to be anaesthetised to avoid the pain of the egg collection, but it felt as if the doctor had been a bit more aggressive with Sleeping Beauty. I felt swollen, bruised and beaten.

The rewards, however, were much greater this time. They had harvested eight eggs. Wow, I was over the moon.

The embryologist injected all eight eggs with Dom’s defrosted sperm and we got five embryos! This was really exciting. I started daydreaming about the possibilities. Would we put one or two back in? Would we freeze the rest and go for more babies? We couldn’t help but feel absolute relief.

I waited by the phone for the daily call from the nurse at FertilityPLUS. I was in a good mood when the phone rang because I was expecting her to tell me the embryos were all strong—fighting it out over who would be chosen to be deposited back into my welcoming uterus. But, instead, I got bad news—the worst news possible.

‘I’m so sorry Jay-Jay. None of your embryos have survived. They’ve stopped dividing.’ At this point I wanted to burst into hysterical laughter. Surely, it was a joke? But fertility issues are no joking matter and there are no comedians at Fertility-PLUS. I think once the news registered what I actually said was, ‘Nooooo! How can this be?’ And then I burst into tears. I felt my heart tighten in my chest as the news sank in—there was to be no embryo transfer. IVF cycle two was over—null and void.

We had spoken about our fertility openly on the air and online. We seemed to have become the go-to couple for fertility stories and comments in the media but right then I was too upset, too tired and too sore to speak.

Once we had gotten over the grief of failing a second time, things got better and Dom and I did our first big magazine story with Katherine Granich for OHbaby! By then, we had also begun to look forward to a third IVF cycle.

I loved the way the article turned out in OHbaby! I wasn’t nervous about sharing our story and I knew Katherine and her editors would treat it with respect. We had so much positive feedback and so many people reaching out to us after the story was published. It made me feel good—like we were connecting to other like-minded people.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—SECOND IVF CYCLE

Getting serious, everyone assumes that having male infertility would challenge my masculinity, but it doesn’t. Guys who think that way and start to feel sorry for themselves need to realise that their partners are going through a lot worse than they ever will with IVF.

After two rounds of IVF, you start clutching at weirder and weirder advice—if someone told you eating bananas with the skins on would make a difference, you’d do it.

You get to the stage where you listen to all sorts of advice and you think, ‘What have I got to lose?’ That question is easy to answer—nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Third IVF cycle

Once we got over the grief of failing a second time, we booked in for a third attempt. The odds, we figured, are so much better by the third cycle and we were feeling confident of success this time. Fortunately, because the second cycle was not completed, we were told we’d be eligible for another fully funded attempt. That was a huge relief.

I had to schedule IVF away from the twice-yearly radio-ratings periods, which meant January–late March and August–October were out.

Radio ratings are crucial to the survival of the business. The radio station needs good ratings to be able to sell advertising. We need the advertising sales to pay the cost of running the station and pay our salaries. If the ratings are high, we have job security. If the ratings start to fall, we might be relocated or dismissed because obviously we aren’t doing a good enough job attracting listeners! So when the ratings period is on, every radio station fights hard for listeners. They put up billboards, run TV ads, and give away enormous prizes like cash and travel.

The Edge is a very creative radio station and has won awards for our big ratings promos, like ‘Two Strangers and a Wedding’—where we married two complete strangers who met at the altar after having never seen each other’s faces. We’ve actually done this promo three times since 1999, and all three couples are still together and all have children. I had a lot to do with making this promo work, and I pride myself on being a good matchmaker!

Later, after we had married three sets of strangers, we decided to marry a couple who were already engaged. We would pay for the whole wedding on board a luxury boat, but only if the bride and groom got married in the nude. We called it ‘Nudie Nuptials’.

There was also ‘The Edge’s Next Top Friend’, where we put ten people together in a house that was wired with webcams (Big Brother–style) and gave each person a Facebook page. Their job over the six-week promo was to interact with fans and get as many Facebook fans as possible. The person who collected the most friends was crowned the winner and given a cash prize of $10 000.

When we ran ‘Wheel of Misfortune’, each week we spun a big prize wheel that had our names on it to reveal which one of us would be up for that week’s unfortunate task. The next day the wheel had envelopes stuck to it, and we spun again to reveal what the task would be and what the prize money would be. Listeners entered the draw to win the prize money, so if we went through with the task, the listener would win the money.

Mike got The Edge logo tattooed on his butt cheek, I had to get my nipple pierced, and bungee jump (which I chickened out of), Dom had to dance with a naked man outside the train station and we all had to waterski over a six-foot-high ramp.

Of all the promos we’ve run to date, however, ‘The Tom Cruise Bounty’ is still one of my favourite experiences from working in radio.

In 2003 Hollywood actor Tom Cruise came to New Zealand to film a movie called The Last Samurai in New Plymouth. Tom wasn’t doing any press or interviews while he was here, other than one press conference at the beginning of his stay. So, we decided to put a bounty on his head. We told our listeners that if they could get Tom Cruise to call our show and speak to us for just five minutes, we would pay them $5000. We heard from various sources that people put letters in his letterbox (he was renting a house in Taranaki and quite a few people knew where it was), begged his security guards to pass a message on, and hassled other Last Samurai cast members. Eventually Tom got the message loud and clear, and one day we got a call from his sister, who was his manager at the time. She told us Tom had heard about the bounty and wanted to call us the next morning after his night shoot. We were buzzing!

The next morning, at about 8.30 a.m., he called our show and spoke to us for 18 minutes. When we answered the phone, the conversation went something like this:

Me: ‘Hello, The Edge?’

Tom: ‘Hello, is that Jase, Jay-Jay and Dom?’ (Jase is my former co-host who worked with us before Mike Puru).

His voice was unmistakable.

‘Is that Tom Cruise?’ I asked, all giddy and surprised.

‘Yes it is,’ he replied.

And then I squealed, and I can’t remember much more after that. All I could think was, I’m talking to Tom fucking Cruise!

Tom made a deal with us early in the phone call. He told us that there was a small country school near where he was filming called Urenui School, and they needed $14 000 to build a sun shade for their playground. Tom told us that if we would raise our $5000 bounty to $7000 he would match it, and together we could give Urenui School their much-needed sun shade.

So we did. And Tom held up his end of the bargain. And Urenui School got their sun shade!

To thank Tom for the sun shelter, we organised a huge human banner for him. We convinced about 2000 Taranaki residents to dress in black and meet us at the Bowl of Brooklands in New Plymouth to spell out the word TOMINAKI on the ground. The local newspaper, Taranaki Daily News, took the photo from a helicopter, and Tom saw it on the front page the next day.

Dom emailed Tom’s sister to ask where to send a copy of the photo with a letter of thanks from us, and she suggested we deliver it to Tom in person. So we were given directions to the secret location of the Last Samurai set and told that only four of us could go. So there was me, Jase, Dom and our promotions manager in New Plymouth, Beks Ali. We arrived and watched Tom filming for an hour. It was so surreal. I had never been on a movie set before, let alone a Hollywood blockbuster, and there, just ten metres in front of me, was TOM CRUISE.

After his scene he came over and talked to us for half an hour. We gave him some gifts (a few CDs by New Zealand artists, presents listeners had sent us and the framed Tominaki picture) and he was stoked—he almost cried! (Either that or he is a pretty good actor.) We weren’t allowed to take photos, or get autographs, but his photographer took some pics and Tom sent them to us.

Tom then told us to go and have lunch in the mess tent with all the cast and crew. So, on Tom’s orders, we went. The tent was huge, about the size of a school hall. There were caterers and lots of tables and chairs. There was a whole buffet of food that ranged from salads and meats, bread and potatoes to rice, curry and naans. There was also a huge table of desserts, but I can’t recall what was on it because I wasn’t really concentrating. I was too buzzed out by what was happening.

There were only a few people eating, probably about 30 or so, but it was funny to see people dressed in character having lunch. Tom’s body double was there and he looked so much like him. He was really friendly and talked to us for a while.

We were sitting eating lunch and trying not to talk too much about meeting Tom Cruise in case other people heard us when one of his people came over and said to us, ‘Tom would like to see you in his trailer.’

I almost wet my pants. Was this for real? Even now when I think about it, I find it hard to believe this happened.

So we didn’t finish lunch, we got up and headed for Tom’s trailer. It was the biggest caravan I’ve ever seen. Long and chrome and surrounded by a small white picket fence. Large for New Plymouth, but modest for a Hollywood superstar.

We were motioned to go inside and the assistant left. We walked in and Tom Cruise was standing in the doorway.

The trailer had one double bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and lounge area, and was fitted out with all the mod cons of 2003. ‘Come in and sit down,’ Tom said with that familiar Tom Cruise grin. He motioned us to his cream leather couch.

There was no-one else there. Just Tom Cruise and us.

Tom was holding a rail above his head with one arm and doing stretches. He was standing about two feet from me. He didn’t appear as short as everyone makes out, but he is only 5 foot 5 inches. Maybe he was wearing high shoes.

I looked around in front of me. There was a big plasma screen TV surrounded by framed photos of Tom and his then-girlfriend Penelope Cruz, and him with his kids. He loves his family.

On the wall was a Scientology chart. I didn’t study it, but I thought it was weird. And almost everything in the trailer, including the leather couches and the screensaver on the TV, had Tom’s monogram on it: TC.

Tom was excited and told us they had just cut the trailer for The Last Samurai that day and he wanted us to be the first to see it. He hit play. The speakers were booming and for the next two minutes all I could think was, I’m in Tom Cruise’s trailer! At the end of the clip Tom asked, ‘So what do you think?’ We were all speechless. What do we think? ‘Um, it’s really good,’ was all we could say. He seemed a bit disappointed, expecting more from us, but we weren’t ourselves. I was not qualified to critique movie trailers, especially not in front of the star himself.

We were all very quiet and not as cool as we would have hoped we would be if we had anticipated this. We stayed and chatted for awhile, just making small talk, and then told Tom we had to leave. Yes, we excused ourselves. We didn’t want to be the people he had to evict from his trailer because we overstayed our welcome. I think we were in there for about twenty minutes.

He’s the most divine man. So enchanting and mesmerising. He is so genuine and sincere, and I can see why no-one has a bad word to say about him.

None of us said a word to each other as we drove away until about five minutes down the road, when we all just burst out into hysterics. It was an unbelievable experience.

So, the pressure is on to always come up with the next big thing. We work so hard during the six weeks of survey time and the weeks leading into it, and there is no way our program director, Leon, would let us have a day off during this time. I would have to be dying to get a day off during ratings; egg collections and scans are not a big enough excuse for a sick day during radio’s most crucial period.

I love my job so much that I was happy to make the compromise. I thought it was better to have fertility treatment between surveys, anyway, because I would be more relaxed.

The soonest clear time that we could think about starting treatment again after the ratings madness was in April 2008, so we went ahead and booked in for then. My drug regime leading up to the egg collection was the same as the previous cycle and, once again, I requested a general anaesthetic for the egg collection. The clinic agreed because my right ovary was still hiding behind my uterus and needed ‘considerable pressure’ to gain access to it.

They were able to collect nine eggs—nearly a dozen—and six were mature enough for sperm injection. As I was under anaesthetic getting the eggs ripped out of my ovaries—well, that’s what it felt like—Dom was upstairs having another TESA.

What a pair of lovebirds. We were recovering at the same time—we were suffering equal amounts of discomfort. We were both wearing sanitary pads and we were dozy—too dozy to drive—but we both wanted to go home. A good friend came to collect us and as soon as we got home we both took some paracetamol and crawled into bed clutching our nether-regions. I found it quietly comforting having my husband feel some of the baby-making pain with me.

The morning after the egg collection the phone rang with good enough news—two of our eggs had fertilised. This news wasn’t as good as last time, but we had two embryos fertilising in their little Petri dish. It gave us hope.

The next day the clinic called again. This time they told us one of the embryos had slowed in its development and the other was a viable embryo so they wanted to implant them both into me as soon as possible.

Two embryos! What if they both worked? Would I have twins? Oh my God, I thought, I don’t know if I could handle twins. But it was a risk we had to take. If we stuck two of those little suckers in there, at least one of them was bound to stick, right?

I went to the clinic the next day for the embryo transfer. As much as you try so hard not to get your hopes up, it’s really difficult to avoid getting excited—that day we couldn’t help it. I was about to be impregnated!

The transfer went well and I was sent home for the dreaded two-week wait. This time I was determined to take things really easy. No strenuous activity, not even sex! I would rest up as much as possible and try not to get wound up over anything. Breathe deep. Remain calm. Stay focused.

Every day when I went to the toilet I was almost too scared to look. Would I find blood?

After twelve of the longest days of my life, I went for a pregnancy test. I had it first thing in the morning and had to wait until 2 p.m. for the nurses to be able to call with the results. I literally sat by the phone the entire day. And it rang right on time. The nurse sounded happy . . . Was this good news? ‘Jay-Jay, you’re pregnant!’ Yes it was! ‘Oh my God!’ I screamed.

I cried and I looked over at Dom who looked almost teary himself. We were going to have a baby! Wow, I really couldn’t believe it. I had never been pregnant before and now I was six weeks pregnant. I had felt nothing unusual so far. When would I feel nauseous? When would I start getting fat? I started reading pregnancy books and magazines to see which stage I was at.

At six weeks pregnant . . . I only had six weeks to go until I’d have my first scan. What would our blob look like? Or was it blobs? For the first time in my life, I started thinking about baby names. For some inexplicable reason, I was drawn to names with Js and Vs in them—Devon and Jasmine were favourites.

Unfortunately, the good news was, once again, short-lived. The next day at work I started bleeding. No! No! No! I felt sick because I knew it had to be over—it was heavy and gluggy and gross. I went back into the studio, took one look at Dom and burst into tears. He knew, our co-host, Mike, knew. Everyone at The Edge knew just by looking at me.

I locked myself in a small studio and called my favourite nurse, Penny. I told her what had happened and she said, ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry.’ I slumped to the floor and cried and cried. I could hardly breathe through the heartbreak. How could this happen when it was all looking so good? What did I do wrong? How could I have made it better? My boss was very supportive and let me go home. I can’t remember what Mike told the listeners but he made up something convincing. I had a blood test that confirmed I had miscarried and that was the end of that—third IVF cycle over and out.

Instant parenthood

As we were struggling to become parents (with a great deal of help from a large team of dedicated medical professionals) our lives were suddenly changed in a quite unexpected way. And it all came about from another major family drama involving one of my siblings!

My brother, Matt, who had been in and out of prison almost every year since he was seventeen, was doing another lag for drug-related charges on 21 February 2003, when his son and only child, Seven, was born. Matt got out of prison when Seven was two and assumed custody of his son.

Already history seemed to be repeating itself, as Matt also went to live with his dad at the age of two. Matt worked hard to build a relationship with Seven and they seemed to have a strong bond so it was very difficult for them both when Matt was sentenced to prison again not long before Seven’s fifth birthday. My sister Melissa told me what was happening and my first thought was about Seven’s future. What about Seven? Where will he go? I spoke to Dom and he seemed just as concerned as I was about this poor little boy. I called Matt and told him if he needed us to look after Seven, we would.

I didn’t hear from Matt for a couple of months and I figured he had sorted himself out. Then on 19 January 2008 he called. ‘I’m handing myself in tomorrow. Will you take my boy? I’ll bring him today.’ I was preparing for our third round of IVF. Seven was one month off turning five years old.

Today? Oh my God. I hadn’t really thought this far ahead when I had made the offer. I hadn’t actually considered that we might end up taking on a wee boy I hardly knew—I had only met him briefly about three times. Neither of us had ever had a child before. Babysitting for a couple of hours was the sum total of our experience. Dom got on well with kids but I had no idea what to do. Seven would arrive pre-programmed and with lots of baggage. And I don’t mean bags of clothes and toys—I mean emotional baggage.

‘Can you come tomorrow?’ I needed a day to get my head around the idea and to tell Dom. Meanwhile, I asked to speak to Seven, although I doubted he would remember me.

‘You are coming to stay with me and Uncle Dom for awhile,’ I told him. He sounded cute on the phone and was obviously unaware of the magnitude of what I was telling him. My heart broke.

I have to say, it was painfully sad and heartbreaking to see my brother drive away, leaving his son with us. We were strangers to Seven and he was obviously afraid.

This cute little boy had already had a rocky start to life—he’d spent half of his life with each parent and now he was being left with an aunt and uncle he hardly knew. I don’t think he understood where Matt was going or why he was being left with us.

It wasn’t the best timing for stress levels. Dom and I were trying to have a calm third IVF cycle but our home life was thrown into turmoil. We had no idea how long Seven would be with us. Would it be a month? Would it be a year? He was about to start school! This was a challenge in itself—how do you choose a school?

I guess if you have a child from a baby, they grow up, you have a relationship with Plunket and a doctor, they go to kindergarten and you learn about getting them into school from there. I knew nothing of Seven’s history except that he did not have a doctor and had not been to pre-school of any kind. I didn’t know where to start, either, but we thought we would only have Seven for a short time while Matt did a stint in jail, so I didn’t bother doing any research. Matt hadn’t officially been sentenced yet but we all thought he would only be gone about three months.

We leave for work at 5 a.m. every day, so once Seven had started school we would need someone to help us by looking after Seven in the early morning and getting him to school on time.

Luckily Dom’s sister was getting married so we had lots of family staying who could help look after Seven in the mornings until we found a regular sitter. We advertised on Trade Me and eventually hired a girl called Marama to arrive at 4.50 a.m. each day.

In the end, Matt was sentenced to two years in prison and we knew we would have Seven for a long time.

We approached a nearby primary school to enrol him and they told us Seven needed to be up to date with his vaccinations, and be enrolled by his legal guardians. Well, that wasn’t going to happen, so we told Matt and Seven’s mother that we needed to assume legal guardianship.

I know my brother wasn’t happy about it, but we really had no choice.

I think Matt was worried that we were stealing his child, but I was doing my best to take care of this wee boy and give him a normal life away from drugs, gangs and crime.

It took about a month and cost nearly $4000 in legal fees. Getting Matt to sign was easy, because he was in prison and we knew where to find him. Seven’s mother was harder to track down. Eventually she responded to an email and agreed to sign the paper.

So, before we had completed our third IVF cycle, we became parents—instant parents to a gorgeous four-year-old boy who turned our world upside down, but in a good way. It’s what we had always wanted but it didn’t happen in the conventional way. But, then, our lives have never been conventional.

Adjusting to having Seven in our care was quite a challenge. Firstly, because we didn’t know him very well and he didn’t know us at all. So we were learning about each other. Just as we had to adjust our lifestyle to fit him in, he had to adjust to his new home. More importantly, he had quite a few emotional issues—hardly surprising given his difficult start in life.

During Seven’s first year at school he was invited to his friend Sean’s house for a play date on a Friday afternoon. Sean’s mother, Jo, had invited all eight boys in the class to play that day and told the mothers to collect the boys at 5 p.m.

That afternoon the boys made a fortress in the backyard and proudly named it ‘Boys Club’. When we all arrived at 5 p.m. to pick up our boys, Jo offered us a glass of wine and, being well organised, a few grown-ups nibbles. How could we refuse? We were all very different women and we probably wouldn’t have become friends if we hadn’t met this way. I really felt like the odd one out, but the others all made me feel welcome and, despite our colourful story, we were accepted into the fold. A few wines later it was 7 p.m. and the dads were called to pick up the boys.

A few weeks later one of the others decided to have all the boys over on Friday afternoon and invited all the mothers for a few wines at 5 p.m.—or wine o’clock. Boys Club was born. Now, every term, we get together in pairs to host Boys Club. One of us has all the boys after school (and all of their siblings) and the other organises dinner and drinks for everyone—all the kids and parents. In all, there are sixteen adults and nineteen kids, so it’s a bit of a mission.

The mothers have given me great parenting advice along the way, helping me understand what is normal and what is unique to our situation. They have been steady and strong in their support, making me feel better when I think I’m doing it all wrong.

We have all been great friends for five years now, but I’ve definitely upped my wine intake since meeting them all. They also encouraged me to do a parenting course, and Jo recommended Incredible Years, which is a government-funded course for parents of three to eight year olds. Coincidentally there was an ad for the latest course in Seven’s next school newsletter, so I enrolled. I went to class every Tuesday night for fourteen weeks with fifteen others, to learn how to change difficult behaviour into positive stuff.

Dom didn’t come because he thought we were already doing a great job and didn’t need a parenting course, to tell us what to do. I felt the opposite. I had no confidence in my skills as a parent and, besides, Seven was quite a challenging child.

There were sixteen people in the class—mostly couples. Surprisingly, they were all normal people who, I would assume, were good parents already. At times, I found the class to be a little bit kooky and it was extremely PC, but I stuck with it.

Each week there was a topic of the week for all the discussion and activities—I remember one-on-one playtime with your child, tantrums, time out, praise and emotional coaching. We watched vignettes that were very interesting but looked as if they’d been filmed in the seventies, and we’d do role-playing, too. I found the role-playing very awkward. One of us would have to be the child and the other the parent and we would act out a scenario in front of the group. Cringe!

I learned a lot from the course and it gave me the confidence and skills I needed to care for Seven. Before I did the course I was very soft on Seven and treated him like a nephew, spoiling him and letting him do what he wanted. Now, I don’t let him get away with as much and treat him like a son. I have boundaries, we have rewards charts, and I always follow through with consequences for both good and bad behaviour. (It hurts to take the skateboard away for a day, but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind!) Since I have become a better parent, Seven has become a better child. It works both ways.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—INSTANT PARENTHOOD

I don’t think I fully appreciated just what we were taking on when we agreed to take in this little boy in January 2008. It was a Sunday and the final day of our four-week Christmas break.

The next morning, our alarms were set for 4.30 a.m. to host the breakfast show. All of a sudden, waking up so early after a month of sleep-ins was not our biggest concern—what the hell would we do with this kid? Our boss, Leon Wratt, a dad of four himself, kindly came over to look after Sev while we went into work to try and present a fun and entertaining radio show. Not the easiest job in the world when you have such complete chaos going on at home.

Since Seven came with the clothes on his back and not a lot else, we went shopping after work on Monday. We told him we would go to The Warehouse and buy him a toy, anything he wanted. Before we left the house we told him to put his shoes on. He crawled under the fold-out bed he had slept on and got them.

Puzzled, I asked him, ‘What are your shoes doing all the way back there, mate?’ He said he put them there so nobody would steal them. It was heartbreaking stuff.

At The Warehouse he was adamant he wanted a thing called a Monster Truck. Not having any prior experience with kids, we didn’t have a clue what a monster truck was so we were counting on him to point it out to us. In the end, I think he pulled a swift one on us because we ended up leaving the big red shed with a big chunky remote control car and a battery powered ride-on three-wheeler Shrek motorbike.

Initially, I didn’t think Sev was going to be with us forever. The way I saw things playing out was that Matt would do his sentence then get a job and a house, and when we were happy he had his life back on track, Sev could go back. I saw this entire process taking two or three years. In hindsight, this was all a bit too optimistic.

Seven’s growth and personal development flourished with routine, boundaries and consistency. It became clear to us before too long that he was with us for the long haul.

At the time we had no family in Auckland who we could call on to help out, which made things a challenge. But once he started school a few weeks after arriving at our house we became good friends with other parents in the neighbourhood whose advice and support we found invaluable. Since they had kids the same age as Sev we could work out which behaviour traits were because of his unorthodox start in life and which were just him being a regular bratty five-year-old boy!

I feel horrible writing this, but there were times in those first few months when Jay-Jay and I would look at each other and say, ‘Why the hell did we do this?’

Now the hard days are getting further and further apart. It has been bloody hard work but it is so incredibly rewarding to see the progress this little guy has made. I’m both excited and nervous about watching him grow up and become a man. He has a good heart and a good head. We desperately hope he uses them to make good decisions and create a good life for himself.

And rather than put me off wanting more kids, it actually made me realise just how much more rewarding life is with kids in them. And, if we may pat ourselves on the back, I reckon we are both pretty good at this parenting game.

Fourth IVF cycle

It took almost two years to get over the third cycle and build the courage and strength to try again. We had also had a lot of adjusting to do as we learned to be good parents to our nephew, Seven. It was a huge coincidence that the embryologist at FertilityPLUS, Sonya Jerkovic, was one of the mothers from Boys Club.

When I first met her at school I thought she looked familiar but I didn’t put two and two together and she never said anything to me, although I suspect she had recognised me. We were friends for a few months before I realised where I had met her before.

She thought Dom and I should try again for a fourth cycle. She said she felt confident for us and suggested we make an appointment with Neil Johnson, Medical Director at Fertility-PLUS, for an overview of our files and a chat about possibilities. Talking to Sonya about it felt safe. It was good to know a friend would be in charge of mating my eggs and Dom’s sperm—I knew she would try her best for us.

When we contacted the clinic we found out because I had ovulated early during my first cycle we were eligible for another funded cycle. Our fourth cycle would also be publicly funded, so not everything has gone against us. Really, we had been very lucky so far and had received the best of care.

Around this time we were also contacted by TVNZ’s Sunday and asked if we would be interested in having them document our next round of IVF for a story for the program. They had done a story a few months earlier about male infertility and had interviewed Dom for it. They thought covering a complete IVF cycle would be a great follow-up to that piece, so they called us and asked if we had any plans to do another round, which we did!

This would mean cameras following us on our journey so they could produce a twenty-minute story. It was a daunting prospect—IVF is a deeply personal experience, but Dom and I aren’t private people. We are hosts on the most popular morning radio show in New Zealand. We had talked about our experience of IVF briefly on air and I had written about it on my personal website, which is no longer active. So we had already shared our story publicly, but we’d been light with the details. Having a camera crew follow us to all our appointments would be far more intrusive. They would see everything!

We would be on show and although we’d talked in general terms we had never really shared our emotions with our listeners. We had a lot to think about. We wouldn’t be paid for the Sunday documentary. If we did it, it would be simply to share a rarely talked about story with the rest of the country. There had not been much in the media about New Zealanders’ experiences with IVF—mainly, I think, because not many people want to talk about it.

We decided to go ahead with it. The main reason for me came from remembering when I first heard we would have to have IVF—I felt very alone, scared and afraid. I couldn’t find much information out there that wasn’t clinical. I wanted to hear personal stories from people who had been through IVF, too.

I figured that if we did a story for Sunday, we would be of some comfort to people like us, and their families. Also, imagine how exciting it would be, if we were successful, to have an awesome documentary to show our baby one day! And if it doesn’t work . . . Well, that’s the reality of IVF and we hoped that our story would help others in the same situation.

The other reason we agreed to do it was because we liked the program and absolutely loved the producer Julia Sartorio and correspondent John Hudson. They are great people and we became friends over the time of filming. FertilityPLUS were very good about us bringing a host, a producer and a camera guy to every appointment. Although, I have to say, the first appointment, in November 2009, was the most uncomfortable because we hadn’t talked to Neil Johnson before about whether we should even make a fourth attempt and here we were with a large posse in tow. It felt a bit presumptuous when, all of a sudden, reality set in.

Having a camera in your face during private moments is not comfortable for anyone. Understandably, Neil Johnson was a bit awkward and so were we. But as time went on, we all got used to the crew and, even, at times forgot they were there. Overall, the first appointment went well and the doctor told us he thought we had a good case for a fourth round.

At that first meeting we also discussed using a sperm donor this time because of the problem with Dom’s sperm, but I wanted to have Dom’s baby—not someone else’s. It’s a whole new drama to get your head around and I felt awkward about having another man’s baby. We decided that we weren’t ready to give up on Dom’s sperm just yet!

The Sunday crew went with us everywhere, including the scanning room when I had no knickers on and my belly was swollen so that I looked as if I was already pregnant. When they asked me how I felt about it, I said, ‘I’ve always been an open person. That’s just me. I’m honest. Maybe I’m an over-sharer. I’m straight-up with people and will tell them everything.’

Around this time, we were also contacted by Fertility New Zealand and asked if we would become ambassadors for them. Dom and I were thrilled. It seemed perfect for us because here we were, in the middle of filming a doco about our personal journey through the fertility clinic for a fourth attempt at IVF, and we had already been spreading the good word about fertility issues in various media for quite a while.

Fertility New Zealand is a charitable trust that offers support for anyone going through fertility treatment, as well as for the friends and families of people going through it. They offer advice and support, provide information, run seminars and online forums, and organise coffee groups. They charge a small membership fee but members receive a regular newsletter full of interesting information and stories.

So, I started a blog for Fertility New Zealand. The blog was really helpful because I was giving advice and sharing my experience, but I was also receiving heaps of helpful advice. Hundreds of people started sharing their stories with me and every single one was different.

Dom and I often get asked why we are so open about our fertility issues and our struggle to have a baby. There are many reasons, but I guess the most obvious one is this—Dom and I work on radio. We are paid to talk about our lives and to share moments of our lives and we try to find ways to use things we see and experience to entertain our listeners. So we are not shy about talking about ourselves. I absolutely understand why people would not wish to talk openly about IVF, but because we are so used to talking freely about life and all its challenges, we don’t have any fear about sharing our personal journey.

The second reason is that it has been really therapeutic and helpful for us to talk about it. You know what it’s like when you have something you want to tell someone—it’s always a relief when you do. Maybe it’s that we are always looking to be comforted. It’s comforting to know that someone else understands what we are going through and it’s comforting knowing that we are not alone. It’s also comforting knowing there are people we can turn to when we need support.

The third reason relates to what I said earlier—when I first learned we would need help having a child, I really wished I had already known something about what was involved. We hope that by sharing our story we can help make others feel better about their situation. So, that’s why we share our story.

Two weeks into our fourth cycle, I was feeling pretty challenged as I succumbed to the drugs! I’d always prided myself on not having too many side effects but this time I was being taught a lesson. The first week and a half were the hardest as I surrendered to a non-stop headache and major lethargy. I seemed to survive on paracetamol and I kept bursting into tears over nothing. Late in the first week I had a major meltdown. Dom had set me off over something trivial—it was so silly I can’t even remember now what triggered it. I do remember it was something to do with work. So I stormed off and threw myself on the bed and cried hard.

Dom came in and asked what was wrong. ‘I’m upset!’ is all I could muster. Then I decided I was going to quit my job and I had had enough. I was imagining what my letter of resignation would read. My eyes were swollen from the tears and I just could not pull myself together. In hindsight it was ridiculous—I had temporarily lost control.

That weekend, Dom and I went to a friend’s wedding. Dom was a groomsman. The nurse at FertilityPLUS told me I should mostly avoid alcohol, but if I really felt the need I could have up to three glasses of wine a week at this stage. It’s quite hard to go through a wedding without drinking! Every two seconds, someone was asking me where my drink was or why I wasn’t drinking. One person came up and just shoved a glass of champagne in my hand. By then, I was over it. Why should I have to explain myself? Everyone seemed to need an answer, as if there was something wrong with me because I wasn’t drinking. I didn’t want to bore complete strangers with the truth so simply said ‘I’m saving myself for later.’

Once the champers was thrust into my hand, I decided to go with it and ended up drinking one at the ceremony and one at the reception. I needed something to join in the toast to the bride and groom and a glass of orange juice wasn’t going to cut it—not cool enough.

The few people who knew about the IVF got off my case about the booze, but infertility is a topic that brings the party down, isn’t it? So, we didn’t want to talk about it at our friends’ life-affirming celebration. People don’t know how to react or respond. It’s like telling people you have cancer or your mother has just died—it’s hard to make people feel at ease when you talk about it.

I didn’t particularly enjoy the champagne—I hadn’t missed drinking wine at all even though I usually love a glass or two! The thing I missed most was my daily latte. I don’t think I have a caffeine addiction, but I had developed a 7 a.m. coffee-hit habit that I’d given up in order to keep my eye on the prize!

I went for my first scan on a Wednesday to see how things are cooking down there. The TVNZ camera crew came with me, so things got a little crowded in the treatment room—the doctor was assisted by a nurse and there was a trainee doctor there, too. The doctor did her thing with the lubricated ultrasound probe and pushed on my ovaries for a close-up view of any follicles that were ripe enough to count. It was very crampy and uncomfortable and I was squirming and tensing up. She kept telling me to relax but, really, there were too many people in the room for that.

Anyway, the news was good. She counted seven follicles—five good-sized ones and two smaller ones. I have no idea how she did this because I was looking at the same screen and couldn’t see a bloody thing.

About that time, a really good friend approached me and offered me his sperm, should I need it. It was the second serious offer from a friend and about the fifth offer in total. It is an extremely generous but very major thing to offer someone. Our infertility issues supposedly lay with the sperm, so it was certainly worth considering donor sperm.

I was speechless when my friend suggested it. He would be an excellent donor, but it’s a whole other dilemma that one. If you go for a donor, do you go for a stranger or someone you know? Is it easier to bond with your child if you don’t know the real father lives around the corner from you? I wasn’t emotionally ready to deal with that yet. Dom and I were just praying like crazy—and we’re not even religious—that Dom would have the goods this time.

I spoke too soon and this time, I had to admit, maybe I was part of the problem. When I went for the second scan things weren’t as hopeful as they had been on the Wednesday. I went in hoping they might found an eighth follicle, but the news was there were only three good ones! The doctors and nurses were trying to be positive and remind me that they can work with three and it’s not a bad number, but I was gutted.

I couldn’t control my disappointment and ended up bursting into tears. The TVNZ cameras were rolling and no matter how hard I tried not to cry, I couldn’t hide my pain. It was my own fault—I got too cocky and confident hoping for another one. I felt as if I was being punished for being too greedy. I knew it wasn’t over yet—there was still a chance—but I was really sad about the way it was going. I had to go back the next day and hoped like mad the three follicles would have plumped up so they would be ripe for the picking in a couple of days.

Dom and I had our operations and they both went very well. Mine was so good that I don’t remember a single thing about it—those drugs are awesome! Dom said I was cracking heaps of jokes and was quite funny. It made me think perhaps I need to take those drugs before I go on air—maybe I can be funny on the show, too.

This time Dom remembered his op but he says it didn’t hurt. We were both walking very gingerly around the house, suffering together for our cause.

Later that day, the embryologist, our friend Sonya Jerkovic, called to tell us they had collected seven eggs and injected six with sperm. Great news—that was so much better than we had expected given the previous scan. Next morning a nurse called again to say two had died, two hadn’t changed at all, but two had done what we’d hoped—they’d started to divide. We had two potential embryos. Again, we had to wait overnight to see what would happen. Would they survive the night?

Yes, they did—both embryos survived the night! Well, one multiplied as it should and the other one wasn’t quite so promising. In fact, it was highly likely it would die, but it was decided to implant both embryos in my uterus anyway, because you just never know what could happen.

The process is painless, apart from the bursting bladder and, once again, it was incredible to see the embryos pop out of the end of the straw and nestle into the uterus. It was emotional and we felt lucky to be able to see that. Not many people can say they saw their two-day-old embryo moving inside their uterus!

Dom didn’t cry but I reckon he would have if there was no-one else in the room! Even Sonya cried. It was such an amazing moment.

The two-week wait for a pregnancy test dragged on . . . and on . . . With five days to go I was getting nervous, but was relieved to have had no signs of miscarriage. I wondered if there were any signs of pregnancy—I had a slightly sore boob for two days. I’d had a headache all that week and it hurt a lot. I’d been hungrier than usual. I’d had waves of nausea. Was I imagining those things? I just wanted a sign!

Going over the possible results in my head, I thought, If it’s negative, I’ll be utterly and completely devastated. Inconsolable. I thought about whether I’d need to take time off work. If it was a positive result, I wouldn’t want to get too excited because I’d had that news before and miscarried later. I had come so far but I really didn’t want to go through it ever again. Also, I knew I wasn’t getting any younger. I thought, ‘This has to happen now or it may never happen’. It was all too much!

With three days to go before my blood test, I woke up but felt very tired. We got up at 4 a.m. and got ready for work. We left for work as normal at 5 a.m. I dragged myself there with that horrible tired feeling I usually get on the first day of my period. By mid-afternoon the cramps set in and that night there was blood.

I can’t describe the shock. My heart was racing so fast that I was shaking. I didn’t want to panic, but I knew it was not a good sign. Dom knew, too. We both sat on the couch very quietly. I felt numb. I went to the toilet numerous times hoping it was nothing, but it was something. I texted a nurse at FertilityPLUS and she told me not to panic but to call her the next day.

By 5.20 a.m. the next morning, when I was supposed to be at my Edgy best, I was a complete wreck. I just knew it was the end and I couldn’t do a thing about it. It was all I could think about. There was no way I could go on air and pretend to be happy when I was dying inside. Dom was upset and emotional, too, and announced he was coming home with me so we walked out of the studio with heavy hearts and left Mike to cover for us again. He is such a good friend.

At 8.30 a.m. I had a blood sample taken and we waited at home, doing nothing, until 1 p.m. when we had go to the clinic for the results.

The Sunday crew were waiting for us. They weren’t there when I started bleeding, so would have to cover that part of the documentary in a voiceover or interview. They showed up to all the clinic meetings and let us film our own private moments at home with our own camera. But when I saw them in nurse Penny Lewis’s office this day, I felt nervous. All of a sudden I didn’t want them there.

‘It’s not good news. I’m sorry,’ Penny said.

My head collapsed forward into my hands and I cried and cried. Dom cried, too. We had been together for eleven years and this was only the third time I’d seen him cry. My heart was aching and I couldn’t think beyond the pain. That’s the journey with IVF—it’s a long and tortuous road to happiness and only the strong survive. The question was, how strong am I? How strong are we, Dom and me?

IN HIS OWN WORDS—FOURTH IVF CYCLE

So this is it. IVF Round 4. Twice as many rounds as Shane lasted with the Tua Man and, to be honest, I feel more beaten up than what Shane Cameron was! IVF is no picnic. It is not unbearable or anything but when you go through it and it doesn’t work, and this happens over and over and over, that really takes it out of you.

I have been telling people this will be our very last round of IVF, whether it fails or gives us the baby we both want so badly. I figure if it has not worked after four cracks, it is just not meant to be. It’s just too taxing—mentally, physically and financially!

If I am being perfectly honest about it, part of this reluctance to persist with it is guilt and shame—I am the reason we are on this insane medical journey.

Yes it sucks. Yes it is a pain in the arse. Yes it rips you to pieces when you go through all this and have nothing to show at the end of it. Yes you become a little bit more cynical and negative each time another cycle fails.

But, unfortunately, this is the reality of IVF.

Time to reassess

Five days after our fourth IVF cycle failed and we had to accept we wouldn’t be having babies anytime soon, I began to pick up the pieces of my broken dreams. The week before, when I thought I was all cried out, a friend came by with flowers and a bottle of French bubbles. She had tears welling in her eyes and I said to her, ‘Don’t you dare cry! I’ve got nothing left in me!’ The bubbles helped.

It was humbling, seeing how many friends and family cared as much as we did and felt as distraught as us. And the messages and emails I received from listeners, friends of Radiochick and blog readers were overwhelming. I wanted to reply to them all, but I simply couldn’t keep up. So many of them made me cry. Others inspired me. All of them humbled me.

I find it so hard to fathom why so many people who don’t know us personally have been touched by our journey, and I want to thank them all from the bottom of my heart. The feedback and support has meant so much to both of us and it really helped get us through the sorrow.

Neither of us knew where to go. Dom thought we needed to take a break to get our heads clear again, but I thought we should keep going while we were on a roll. We were both confused about how to proceed if we were going to carry on. Should we try again the same as before? Should we use a sperm donor next time? What about an embryo donor? Surrogate mother? Adoption? So many options . . .

So far, no-one has been able to tell us exactly what the problem is. There’s clearly more to it than the quality and quantity of Dom’s sperm. It’s frustrating because, without knowing what the problem really was, we couldn’t work on fixing it. By now, four really good friends had offered to donate sperm to us. That was huge. That would be a very difficult decision to make. And many women, most of whom we don’t know personally, have offered to carry our baby for us. It’s just crazy incredible that a stranger would offer to help in such a huge way. But I wasn’t able to think about those things. We needed to figure out what we were going to do next and into the future. We needed to seriously consider that our future might not include our own biological children!

People say to us, ‘Oh, but you have Seven.’ And we love him to pieces. But I guess the relationship with Seven is that of a step-parent to a stepson. I didn’t have the experience of being pregnant, of giving birth and bonding from day one. Instead I picked up the pieces of a five-year-old who had come from challenging circumstances. I still want my own child. One I don’t have to share with its real parents when they feel like visiting. One with that inexplicable bond that only a mother who has given birth can describe. I also don’t want Seven to continue being an only child, because he is accidentally spoilt. We have worked hard for years to live the lifestyle we want and Seven has landed right in it. So here’s a kid who has an iPad to play with at bedtime, who has travelled overseas, who has a pool and goes to a decile ten school. He doesn’t have to share with anyone, so he doesn’t really know how to. I want him to learn about love and compassion for others, and that attention needs to be shared around.

Seven is a gorgeous wee boy. I am fiercely protective of him and am so proud of how far he has come since he has been in our care. He makes me laugh so often and also pushes me to my limits at other times. He has taught me so much about myself as well, and given me a different perspective on life. I have become so much less selfish and so much more patient! And he is excited about becoming a ‘cuzzie-bro’. I don’t want to let him down.

On Sunday 30 May 2012, nineteen days after I started bleeding, the TVNZ documentary went to air. As we were filming I was thinking, How could anyone find this interesting?, but it turned out great. We got the most incredible feedback from all sorts of people—I couldn’t keep on top of all the messages. Most of them were positive, but we had our fair share of negative feedback. Some people accused us of doing it as a publicity stunt for our radio show.

I have worked in radio for 21 years, and I’ve pulled many stunts to get attention and publicity, but I can tell you, hand on heart, the doco was completely separate to my radio life. Watching ourselves on TV, we both felt slightly embarrassed, but we believe we did the right thing. Many people have thanked us for giving them insight into a topic that is largely hushed over.

Our blog was viewed about 63 000 times in 2010—we got hundreds of comments and many people shared their stories. As well as messages of support, offers of donor sperm and surrogates, the most extreme offer was a baby itself. I was surprised to find the following email in my inbox one night.

Hi Jay-Jay,

In June I found out that I was pregnant again with my 6th child. I’m only 28 and this is my eleventh pregnancy. I have had 2 Mirenas (contraception) and fell pregnant on both, 2 miscarriages, 2 abortions (hardest decision I have ever had to make) and given birth to 5 super intelligent cool kids—they are my life, the very reason I am so motivated in becoming a better mother, partner and person all together.

When I found out I was pregnant, my husband and I both talked that another abortion was totally out of the question and so we opted to adopt our baby to my brother and his partner who have been trying for another baby.

Recently I phoned my brother and his partner to let them know that we were expecting a baby girl, but their response to that was very disheartening, because it was almost as if they had totally forgotten that they were to adopt her. My brother then told me that he wasn’t sure if they could adopt her.

I love all my children but the simple matter of the fact is that I have 5 other children under the age of 9. I am studying, so my time is stretched as it is.

I’m really not sure what to do because I am due in 10–12 weeks. All I know is that I want her to have good home to grow up in, plenty of one on one attention, lots of love will come naturally from the right parents.

I am considering adopting outside of my family but am really scared, because I need to know that she will be loved and cherished for the special angel that she is.

Before I go to bed I will pray that sweet serendipity comes to play and sends all the right advice and people my way to help me out of this situation.

Some insight would be greatly appreciated.

Wow. Was this person who I’d never met offering me her baby? An actual baby girl that would be here in about twelve weeks? That wasn’t much time to prepare. But I could have a baby now if I wanted it. There was so much to consider. I spoke to Dom about it and he was excited by the thought but a little bit uncomfortable with the way it had all happened. I emailed the mother back asking her if she was serious about adopting the baby out and for some more information about herself. She seemed like a genuine woman. Very smart, and with good reason to want to give her baby away. I seriously considered this. I really wanted to go out of town and meet her so I could get more of an idea of what was coming, but then I thought I would be really committing and getting her hopes up if I met her. I started to chicken out. Adoption is an option, of course, but it’s not what I wanted at the time. I was still mourning the loss of my latest embryos and was confused as to what I wanted to do next. What we really needed right then was a holiday—we were emotionally exhausted and needed to take some time off. I booked a week away in Fiji, followed by a week in Melbourne for the middle of July. It gave us something to look forward to.

I had a few sleepless nights, but in the end I decided that if I wasn’t 100 per cent committed to the idea, I would have to tell her no.

I emailed her and she responded a few weeks later.

Hi Jay-Jay

I had a beautiful baby girl, and her adoptive parents (from up north) have named her [name withheld].

The first week was the hardest for me, the worse broken heart feeling one could imagine and feel and still today, I get this overwhelming fretfulness—if that even makes sense, I can’t quite explain in words.

But she is truly loved by her new parents and the bonus of it all is that they have asked us to still be mum and dad. They text us regularly with updates on her development, and that keeps her near to us.

All this helps our family to heal, and we realise now that it’s not a loss we have suffered by adopting her out, we have only extended our family roots by sharing such a wonderful gift and no gift greater than the gift of life.

I knew it then it was too late to change my mind, no matter how much guilt or uncertainty I felt. Dom and I started on recovering from the last round, and we decided what our next move would be. We would take a break from treatment.

The kind words coming from my blog were a great help to us both; here are four extracts from the blog that moved us and made us feel supported.

My hubby and I are currently on the IVF waiting list, waiting for our first cycle. It’s been the hardest issue we’ve ever faced and I know that keeping spirits and hopes high (while still being realistic about things!) is really tough.

It’s great to hear someone else’s journey and I just wanted to encourage you and say that you did a good thing!

—Sarah

My husband and I have lived with infertility for the last few years and there is no way either of us would have been brave enough to share our story with the country. It was bad enough that our friends and family had to know. I think it is fantastic that you have been so open about all you have gone through in your quest to have a baby.

Good luck with your next cycle.

—Tracy

I have had lots and lots of friends/family contact me today for a ‘chat’. Their main reason for calling was overwhelmingly to discuss your piece on Sunday last night. Their comments were firstly very positive and sympathetic towards you and Dom—they thought you were extremely courageous and were gutted for you both.

Secondly their comments were (in the vicinity of) ‘Now we get it Delwyn, we didn’t really understand what you were going through until we saw Sunday!’

Imagine then if this is the response I have had, how much you have educated friends and families of other couples going through fertility treatment also.

—Delwyn

When brave people like you and Dom share your stories the ‘normal’ people in this world become more educated, and hopefully, more considerate and understanding.

—Jacqui

Recovery

It took two and a half years after our fourth IVF cycle for me to begin to think about trying again. I still find it hard reading the emails of support I got during that attempt and it’s hard to see just how emotional I was at the time—it seems weird, now, that I didn’t realise just how emotional I was. And we did it all with a camera crew in tow.

It seems bizarre to me now, but I went to a party the day after our fourth cycle failed. Inevitably, someone who knew we were going through IVF decided to get to know me by discussing it. Of course, she couldn’t have known what had happened the day before. So, she wasn’t aware of the effect her best efforts were having on me. Our loss was raw and I started to get upset and then I just burst into tears and muttered ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ And then I realised I had nowhere to go.

As I looked around the room I began to panic. I ran down the hall and up the stairs where I threw myself on a couch and bawled my eyes out, all by myself. I wanted to go home but my handbag and keys were in the kitchen where everyone was gathered and I couldn’t go back in there. My phone was downstairs too so I couldn’t call Dom, who was out with other friends. I felt trapped—suffocated.

Four of my friends found me and asked if I was okay. I remember feeling like such a dick. It was obvious I was a mess. By then, I think everyone in the room knew what had happened and the poor woman who had been trying to make me feel comfortable felt terrible. It wasn’t her fault. How could she have known we’d just had another cycle of IVF fail?

I felt stupid for making her feel that way. I knew I couldn’t go back downstairs and face everyone—they’d all stare at me when I walked into the room. I wouldn’t have been able to handle the sympathetic looks. I didn’t want sympathy. I wanted to bury my head in a pillow and cry myself to sleep. One of my friends retrieved my bag and keys and sent me home in a taxi.

After feeling like a dick running away from that party, I decided I needed to get myself sorted and it’s a known fact that the healthier your BMI, the better your chances of conceiving. It was time to get rid of my tummy fat! I knew I was podgy. I had this huge chunk of blubber that sat nicely on top of my jeans and was the reason I couldn’t wear tight T-shirts!

I ate a lot of carbs and drank a bit of wine, and had battled my weight my entire adult life. It’s not that I’d ever been obese, but I was carrying about 10 kilograms more than was really good for me. For IVF, that’s not ideal.

Over the years, I’d tried Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, even the blood-type diet. They all worked reasonably well, but as soon as I stopped, the fat came back! I hadn’t weighed myself all year because I knew I was heavy and I was afraid of what the scales would say. I was scared of harsh reality! So, I waited until a Saturday morning, after a good, long sleep, got up out of bed, naked, went for a pee and then nervously hovered above the scales. No point mucking around, so on I got. The scales creaked as I put my foot down, I am not joking! So I stood, sucking in, and watching the numbers creep up . . . up . . . and away. Holy shit! I am 163 centimetres tall and my ideal weight would be 57 to 63 kilograms.

I was the heaviest I had ever been in my entire life. I’d cracked the 70-kilogram mark and the scales said I was 71.8 kilograms. I just about died. In fact I got off the scales and got back into bed, wondering how I could ever go out and face the world again. It really was time to sort my shit out.

Dom and I drink a bit of wine. We’re not raving alcoholics or anything like that, but we like a glass most nights. Dom can drink an entire bottle of pinot noir and it won’t affect him, whereas if I have more than two glasses of pinot gris, I start getting more ditzy than I already am. But then, Dom has a problem with excess. If we have chocolate in the house, Dom cannot just have one piece and leave it alone—he must consume the entire packet immediately. He can’t help himself. I have yelled at him many times when someone has given me chocolate and I have put it in the back of the fridge for my occasional cravings, but when I go to get it, it has disappeared.

It looked as if I needed to cut back on food and wine to get myself prepped for a fifth IVF cycle.

I also suffer serious stress and I know it’s not healthy. The doctors and nurses at the fertility clinics have all told me stress can contribute to IVF not working but, no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep it under control.

I know I take on too much. I attend lots of premières and parties and product launches, I do interviews, photo shoots, TV appearances, write for a magazine, visit schools, MC events and I’m Mum to my nephew and a wife to Dom.

I get up at 4 a.m. every weekday for work and I am expected to perform for the nation with high energy, entertainment and laughter for four hours every day and then prepare four hours of new material for the next day.

I’m not complaining about this, I’m just saying I do a lot of things and I have a real problem saying no, probably because I care so much about other people. I will go out of my way to help others and, sometimes, I end up bearing the burden of other people’s problems, and that can bring me down.

One morning while on air in March 2012, at a time when I had been feeling the brunt of being caught in the middle of another serious family drama and I wasn’t coping, I suddenly felt faint and nauseous. My eyes started rolling and I began to sway. Dom looked across at me and asked if I was okay—live on the air!

I looked at him and I didn’t feel at all well. I almost lied but I’m not a good liar and I felt like shit. Most of all, I wanted to get out of there. ‘I’m not actually,’ I said, live on air, and burst into tears. Then it got really awkward. Dom was silent. Mike was silent. I imagine the listeners were silent, too. I realised then I was going to have to say why I was so upset. I couldn’t think of a lie so I told the simplest truth.

‘I’m exhausted . . . I’m just so exhausted,’ and I continued crying. ‘I think I need to go home.’

It was about 6.30 a.m. Nobody tried to stop me. I grabbed my stuff, caught a taxi home, climbed into bed and didn’t get up for at least 24 hours. I did not want to go back to work—I thought I hated it. When I finally dragged myself out of bed I crawled off to my doctor—I was a wreck.

My doctor took one look at me and said I was suffering from chronic fatigue and depression. She prescribed daily exercise and Citalopram—it’s an anti-depressant similar to Prozac. I have never been one for medicating. I don’t like drugs, I don’t do drugs and I’ve always tried to avoid prescription drugs—except for battling infertility. Paracetamol and ibuprofen are as crazy as I cared to get, but she promised me I would feel so much better on these happy pills and that they were safe to be used while pregnant. As long as I could still try for a baby, I would be happy.

It was two weeks before I went back to work. We were in the last week of ratings but having clinical depression was a good enough excuse for Leon to forgive my time off work. I spent most of my day moping about the house, but I walked about 5 kilometres each day and I gradually started to feel better. The Citalopram kicked in about three weeks later and I felt good again. My head was clear. My moods were even. I suffered far less anxiety. I’d had a couple of bouts of really bad stage fright in the previous couple of years, but now I felt like my fearless old self. Unfortunately, one of the worst side effects was weight gain, and that was something I was constantly battling already!

Alternative treatment

As Dom and I began to discuss the possibility of a fifth IVF cycle, we thought back over all the free advice we’d been given—we looked at the serious stuff and the downright wacky stuff. We figured, if we went for it, it would definitely be our last shot. Although, I still say ‘Never say never’.

We decided that if we did another round of IVF we’d keep it quiet. Obviously, we would have to tell our boss and our close family and friends but we weren’t going to go public. It’s just too much pressure to share it with thousands of others. We learned this when we did the Sunday documentary.

Everyone I spoke to about IVF had some advice or wisdom to share—and I’ve heard the same is true for first-time parents. People shared miracle ways their babies came about, including losing weight, running marathons, detox, acupuncture, holistic massage, feng shui, alternative medicine and more. There are too many options and too much information for my brain to take in.

I kept it pretty simple the first four times—cutting out coffee and alcohol were hard enough. Next time I was going to look at some less conventional tips and maybe, even, some of the downright kooky ones.

I have a book at home called Make This Your Lucky Day—Fun and Easy Feng Shui Secrets to Success, Romance, Health and Harmony by Ellen Whitehurst (Allen & Unwin, 2008). I’ve never really been into feng shui, but it’s also true that I’ve never liked having a TV in my bedroom because the reflection is supposed to be bad luck.

There is a chapter in the book about fertility, and a couple of success stories of women who got pregnant after rearranging their houses according to Ellen’s advice. I decided I had nothing to lose.

‘Place a pair of wooden elephants on either side of your bedroom door.’ I bought two wooden elephants from the Trade Aid shop and placed them in my bedroom. They look out of place and ridiculous but, hey, thousands of years of Chinese belief can’t be scoffed at.

‘Sleep on green sheets.’ I did this during a previous IVF cycle so it’s not guaranteed to work, but I decided to try it again, even though I’ve never been a fan of the colour green. When I was a kid I refused to draw with a green crayon—I felt sick every time I touched one. It sounds stupid and I have no idea why I felt like that. Despite that, I bought a couple more sets of green sheets for the bed in preparation for our fifth IVF cycle.

There are other far-out suggestions in the book, but the author says if you can’t do everything she suggests, do at least one or two of them. One other warning she gives is to never vacuum under the bed while you are trying to get pregnant. In Eastern cultures, people believe the ling—soul—of your child circles your bed in its efforts to get to you.

So, figuring I had nothing to lose by trying, I slept on nothing but green sheets for months, I had two wooden elephants by my bedroom door, and dust was gathering under my bed. It’s lucky I don’t suffer from asthma!

Of all of the advice we’d been given over the five years we’d been trying, one piece stood out. So many people had recommended naturopathy and most of them had named a particular naturopath who specialises in infertility issues. Brad Crouch, who was, we’d been told, a miracle worker, can be found at Brad Crouch Naturopathic Clinic in Browns Bay on Auckland’s North Shore.

I did a bit of research with friends and online forums and found lots of glowing testimonials on the OHbaby! website. After that, we decided we’d be stupid not to give him a go.

We learned that Brad is a renowned medical herbalist, iridologist and naturopath with over 19 years’ experience in the field of infertility, including infertility management and using natural medicines to solve both male and female disorders. The results from his unique approach to infertility are really exciting.

Once we’d decided we were definitely going to give it a go, I got on the Elevit, designed to give me the right vitamin and mineral levels to sustain a pregnancy, and Dom got on the Menevit, designed to maintain sperm health. Dom took Menevit the previous time and we didn’t notice an improvement, but we were nothing if not determined to give this our very best shot.

Of course, the next thing we did was make an appointment to see Brad. We got in straightaway because it was fresh after the Christmas holidays, 19 January 2012. His office was up a flight of very steep stairs—the type of stairs you wouldn’t want to come down while you were drunk! It was a small, tired-looking room, no bigger than a standard bedroom. There was a two-seater couch, a reception desk and a giant beanbag. Brad’s son, Dallin, who is about to study naturopathy, was acting receptionist. He said his sister made the beanbag big enough to sink into but not get lost in. The walls were plastered with cards and baby photos from successful clients. Some of them were quite a few years old by then, but there must have been at least 150 of them. Dallin kept referring to them as angels. He knew how to strike a chord with new clients!

We sat down and waited. I had no idea what I was really here for or what Brad would be able to do for us. We planned to tell him our issues in brief and let him do the rest. After half an hour of waiting we were finally led into a small, sunny room with a treatment bed behind a screen on one side and a desk with three chairs on the other. It seemed to have all the standard stuff you find in a doctor’s office but it was a little more casual and felt less clinical. I felt the room could have done with a clean—it seemed old, dusty and tired.

I guessed Brad was in his mid fifties. He had an accent—South African, I thought, and made a note to ask him next time. He had a middle-aged man’s belly—big and solid, as if he liked a few beers during the week. But he’s a naturopath, so I assumed that he must be into healthy living.

He asked us to sit and then he insisted that I sit directly in front of him, with my knees between his parted legs. He pulled me in close. I felt very awkward and uncomfortable, especially since we had just met. If Dom hadn’t been there with me I would probably have felt scared!

He hadn’t asked any questions and all he knew about me was my name and that I was there for IVF issues after four failed attempts. He looked me straight in the eyes, and started rubbing my arm and pinching the skin on my hand. I joked that if I had known he was going to feel me up, I would have moisturised. He told me then that ‘dryness’ was the whole issue.

‘If I was to let out my little secret and what I know about infertility and why I’m the most successful person in fixing it anywhere, possibly in the world, it would be dryness,’ he said ‘You have no ping. Your insides are dry.’

I was sniggering. What an odd to thing to say.

‘Getting pregnant is all about wetness,’ he said. And then he joked, ‘Because you do have intercourse under water, right?’

Dom and I both laughed out loud. Not because he was particularly funny, but out of relief that he had a sense of humour at all. I need people around me to have a sense of humour—all the ‘by the book’ clinical, serious stuff is not who I am. It’s not what I’m about. Fortunately, Brad had an easy explanation.

Once you’ve had sex, the sperm are swimming. You’re supplying the mucus for them, your eggs are floating in a current of wetness in your abdomen. You release the hormone into that same wetness and it diffuses through your body. There has to be a sea and an ocean, it all happens in wet. If you’re not wet, it’s not happening.

Well, that was a lot more than I had bargained for—I hadn’t said a word yet. I was squirming the whole time because I really don’t like to talk about my sex life. Not at all, or in any detail, with anyone, not even with a man who may help me get pregnant. I’ve always been like this. I find it very uncomfortable. I don’t mind talking about other people’s sex lives and I can be very crass when I want to, but when the attention is turned on me, I’m out of my depth. I thought it was about time I interrupted him.

As far as I was concerned, wetness was not my problem. ‘Can I stop you there?’ I asked, before he embarrassed me any further. ‘Dom has retrograde ejaculate.’ Dom cut in to tell him he’d had a tumour taken out a few years ago and as a result he has dry orgasms.

I told Brad that Dom also had a very, very low sperm count and most of it was no good. Brad asked Dom to confirm he used to be able to ejaculate.

‘Yeah,’ Dom replied matter of factly, ‘All over her face. Often.’ I immediately burned up red in the face and covered my face with my hands, but Brad burst out laughing, thank God. That could have been very awkward for all of us!

I handed Brad a copy of the letter Dom got after his operation. The room was quiet for a minute or so while Brad read it, and then Dom broke the silence. ‘So what do you reckon? We’re fucked, aren’t we?’

‘Not at all,’ replied Brad. ‘We just have to work around it.’

I also said we had a problem because I didn’t seem to be able to hold embryos either. Brad took a deep breath and I wondered if we would be too much of a challenge for him. Then he called Dallin into the room. He handed Dallin a magnifying glass and told him to look into my eyes.

To do that, I removed my knees from between Brad’s and pointed them toward Dallin. He was a good-looking guy, around 20 years old, chatty but understated. He was cracking jokes but talked so deadpan it was hard to know whether to laugh or not.

I had to open my eyes wide, which is hard for me—I’m a squinter. Think Renée Zellweger! Dallin shone a light into my right eye and told me to look at it. I tried hard not to giggle. He looked through the magnifying glass and joked, ‘Yep, there’s an eye in there.’

He started rattling off issues I had according to my eyeball—weak kidneys, weak heart, a bit emotional, slight prolapse. I interrupted him.

‘Did you say “a bit emotional”?’

Dallin joked, ‘Yes, I saw you had a vagina, so I guessed you would be.’

Funny guy. I love a sense of humour, usually, but that wasn’t funny. And it got worse when Dom agreed, ‘She can be emotional. Very much so.’

I don’t think I’m overly emotional, but I know it’s hard to judge yourself. I’d never take Dom’s word for it, though—he can be quite insensitive and intolerant of any sign of weakness.

Dallin changed to my left eye. ‘Let’s see if she still has a liver with all the drinking she’s been doing . . . A big hole in the liver.’

I asked him if he was taking the piss now and he denied it, then he mumbled something about my uterus and passed the instruments over to his father. So far it wasn’t looking too good.

Brad pulled me between his legs again and started looking into my eyes. He and Dallin chatted to each other about my conditions as if I wasn’t even in the room.

‘Did you say she was emotional because of the thyroid?’ Brad asked Dallin.

‘Yeah, she has five rings,’ Dallin replied.

Brad repeated him. ‘Five rings, whispy nervous system . . . a lot of tension in her lower back.’ Now he was looking at me.

‘Does your lower back bother you?’

‘Yes. I broke my tailbone when I was fifteen. I’ve had a bit of trouble with my lower back ever since. It’s probably not even connected to my tailbone. It could be because I also have shocking posture.’

‘You’ve got a real tilt in your lower back,’ Brad told me. ‘It’s as crooked as anything.’

He talked about my uterus and how it is sensitive and, I don’t know why, asked about Nana, my maternal grandmother. I told him she’d recently suffered a stroke and had the onset of dementia. She’d had breast cancer and one breast removed, had high blood pressure and bad varicose veins, but otherwise she was fit and well.

Brad told me she was the woman I’d take after. I already knew that and it worried me—I’m paranoid about breast cancer. Brad finished looking into my eyes and wrote up his notes. ‘Adrenal fatigue, uterus congestive, lumbar tilt.’

He concluded my uterus wasn’t in an ideal condition for growing an egg. Then he said he usually tries to fix people, and he believes when they are well their fertility will return.

He said we needed to focus on my womb if we were to get any future embryo to thrive. But in order to do that, we had to work on my overall wellbeing.

He started asking me specific details about my period, which was as awkward as asking me about sex. I was squirming in my seat. ‘What colour was it? Lego red? Was it clumpy? Does it hurt?’ The questions went on and I was uncomfortable.

Then he started talking about my slight prolapse, which he said was a prolapsed bowel. I had no idea what that meant so he explained it to me. It had dropped and was sitting on top of my cervix, pushing it out of place and causing cramps and occasional pain during sex. And Dom thought it was just because he had a big penis!

Brad told me I had to lean an ironing board against the couch and lie on it upside down every night for fifteen minutes so my bowel would fall back into place. I found this a little bit hard to believe and told him I thought it sounded a bit kooky. Then he told me I also had an introverted uterus, which was news to me.

Brad said I needed to give him four months before I started my next IVF cycle. He wanted to get my insides ready and he wanted to start me on anti-miscarriage herbs before I even began the IVF treatment. He said his miscarriage rate was about one in eight and the clinic’s was about one in two—those were some pretty good odds. How could we fail?

Brad didn’t have time to gaze into Dom’s eyes on the first visit so we made another appointment. He wanted to improve Dom’s sperm quality. But he did make a passing comment that he knew why Dom’s sperm was crap. He said it was because his guts were rotten. Dom was eating a lot of junk food and running it off.

Brad told us a story about another man he saw who had rotten guts. When he first visited the clinic, everyone wondered why the place smelled of baby poo. Two weeks later, the man visited and it didn’t stink of baby poo anymore. He thanked Brad and admitted that wherever he went for the last few years, people would always complain about a smell of baby poo in the air. Not a pleasant story, but thanks for sharing, Brad.

Dom admitted he was incredibly gassy but not smelly. Brad told him it was because he has a lot of fermentation and said all that gas was like Auschwitz. ‘In a way, you’re gassing your semen to death,’ he said.

‘If we fix your guts, you’ll have between 600 and 900 per cent improvement in your sperm.’

Here I was thinking that Dom’s sperm was the problem, but Brad was convinced my eggs were the issue and wanted to really focus on that. He hadn’t finished with his assessment of me. He asked about the frequency and strength of my urine, poo, my varicose veins and then my sex drive. I told him I was 37 and had been with Dom for thirteen years—he could work it out. Dom cheekily piped up, ‘Let’s just say I could be doing better for myself!’

Brad asked about my diet. My diet wasn’t that bad, but carbs I have no self-control with. I’d always had a problem pooing, which Brad picked up on. Probably because of the carbs, I was pooing only a couple of times a week. No big deal, I thought—until now!

I was sent away with a few bottles of pills—all natural remedies. I had to take 21 pills a day, lie upside down on the ironing board and follow a new healthy-eating diet. One of the pills Brad had me on was to make me poo every day. I hoped to lose weight, but time would tell. I’d already given up alcohol and caffeine, surely I could give up bread, potatoes, rice, pasta . . . Oh man, it was going to be killer!

A week later we were back and it was Dom’s turn in the hot seat. Brad started with an examination of Dom’s moles—he’s very freckly. His advice: ‘Get some Black Salve from the internet. It kills cancerous tissue in one day.’

Looking into Dom’s eyes, Brad proclaimed that Dom had a twisted back, but nothing serious. He said people wouldn’t be paying money to come and see the man with the twisted back. Then Brad asked Dom to poke out his tongue and he described what he could see—the back half was creamy and the front half was clean. That was a sodium phosphate deficiency and had something to do with the gassy guts.

Gazing into Dom’s eyes again, Brad looked perplexed as he jokingly compared Dom’s eyes with the view he had on his recent trip to Tahiti. Beautiful! However, he said Dom’s liver wasn’t good looking—perhaps that’s the bottle of red wine Dom consumes most nights.

Brad concluded Dom’s sour guts could have something to do with him being hyper. This made sense to me. After all, Dom had a large adrenal tumour and when we first met I was convinced he had ADHD. I was so convinced I made him go to his doctor, but the doctor laughed and told Dom he was fine but I was nuts.

We were getting down to it, when Brad told Dom he had a weak vein in his left testicle and told him he’d have prostate problems when he got old. He said he’d inherited a weakness from his paternal grandfather.

‘But he lived until he was 95,’ Dom bragged.

A few months ago, Dom had had a prostate exam on air—we’d gotten a doctor in the studio to shove his fingers up Dom’s butt and he concluded that Dom’s prostate was healthy. So, Dom wasn’t too worried about his prostate.

Brad seemed to be fishing for something to be wrong with Dom but he was struggling. Dom’s a fit machine. He runs marathons. He never gets sick as such—the tumour was a medical emergency.

When Brad asked Dom how frequently he poos, I started giggling. Dom and Brad both stared at me like I’m immature and I guess I am. I don’t know why but I find any conversation about poo or periods or sex extremely uncomfortable and when I get nervous or uncomfortable I giggle. Yes it’s immature, but I can’t control it.

Brad told Dom to cut back on the starch—bananas, potatoes, bread, rice, pasta. All the good stuff, the stuff we both like. It’ll be a challenge for Dom—he was having two bananas a day. Brad can’t fix retrograde ejaculate but if he can help with Dom’s sperm production, we’ll be a calling him a miracle worker like so many of his other clients.

My social life revolves around glasses of wine with my girlfriends. It’s very difficult to avoid it. Naturally you go overboard at Christmas and New Years, but I was determined to cut back. I signed up to become an ambassador for FebFast, a fundraising event organised by the New Zealand Drug Foundation. The idea is to give up alcohol for the entire month of February—at least it’s the shortest month of the year—and raise money for deserving charities at the same time. I convinced Dom to sign up, too.

In preparation for FebFast, I stopped drinking after my first visit to Brad in mid-January. It suited me because I was trying to keep our plans for IVF on the down–low this time and FebFast provided the perfect cover story. Dom lasted three days before he caved. His birthday is 3 February and he decided to organise his own birthday present on the air—he ordered three sexy promo models in bikinis to give our car a wash while he sat watching from a fold-out picnic chair. Of course, it had beer holders in the arms. Dom had an ice-cold Pure Blonde in his hand—the beer, not a promo girl—and three hot blondes cleaning his car.

Having broken his three-day drought, he figured it was okay to drink that night, and then the next day at a mate’s stag do. He withdrew himself as a FebFast ambassador, but I continued on. Off the wine, I didn’t feel any better but I felt good that I’d stuck with it. I found myself asking friends for a sniff of their wine. Is that weird?

It’s hard work being an ambassador, though. It’s always difficult trying to get money out of people, even if it’s for a good cause. There are so many charities and so many appeals and so many people asking for help that people tend to become desensitised to it. I’m the same. Every time we have a money-can’t-buy prize to give away on air, such as a meet-and-greet with Taylor Swift, so many people email, text or call in begging for the opportunity, followed up by a sob story. Very genuine stories, of course, but when you have 30 people battling cancer wanting the same prize, you can’t help everyone.

It’s the same with fundraising. I’m well aware of this, but I had a job to do for FebFast—raising money for groups like Rainbow Youth and CareNZ to develop drug- and alcohol-prevention programs for young people. I had a fundraising page and the platform to put the word out to lots of people for FebFast, including 450 000 Edge listeners, 75 000 fans on Facebook, 15 000 Twitter followers, but still, it was like getting blood out of a stone. I wrote about it in my weekly column in New Idea and was even on TVOne’s Good Morning program, but at the end of the month I had only raised $321. I guess it wasn’t a bad sum when I compared my total to that of the Labour Party, who raised $1998, and The National Party, who raised $1560. They had a whole party campaigning for donations and I was just a party of one!

When TVOne’s Good Morning show asked me to come on to talk about FebFast, I was worried our decision to keep things quiet about a fifth IVF cycle might be blown away. I know how these things work—talking for eight minutes about giving up alcohol for charity is hardly riveting television. They would want more, and they’d be digging for it. The producer called me and asked me a few pre-questions. She asked about my nephew and I told her it was a very personal and delicate subject but, yes, I would be able to speak lightly of him. She asked me about his parents and if I had any experience with drugs and alcohol. Obviously, I did. It’s on the record that Seven’s dad has have battled addiction and, of course, that has been a huge stress on our family but I knew if I spoke about it, it could really upset the apple cart.

I can’t tell you all the details here. It’s not about me, there is an innocent child caught in the middle. I told the producer it was extremely sensitive and I understood that in order to make the interview more interesting I would need to say something about my personal situation.

In the days leading up to the interview I was a bit stressed about it and contemplated pulling out. Firstly, I get camera shy so that wasn’t helping and, secondly, I was nervous I would be put on the spot. It’s not a hard news show so I knew it couldn’t be that scandalous but how would I answer their questions by giving them something without giving them too much?

I told Dom about this dilemma and he said, ‘You don’t have to give them specific details. Be careful what you say about Seven, and just tell them we’re doing IVF. You don’t have to tell them when. But you can say it’s coming up.’ Sounds easy enough!

On the day of the appearance I arrived at TVNZ and waited at reception to be collected. The producer came and took me straight to hair and make-up. The people are very friendly and relaxed there so that helped. By the time I went into the studio to be seated and miked up I was feeling better. The Good Morning hosts, Jeanette Thomas and Rod Cheeseman, were ready to roll. There wasn’t time for any small talk beforehand and we got straight into the interview—live to air. My mouth went dry and I was so thirsty I grabbed a half-empty cup in front of me that the last guest must have used.

The hosts introduced me with talk of FebFast and how it was helping raise funds for charities helping young people with alcohol and drug problems. We chitchatted for a bit then Rob Cheeseman cut to the chase.

‘Why is this so close to your heart? You’ve got some experience with drug and alcohol abuse in your family?’

Now I was shifting awkwardly in my seat.

‘Yeah. It’s true. My nephew lives with us because . . . um . . . my brother has had drug problems and has been to prison for drug-related crimes. And um . . . yeah . . . um . . . it’s quite a sensitive subject but there are a couple of people in the family who have battled really bad drug addiction and who still are.’

My voice was wavering and I was looking down—obvious signs of discomfort.

‘It’s quite heartbreaking actually. Drug addiction breaks families apart and the person who is the addict often doesn’t see that. And I’ve never seen a happy ending for someone who is on drugs. Even if they say they want to get off them and they try to get off them, they really are caught up in this world. It takes a lot of willpower to get off the drugs but they have to think about the innocent victims as well—like my nephew, for example.’

After a bit more chitchat about day-to-day stuff Jeanette got to the next big story and we chatted about the Sunday doco, they showed a clip from it, and I confessed Dom and I were getting ready for another go. As Dom suggested, I kept it light and didn’t say when. And that was it. My mic was removed and I was ushered out of the studio.

I didn’t anticipate how big a deal my statement about doing another cycle of IVF would be. I guess I thought not many people would see me on Good Morning. I immediately got Facebook, Twitter and email messages from people offering congratulations.

I was invited to join a secret Facebook group for people going through IVF, and a woman called me at The Edge and offered to talk me through glycol nutrients. I felt exhausted at the thought of having to reply to all of these people. That’s why we were going to keep it quiet. I remember now!

I was keen to check out the secret Facebook group—it sounded like something that could help me and I also thought that, as I was about to embark on a fifth IVF cycle, I might be able to help others in return. The group had about 150 members and you had to be invited and approved before you could join. That was to protect existing members—someone may ask to join who a member knows and doesn’t want the applicant to know the member is going through IVF. I don’t know if any women have been denied acceptance but, if so, I hope they were let down gently!

It’s such a good group and we all support each other and share stories. Although there is so much heartbreak within this group, there are also quite a few success stories. Best of all, we trust each other to keep our posts private.

By the end of FebFast I was used to not drinking and decided to keep off the booze as much as possible. I’d have the odd drink here and there but where I could avoid it, I would. I’d also quit caffeine. The rest of the radio team had also quit the 7 a.m. booster. I just hoped it didn’t send our favourite local café broke.

Drinking decaffeinated tea wasn’t so bad. But I was getting serious coffee envy seeing people in my neighbourhood walking their dogs or kids on a Saturday morning with a takeaway coffee cup in hand.

Dom has also made a few sacrifices of his own to get his sperm in tiptop shape. He complained about it and was rushing me along to book in for our fifth IVF cycle so he could get back to his daily hot baths!

IN HIS OWN WORDS—ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT

I was going to go all out to make sure my sperm was the best it could be when the time came to slice my scrotum open for a third time. It takes three whole months to make sperm, so things you do today will impact on the quality of the sperm that comes out 90 days from now. I did a lot of independent research to make sure I could do everything in my power to increase our chances. Here’s what I did.

No hot baths.

If you are not a bath person this will mean little to you. Jay-Jay and I have a big old claw-foot bathtub and I love it. If time permits, I will always have a good soak in the bath rather than a shower.

No alcohol.

I am not like a roadie for the Rolling Stones but I do enjoy my red wine. Saying goodbye to this old friend for over a quarter of a year would be tough

Learn meditation.

I read that this relaxation technique could help. It seemed far-fetched but I reasoned that being relaxed and calm surely could not do any harm. I did a course on transcendental meditation or TM and still practise it today.

Wear loose fitting underwear.

Testicles hang away from the body to stay cool and tight undies risk overheating them. I’m sure plenty of men over the centuries have worn tighty-whiteys and have managed to have families but I could not risk it.

No caffeine.

The morning coffee was out, and so were soft drinks.

Pills from a naturopath.

I had a cocktail of pills to take every day—a dozen or so, to improve my sperm health.

750mls of vegetable juice every day.

I made my own and dabbled around with the formula until I came up with a taste that was okay, but not something I could not describe as delicious or refreshing. I thought it would be great for my entire body—immune system, digestive system, clearing out toxins—and reasoned that it had to be awesome for my sperm.

1 cup of sunflower seeds every day.

I read somewhere they increase sperm production so I decided to eat a cup a day. It was hard work! They may be a wonderful snack for small birds but for a human being? Not so much.

Preparing for our fifth IVF cycle

The beginning of 2012 was a busy time for us. My mum, who had been living in Waverley, South Taranaki, wanted a break from the small town so came to stay with us in the middle of March. She owns an antiques shop in the main street of Waverley but it’s not a thriving metropolis, so earning an income is hard. Also, a huge storm hit the lower half of the North Island and damaged Mum’s shop (and house). The roof came off, rain came in, stock was damaged. Mum decided to shut up shop for a while and come and stay with us in Auckland. It worked out perfectly because we were between babysitters. Our latest morning nanny for Seven got a full-time job in PR so had left us just before Christmas. We had a friend helping us out until we found a replacement, but with Mum living in our house she could look after Seven in the mornings and we would save a few hundred dollars a week!

Mum ended up staying for most of the year, until about November. She loves cleaning and got a few jobs cleaning houses in the area. Another bonus of having Mum at home—I didn’t have to clean my toilets anymore!

Dom was adamant we should try Fertility Associates for our fifth cycle. The original doctors at Fertility Associates, Richard Fisher and Freddie Graham, introduced in vitro fertilisation to New Zealand in 1983. Fertility Associates went on to become the largest provider of fertility services in New Zealand. I had to agree with Dom—it was time to try something new.

It had been almost two years since our last cycle so I called Fertility Associates and made an appointment with the legendary Doctor Richard Fisher. He saw us within a couple of weeks. Our first appointment was for 8 May 2012.

At Ascot Hospital we took the lift to the third floor. When the doors opened I immediately thought, Wow.

FertilityPLUS is in the public sector and the clinic is at Greenlane Hospital. It’s quite small and dowdy in comparison to Fertility Associates, which is spacious, bright, clean, modern and expensive looking. There’s money to be made in baby-making! The walls were curved and the couches were curved, too. There was a lot of space so you could sit far enough away from other waiting couples to feel comfortable. At Fertility PLUS, there were about ten chairs in the waiting room, all next to each other, so your elbows often brushed other waiting couples, which was awkward in a room where no-one speaks to each other. It’s not like a normal doctor’s surgery waiting room where children play on the floor and you may smile across at a waiting patient and maybe even get chatting. Nobody talks to each other in a fertility-clinic waiting room. It’s a bit weird because we’re all there for the same reason and we all know why we are there.

Richard Fisher glided out of his office and walked toward us beaming. My heart leaped because I had seen him in magazines and on TV so many times that it felt like I was meeting a celebrity. I meet a lot of celebrities in my job but I still get excited! Richard reached his hand toward us for a handshake and said, ‘It’s great to have some celebrities in here.’ What? Celebrities—us?

He said he’d seen our Sunday documentary and quite a few of his clients had made reference to it. Here I was excited to meet Doctor Fisher and he was equally excited to meet us—that was unexpected. He led us into his office and we sat down on the couch.

Dr Fisher asked us lots of questions about our previous IVF cycles. I didn’t realise how bad my memory was until then. I really struggled to recall lots of important details so we decided to get our files from FertilityPLUS sent over.

I asked Dr Fisher what he thought about acupuncture and visiting a naturopath. So many people swear by both and I wanted to make sure I had done everything I could to help us succeed. He explained to me that even though some people have success, he questioned whether they could put it down to acupuncture, massage or reading a book, but he agreed that taking the time out just for you is beneficial. You needed relaxation time and time to de-stress. And if acupuncture made you believe you were doing the right thing, go for it. I decided then and there that a massage sounded like a much better idea than acupuncture.

After a bit more chitchat about the possibilities of a cycle of IVF at Fertility Associates, we were sent to meet one of the nurses for even more information. Linda Taylor took us into a room and gave us an information kit with a DVD, a magazine and a price list. She confirmed Dr Fisher would get our files from Fertility-PLUS and have a meeting with all the surgical team and doctors to determine which course of action to take. She told us to expect a phone call later in the week. Our appointment took half an hour and cost $230. Medically assisted baby-making is not cheap.

Eight days later, on the following Wednesday night the phone rang. It was Dr Fisher. He said he’d looked at our records and thought it wouldn’t be unreasonable for us to try again. However, he warned us we’d have to reduce our likelihood of success based on the number of cycles we’d already had and the fact that two of them ended in miscarriage, even though we’d had good-quality embryos.

At thirty-seven, my chance of getting pregnant would normally be 35 to 45 per cent, but the team at Fertility Associates felt my chances were at the lower end and would only be 35 per cent—the same chance as a 40 year old.

Dr Fisher thought that the improvements in technology since our first attempt would help nurture better embryos, but he thought our problem was more likely to be about the sperm than the egg—the opposite to what Brad Crouch had said.

Dr Fisher couldn’t be sure—he thought Dom’s sperm should be okay, but testicular sperm can’t be tested for DNA integrity. We agreed to testing Dom’s hormone levels to determine if he was still producing sperm.

We also discussed other options. Things get more complicated when you consider using donor sperm or egg.

At our next appointment I told Dr Fisher we had been taking vitamins from Brad Crouch. He jokingly asked if we rattled when we walked down the street.

‘We’re all ready to go!’ I announced.

Then he talked about how he’d like to proceed. I’d had some basic blood tests, including for anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH). The test for AMH gives an indication of how many eggs a woman has in reserve at a given time—we are all born with a finite number. Dr Fisher said this time he’d like to try a ten to twelve day course of injections leading up to egg collection. This time he felt there was little difference and he wanted to focus on quality over quantity.

With the long cycle the ovaries are, more or less, put to sleep and then woken up again. With the short cycle, the ovary stays awake and when it’s ready to rock the team set to work. I wondered why no-one had suggested this to me before and Dr Fisher pointed out that it was a reasonably new practice—it’d only been around for about three years, and his confidence in it was increasing.

I told him I’d started taking Citalopram two months earlier and he assured me it would not effect IVF outcomes or pregnancy. He also confirmed that Dom would need to have another TESA and his sperm frozen in advance—there’s no difference in outcome whether you use fresh or frozen sperm and it takes the pressure off us if we’re not both under the knife at the same time.

Dom always squirms when he thinks about his nuts being cut open, even though he’s in la-la land when it happens. While we are waiting to see Dr Fisher’s nurse, Linda Taylor, to talk through the next steps—mainly payment—I admitted to being excited all over again and asked Dom how he was feeling.

‘Oooohhh, nervous now! I don’t want to get my nuts chopped into again,’ he squealed. Then he joked, at least with a short cycle, if it didn’t work we could book in quickly and have another go.

We agreed that, at $12 000 per go, we’d have to think about that later and, anyway, we shouldn’t be assuming it wasn’t going to work. After all, we were in a new place, with fresh ideas and a different approach.

Talking to Linda we were told we needed fresh blood tests—all the usual, including HIV, HBV, Rubella, HCV, VDRL/TPHA and other things I had no idea about. She gave us consent forms, a couple of dates for follow-up appointments, some brochures and the payment options. Ouch.

Payment options? We’d been lucky enough to have government funding up until then and had not understood the real costs of all the treatment we’d had. When we found out it was going to cost $15 000—much more than we expected—we were surprised. Luckily, we had exactly $15 000 saved up but it hurt to empty out the savings account.

But the most important thing Linda explained to us was how the shorter cycle works—my egg collection would be within two weeks of the first day of drugs. The second-most important thing was the different drugs I’d be taking this time—Gonal-F again and Cetrotide, an alternative gonadotrophin-releasing hormone antagonist.

Linda explained I’d have to mix the Cetrotide myself, starting on day six, and I would have to go into the hospital to be monitored for 15 minutes after taking it for the first time, because many years ago someone had a serious reaction.

I asked Linda what she thought about taking False Unicorn root—Chamaelirium luteum—recommended by Brad Crouch as an anti-miscarriage herb. She said the question to ask was whether or not it would react with the IVF drugs I was about to start taking. I certainly didn’t know the answer and neither did Linda.

I believe in naturopaths and I pointed out that Brad had been adamant that False Unicorn root would be fine but, at the end of the day, I had just paid $15 000 to Fertility Associates so they had my full attention. When Linda called me later to say Dr Fisher advised I stop taking the False Unicorn root, I stopped taking it.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—PREPARING FOR A FIFTH IVF CYCLE

We had mutually decided that the fifth round of IVF would be our last one and, through luck, if that is the right word to use, it was going to be the first round we would pay for. It ain’t cheap—it was going to cost serious money—so we were throwing absolutely everything at it, leaving no stone unturned.

First we would get some new people on board. We decided to go with Fertility Associates and Dr Richard Fisher. Whenever there is a story about IVF, sperm or fertility, he is the go-to guy for a comment. He is thought of as a rock star in fertility circles. Jay-Jay was reluctant to change because of the relationships she had formed with the staff at FertilityPLUS, but I thought it was time for some fresh ideas. When the All Blacks lose four games in a row, the coaches make changes, or do things differently. If we did the same things with the same people, we could end up with the same outcome!

There was no guarantee this new crew could help us get a different result but there was no way I wanted us to end wondering if there was something, anything, we could have done differently.

Dom’s delivery

As the day for Dom’s TESA approached, you’d be forgiven for thinking he was about to give birth. Here are some typical Dom comments about the impending operation, even though it wasn’t going to take longer than half an hour unless the little buggers are hard to find.

‘I’m getting my nut sack cut open again!’

‘I haven’t been able to have a hot bath in ages because I’m getting my balls chopped into!’

‘There’s no point going to this party if I can’t drink. Humph!’

Dom wants a baby more than anything but he also wants it known that he’s not happy about making this sacrifice. I reminded him that if I was lucky enough to get pregnant, I would not be drinking for a year, I would get fat, I would have stretch marks, morning sickness, haemorrhoids and whatever else comes with pregnancy and then I’d have to push the baby out. I also told him I was certain I’d rather trade all that stuff for a trip to la-la land and a half-hour operation of just one small incision even if it is in a place most people don’t see.

Dom was booked in for his TESA at 2 p.m. on 31 May with strict instructions not to eat after 8.30 a.m. that morning. That meant it was work as usual and, while we were in the studio with a song playing, I asked our co-host, Mike Puru, how he thought Dom was feeling.

‘No man wants to get his nuts cut into,’ he said in support of Dom.

I considered getting a medal made up for Dom, for when he came to after his operation—he clearly thought he would deserve it. In the end, I made a note to myself to be more sympathetic and, maybe, buy him a get-well card for afterwards.

We arrived at the hospital and were led into a private room with a couch and a relaxing-looking chair with a built-in side table. We were given a few forms to fill in—consent forms for IVF, TESA and the freezing and storing of sperm. Some of the questions on the form seemed really hard to answer right at that point, but we had to do it.

Should the woman die and embryos are stored: will Fertility Associates dispose of the embryos OR will the embryos be made available to the partner?

Tough one. Did I really want Dom putting our embryos in another woman and having our children long after I’m gone? Would he even want the embryos after I’m gone? We decided the answer was yes.

Should the woman’s partner die: will Fertility Associates dispose of the embryos OR will the embryos be made available to the female partner?

Same dilemmas. But we agreed that the living partner could have custody of the embryos should we be lucky enough to have any spares.

And then the big question,

How many embryos to transfer?

Well, first of all, we’d only had one embryo in cycles one and three, and two in cycle four good enough to implant. And we have no reason to expect to be inundated with embryos this time. Shirley Greenwell, the nurse with us at that stage, told us we’d need to decide if we would want one or two embryos implanted and the answer would depend on whether we were open to multiple pregnancy. She reminded us that it came with added risks. Multiple pregnancy? Beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes, but I preferred just one for now, thanks! However, I asked Shirley if we could make that decision later and she said that would be okay.

What should the clinic do with any eggs or embryos that are not viable? Dispose of them, let us take them home in a jar, or donate them for training purposes?

Dom joked, ‘You can poach them, do what you want with them. Put some hollandaise sauce on them, if that’s how you like your eggs!’ Gross. What a thought. Actually, we quickly agreed that leaving them for training purposes was a good move so student doctors and nurses could learn how to handle them.

Shirley explained what would happen in the operating room—sticking a line in Dom to give him some drugs. Dom wanted to request the doctor operate on his left testicle. He gets phantom pain in his right and thought it might be a good idea to provide a bit of balance.

A man Shirley called Bert popped in to say hello and introduced himself as our embryologist. Later, Shirley told us everyone calls him Crazy Bert, not to make us nervous—not at all!

We were also introduced to Annie, who was to be our very young and pretty theatre assistant. Dom’s eyes lit up. ‘Oh cool. You’re about to see my nuts!’ he joked. Annie laughed. Thank God, these people weren’t all serious and stuffy—I just wouldn’t cope and nor would Dom.

Crazy Bert, in his broad Gavinish accent, asked Dom for his full name and date of birth. Dom replied and asked if he was making sure Dom hadn’t sent a stunt double or imposter. Bert said, ‘Yes,’ then asked Dom to confirm he was having a TESA. Dom thought he said TASER. Ouch. We all laughed—there was a lot of nervous giggling coming from Dom and me that day.

Dom confessed he’d prepared for the operation by shaving himself ‘down there’. Oh my God. He can be so embarrassing. Luckily, everyone found it amusing. Then everyone left the room and we were alone.

‘That was a whirlwind introduction!’ I said. ‘It’s like a well-oiled machine around here.’

Not long after, we were taken into the operating theatre where Dom wandered into theatre in his hospital gown tied at the front with just his undies underneath. There, he was asked to lie down on the bed. The nurse asked me to help her pull Dom’s undies down. It was quite amusing as we each had one side of his undies and shimmied them down his legs, and off.

Then the nurse threw a surgical sheet with a hole in it over Dom to cover him from the waist down. Dr Fisher was ready to go and started by pulling Dom’s penis and testicles up through the hole in the surgical sheet. The operation went well and Dr Fisher was very pleased with the results—six straws of sperm.

Bert the embryologist told us he found hundreds of thousands! I was really excited but, all of a sudden, I was scared. What if it worked? I’m not used to it working. What if I actually had a baby? Wow!

I was recording the operation with my microphone and we used some of the audio to play back on our radio show the next day—we’re always looking for original content! And, yes, we’d said we wouldn’t tell people we were doing IVF, so we told our listeners Dom was doing this in preparation for our next cycle, whenever that may be. Mike Puru, our co-host, started the ball . . . ha ha . . . rolling.

‘I’ve got a theme song for you Dom.’ And then he hit off that ghastly AC/DC song ‘I’ve Got Big Balls’.

‘That’s really inappropriate, Mike,’ I said ‘Take that song off!’

‘He’s talking about soccer balls, and tennis balls and snooker balls,’ Mike tried to convince me.

‘Keep it clean, please,’ I begged. ‘That’s unlike you.’

Mike was laughing. He thought he was being hilarious. Dom thought he needed to explain why Mike was playing that song.

What followed was a rare thing—Dom, ever the joker, the prankster and the chief piss-taker of our trio, talked frankly to our listeners.

‘I was away on Thursday because I had a surgical procedure on that particular part of my body. It was a thing called a testicular biopsy.’

Mike shuddered aloud.

‘And this was all part of IVF,’ Dom continued. ‘For couples with fertility issues, this is the process you have to go through if you want to have a baby.’

‘Not everyone has to get the operation there,’ I interrupted.

‘No, luckily . . . It’s a reasonably unpleasant procedure, which I won’t get into in great detail, but it’s probably similar, I’m guessing, to a vasectomy, which is something no guy looks forward to, let’s be blunt about that,’ said Dom.

‘But a lot of guys do it and they survive through it, Dom,’ I reminded him. ‘They put a pack of frozen peas on it and then they’re off again.’

After a bit more discussion, Dom said, ‘This is likely to be the very last one’. He’d done it again—told the world we were about to make a final attempt at IVF. I shouldn’t be surprised—he says it every time. I, too, hoped this would be our last attempt because I was hoping we would have a baby at the end of this cycle.

‘It does your head in, Mike,’ Dom said. ‘It’s kind of like gambling in a way. It’s $15 000 for a round. Fortunately, we have qualified for funding until now. But now that we have to pay for it ourselves, you have to think, “How often will we try?” when you’re paying $15 000 a time.

‘We’re kind of lucky because we’re both working and we’ve both got pretty good jobs so we can come up with the money. A lot of couples can’t unless they re-mortgage the house or sell a car or something.

‘So, anyway, since the beginning of the year I have been going hard out. I’ve cut alcohol out of my diet, stopped having hot baths . . . and I love baths, hello ladies! I’ve been having a cup of sunflower seeds every single day just because it’s good for you.’ Dom went on to tell the listeners about all the other things he’d done to prepare his sperm and finished with, ‘I’m pleased to say, sperm count pretty good!’

Mike asked him for a ballpark figure and a comparison with last time.

‘Last time it was in the hundreds,’ Dom said. ‘This time about a million.’

Mike has been our friend and colleague for the duration of our relationship so he knows what we’ve been through together. ‘Go, You!’ he cheered . . . ‘So all of those things you did may have worked?’ Mike asked.

‘Maybe,’ Dom said. Then he talked about the good job Dr Richard Fisher had done.

‘Or Dick Fisher, as you call him when he’s fishing around in your balls for sperm,’ I joked.

‘So that’s the first hurdle jumped. Now it’s up to Jay-Jay, and her part of the process gets underway soon,’ said Dom. But he made another play for sympathy. ‘I tell you what though, mate—taxing! It takes a lot out of you.’

‘You’ve been bouncing around alright though, Dom. I forgot you had an operation,’ said Mike.

‘I’m still sore!’ he complained. ‘They sent me home with a box of paracetamol. Can you believe it? It’s like, come on, who are you kidding? You just opened up my scrote!’

‘You can’t still be sore!’ I protested. ‘You’ve been running!’ Dom had been running every day, training for the New York Marathon later that year, in November.

‘Ha ha, yes, but I’ve been wearing a tight speedo, he replied. Then, in another rare radio moment, Dom bared his soul.

‘But listen, there is nothing more exciting, and there is nothing that I absolutely want more in this life than to have my own family, my own kids. And if this doesn’t work I’m going to be devastated, and if this doesn’t work I’m not sure what we’ll do next. And this is something that unfortunately a lot of couples go through these days.’

It was not like Dom to go all serious on us on air. It was compelling.

‘Who knew he had a soft side?’ I whispered on air. ‘This is what I tell girls who say to me, “What do you see in that asshole?” Then I tell them, “He’s actually quite nice in real life!”’

Mike giggled.

Dom started reading text messages that were coming in from listeners and to provide balance he read messages of support and ones that thought we were talking crap. Yeah, there’s always a few haters that get through!

I looked down at the phones and saw they had all lit up, like a Christmas tree.

The first caller, Siobhan, was positive.

‘Hi, guys, I just wanted to say I hope everything works out for you and Dom this time around because it is a special time in your life when you’re trying to have a family.’

Dom replied, ‘There have been mixed texts. Some people say “I tune to The Edge because I want to hear good music and entertainment not all about some dude’s scrotum.” You know we don’t go on about these things but we sort of feel that you invite us into your house in the morning so we need to share a little bit of our lives with you.’

Mike and I were surprised by Dom’s sincerity that day and Mike tried to lighten the mood by hassling him about it. ‘Did Dr Fisher operate on something else while he was at it?’

Dom continued with his serious face.

‘I’m 38 years old and if this doesn’t work, we just won’t be able to have our own family. You know, you reach this stage in your life and you realise that you may not be able to have your own family, which makes you realise just how much it means to you. If I can’t have my own family it’s going to feel like my life is incomplete and for the rest of my life it’s going to feel like there is a big part missing and that’s a big thing to deal with.’

‘Really?’ Mike was surprised. ‘It’s sad you think like that. I’m a gay man and I never have that choice to have my own family, but I don’t feel like my life’s incomplete.’

‘We’ve still got Seven!’ I reminded him. ‘He’s hard work but he’s a little cutie!’

I answered another call, this one from Julia.

‘Hi, I feel sorry for you guys. I’ve got a daughter going through the same process. She’s got children by a previous marriage, but she would like to have one with her new partner, so they have had to resort to IVF like you. And I just hope everything works out for you because years ago I volunteered to be a surrogate mother for a friend, but in those days you couldn’t do it. So it’s pretty tough knowing that there are people like you and Dom who would probably love to have a large family. But if you go on IVF you could have eight multiple births! Ha ha ha. I don’t think that would worry you two would it?’

‘Umm . . . it would actually!’ I laughed. And for a second I think about it. Ouch, be careful what you wish for!

‘No it wouldn’t!’ Julia argued. ‘Jay-Jay, if you were told you were pregnant with twins, you’d be over the moon.’

‘Well, my mother wouldn’t be moving out, that’s for sure!’ I laughed. ‘And I’d never lose the baby weight!’ After an ad break we were back on the air and we’d had a lot more feedback.

‘I wasn’t going to talk about it this time,’ I said awkwardly.

‘I just feel uncomfortable talking about it’ . . . sigh . . . ‘I don’t know why. I just feel like people are sick of us talking about it. I don’t want to bore people and tell them all my problems.’

‘But it’s relatable to a lot of people,’ Mike quipped.

Dom chipped in. ‘There’s two camps. Whenever you talk about it you’ll get people who text in saying, “Ah, it’s a radio station. Play some music,” but, you know, I feel, like, an obligation. People have us in their cars, in their workplaces, in their homes, we like to share with you what’s going on in our lives from time to time.’

I agreed with Dom. Then we took a call from Nicky.

‘You guys have made me cry. It’s nice to hear a man who is so keen to be a father because you hear of so many that aren’t. That don’t give a shit. That don’t care they’re fathers and leave children all over the place, and here you have one that wants to be a dad. Jay-Jay, you’re a very lucky woman.’ I had to agree with Nicky, given my own experience of Absent Father Syndrome—it’s rife in my family.

I said, ‘There are a few dads between my siblings and none of them have been around. They’ve all just taken off and left all the responsibility with the mother. It’s so gutless and makes me so angry.’

Dom rescued me by lightening the mood, ‘I’m a doting dad! I just can’t have any kids!’ We all laughed because it was true. ‘I’m walking around with one of those empty front packs on like the dude in “The Hangover.”’

Then we took a call from Amy. ‘Hi guys. I think it’s good that you’re sharing your story. I listen to you every morning on my drive to work, and it’s usually fun and laughs and making fun of each other. But when I heard you this morning talking about your struggle to have a baby, it actually broke my heart. You guys put up such a good front and we don’t actually realise what you’re going through. I think it’s good to share your story.’ I almost felt like crying.

‘We need the next generation of good radio, so come on guys!’ Amy laughed.

The next call was from Charlie, who sounded like a hard case, macho, Maori bloke. He was calling to brag about his fertility and to recommend we take up smoking weed because it worked so well for him.

‘So, what are you saying exactly, Charlie?’ I asked, because I wanted to be sure.

‘Go get high and see what happens after that!’

‘Not quite the advice I got from our fertility doctor, Richard Fisher, but I’ll run with that Charlie!’ joked Dom.

The last call we took was from Charlotte.

‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m doing my midwifery degree at the moment and we’re using your IVF doco from the Sunday program for education.’

‘Really?’ I asked. ‘What are you studying it for, in particular?’

‘Just the different treatments around . . . And a lot of people in New Zealand struggle with fertility so it has been really good to have your documentary as a resource.’

Wow! How about that?

IN HIS OWN WORDS—DOM’S JOB

Testicular sperm aspiration—just saying the words out loud is enough to make a man wince and cup his genitals. A lot of men have vasectomies and most of them will have put it off for as long as possible out of fear and nerves. I imagine the TESA is much like a vasectomy. For me, the build-up is horrible—it’s just about as bad as the recovery.

I wonder why they can’t come up with an anaesthetic pill instead of the giant needle that goes into the ball sack—just that thought is bone chilling! Once my nuts are numb, the doctor slices into my scrotum and scrapes out some skin tissue that should contain sperm and then stitches me shut. The whole procedure is real quick—it’s all over in about twenty minutes.

I’d be a terrible liar if I told you it was quick and painless. Arriving home wearing a pair of mesh-bandage underpants with instructions to take things very easy for at least a week—cancel that mechanical bull ride—is a pain in the arse. Still, the relief after having it done is huge.

Luckily, most men going through IVF or ICSI don’t need to have their nuts cut, but having the TESA at least meant I felt like a participant in the IVF process rather than just being a cheerleader from the sideline.

Fifth IVF cycle

This section is a diary I kept of our last IVF cycle. It’s something I wish I had done since we first began treatment. In the beginning, as a radio host, I relied on sound recordings. Later, all the excitement and disappointment of our fourth IVF cycle was recorded by the Sunday team and broadcast on prime-time television.

Each time we start an IVF cycle, Dom and I talk about whether we’ll have the strength to try again if it doesn’t succeed. This was our fifth cycle and each one takes its toll. In case this turned out to be our last, I decided to keep a written day-by-day diary, which I’m sharing here.

It’s in two parts. The first part covers the first thirteen days and ends with egg collection. The second part follows the progress from then on, including fertilising the eggs with Dom’s sperm and the development of embryos, the transfer back into my uterus, implantation and testing for pregnancy.

EGG COLLECTION DAY ONE—16 JUNE 2012

I have never been so excited to get my period. I felt the aches coming on overnight and I couldn’t wait for the morning for the first sign of blood. Usually I’m whingey and moany because of the cramps, but today was different. At the first sign of red, I was ecstatic. The baby-making begins today. I waited about an hour to go to the toilet again to be sure before calling the nurses’ answerphone.

‘Hello, Nurses. Jay-Jay Feeney here. Guess what? It’s Day One! I’m soooo excited! So call me back so I can come in and get my jabbing stuff. Eek! Bye!’

Perhaps I was a little over the top but I couldn’t hide the way I felt.

At the start of my previous four cycles, I had always felt nervous and anxious, but this time was different. I had a good feeling, but I certainly didn’t want to jinx it. Anyway, I’d already imagined our baby and I’d never done that before. Perhaps it was the Citalopram the doctor had prescribed but this time I was feeling relaxed. Why hadn’t I taken that stuff earlier?

The nurse called back within an hour and I was bouncy on the phone. She seemed to be going through the motions. She hadn’t picked up on my excitement and used her serious tone, checking off the set questions before finishing with, ‘Okay. We will need to book you in for a few things,’ before rattling off the list.

I needed to visit the clinic today or tomorrow to pick up the Gonal-F I was going to have to inject myself with tomorrow night and to get some scans and blood tests taken. ‘I’ll see you within the hour,’ I told her and hung up.

For the rest of the day I kept checking to see if I still had my period. How much blood determines a period? I had enough blood to know I had my period this morning but then all through the day I was dry, but by that evening it had started again. Is it really Day One? I am confused.

DAY TWO—17 JUNE 2012

I woke with the same amount of blood as the day before and I’m tired and achy. Yep, this feels like the real deal. But it’s not a lot of blood. Is today Day One? I called the clinic. The nurse returned my call and I felt like an idiot.

‘I was so excited yesterday!’ I told her. She understands and knows it is hard to be sure of a Day One, sometimes, but we decide to go ahead as planned. I feel relieved.

Dom and I take Dom’s mum, Sue, who lives about 500 metres from our house, to brunch and she is very excited at the thought that we could have a baby soon. ‘I’m trying not to get too excited,’ she tells us. ‘But I’ve got a good feeling.’ Everyone says that every round of IVF and this time I feel relaxed and optimistic, too.

Jumping the gun, Sue asks us if we will find out the sex of the baby. It’s not something I’ve really thought about before but I don’t like surprises—I like to be prepared and organised, so I think the answer is yes.

Plus, Dom would not be able to help himself, either. And forget keeping it a secret. That’s also a flaw of Dom’s—he’s no good at keeping a secret. Dom joked that I’d give the game away, too, by buying so much stuff online in either pink or blue. I didn’t argue with him about that.

It’s recommended women have a BMI of 20 to 25 when doing IVF. I have tried so many times to lose weight for this, but I keep falling off the wagon because I love carbs and I don’t exercise much. I go in three-month bursts of a new exercise regimen and then I quit. It’s so irritating—I could slap myself.

I know I have major body-image issues. I can’t help it—I hate my body, but today I weighed myself for the first time in months. Without the happy pills I would have cried. I’m the heaviest I have ever been. I’m only 163 centimetres tall—or short, as the case may be—so my BMI is not ideal. I reckon I could do with losing about 10 kilograms and if the IVF doesn’t work this time, I will hate my body even more. I will blame my chubbiness. It’s too late now. What will be will be.

I’ve decided that I will take my injections at 6 p.m. each night. By then, I’m usually in my comfiest stay-at-home gear—track pants and bed socks. My phone alarm lets me know when the time has come. I wash my hands and lay everything out on the bench. I should be an old pro at this but it has been two years since I last did IVF so I need to be reminded. Luckily, I have just watched the DVD the clinic gave me that shows each step of administering Gonal-F.

My mum and Dom are in the lounge and I hadn’t realised Dom is watching me until he yells out, ‘Ooh!’ just as I am hovering the needle over my stomach.

I plunge the needle into the chunk of tummy fat I’m squeezing. The needle doesn’t hurt going in at all. It starts hurting as Gonal-F passes through the needle and into me. Yep, that stings. I withdraw the needle and immediately put on some SkinCalm cream, as recommended by a friend of mine who is a nurse. Instantly, the sting is gone. Thank you, Carmel, that’s the best tip, ever! Dom and Mum cheer and I feel as if we’re off to a good start this time.

Not long after the injection I start to feel quite crampy and bloated but I put it down to period pains. I also have a killer headache. That’s right, I remember now. But I’m excited so I’ll get over it.

DAY THREE—18 JUNE 2012

When the headaches are still happening by the third night of injections, I know it has something to do with the drugs. I’ve already got my first bruise from my second injection and figure it won’t be long before my stomach looks like it’s been in the ring for a round or two with Chris Brown.

I have to go to Fertility Associates in three days to start a second drug called Cetrotide, which means we are entering new territory. I have stay for fifteen minutes to be monitored.

I’m having my first scan on Saturday morning so I book in for a bikini wax. Do you think the doctor will notice the effort I went to? Hopefully he just thinks I’m naturally well groomed!

I am not a religious person at all, but almost every cycle of IVF I have received mail from someone wanting God to help me conceive. I have to admit, the letters are always a bit wacky and they usually include an offer to pray for us. I’m always flattered when people take the time to write to me, but I also feel it would be hypocritical of me to ask people to pray for me when I do not pray myself.

DAY FOUR—19 JUNE 2012

So far, while we’ve been having IVF treatment, Dom and I have been offered up to a dozen donations of sperm, a few eggs, quite a few surrogates and so far one baby. Today, I was offered another baby.

My immediate feeling was of concern for the sixteen-year-old girl, who’d found out she was pregnant and was terrified of telling her father. She wanted to do the right thing, and I wanted to be able to give her the right advice. But I was torn, wondering if it was a sign. Should I take the gift that was being offered or continue on my IVF journey? I didn’t think I could do both.

After exchanging a few emails, I was relieved to hear she had decided to tell her dad so they could make decisions together and she could get the family support she needed. I’m not sure I want to open the can of worms and take this one on.

DAY FIVE—20 JUNE 2012

Dom, Seven and I go out for brunch together. It’s also our wedding anniversary—Dom and I have been married for eight years and we’ve been trying for a baby for seven of them. On the way, we stop by our favourite magazine shop. I didn’t intend to, but I find myself in the parenting section. It can’t hurt, can it? I’m not pregnant yet but I want to get into the zone!

We also celebrate that night with a romantic dinner out. Of course, since we work together and live together, by the time dinner comes we never have anything left to talk about. So, we use the opportunity to discuss our thoughts on this round of IVF. Dom is having a red wine and I am seriously jealous—my mouth waters. But then I think of my growing eggs and snap out of it.

At the end of the discussion we agree neither of us wants to think about what we’ll do if this cycle doesn’t succeed.

DAY SIX—21 JUNE 2012

So, I’ve been taking Gonal-F for four nights and have to go to Fertility Associates to take my first dose of Cetrotide to stop me ovulating. It’s a more complicated process because I have to mix it myself and then inject it. I do all of this and as soon as the injection is over, a red rash about the size of my palm appears around the insertion point.

It’s itching like crazy but I’m not allowed to scratch it. Why did I not bring my SkinCalm cream with me? All I want to do is scratch it. After about ten minutes the nurse tells me I am reacting as per normal and sends me home. I drove myself there so I’m driving home uncomfortably, just dying to lift my top up and give myself a good scratch, but I suck it up. When I get home I take a look at it and it is not pretty. A welt about four centimetres across has formed. I show Dom and he feels my pain—awesome. It even looks sore but I’m pleased the pain, itching and swelling die down after about 45 minutes.

DAY SEVEN—22 JUNE 2012

I woke up in the morning with the hugest and darkest bruise I have ever had. It’s about 5 centimetres long and 2 centimetres wide and it’s dark purple. It looks like the really bad hickies fourteen year olds give each other. It looks a lot more painful than it feels but it reminds me how brutal this whole IVF game is.

It’s quite an impressive thing to show off to people at work. I say, ‘Do you want to see my IVF bruise?’ and, without giving them a chance to respond, I whip up my T-shirt. Everybody steps back with a wince. It cracks me up every time.

I begin to get the feeling there’s some action in my ovaries—I can tell there are eggs ripening in there. I feel confident about this time, despite feeling twinges and the odd minor cramp. It’s slightly uncomfortable but not painful.

DAY EIGHT—23 JUNE 2012

Saturday morning I woke up full of excitement. I was going to have the first scan of this cycle. How many eggs would it show? I’m guessing I’ll have three because Dr Fisher told me he was going for quality over quantity. I’m certainly not expecting many. Dom is excited, too, but trying not to get his hopes up. He reminds me that he has already done his job and flooded the clinic with his sperm. Now, he says, it’s up to me. No pressure!

As soon as we arrive the nurse on duty, Miranda, sweeps me away for a blood test to check my hormone levels, I guess. As usual, I look away while she is doing it.

I am relieved as soon as it’s over and thank her and say, ‘Now I just have to have my vagina violated . . . It’s such a playground here!’

Dr Fisher pops his head in. He looks tired, but it is 9.15 a.m. on a Saturday—he must work a lot of hours. He’s very jovial all the same and makes a few jokes with us. In the treatment room, I go behind the screen, take my knickers off and lay down on the bed. I put the blanket over my lower half and lift my knees up into the ‘I’m just about to get a smear test’ position. ‘Right, I’m nude from the waist down!’ I yell.

Dom and Dr Fisher appear on my side of the screen.

He lubes up a long scanning wand and gently inserts it. I can see my cervix on the screen. We count three follicles on the left side. They are about 1.5 centimetres in diameter—no wonder I feel bloated. On the other side there are at least four more. Things are looking good—seven follicles in total that will all, hopefully, keep growing.

The nurses compliment me on the ‘beautiful response’ and tell me I’ve got lovely, juicy follicles. That makes me laugh out loud. Once I’m fully clothed, I am booked in to come back on Monday for another scan. There may even be more eggs by then and it might be possible to book the egg collection on Wednesday. It all seems so fast!

I’m feeling pretty happy and realise I haven’t cried once this cycle, which is a first. It must be the happy pills. Dom and I high-five each other.

DAY NINE—24 JUNE 2012

I felt tinges of discomfort all through last night and woke up with the biggest headache I’ve ever had. I manage to get through the morning but by 2 p.m. I need to lie down. It feels like a migraine and I need to wear a sleep mask to block out the light.

I sleep until almost 5 p.m. and I don’t want to get up then. My head is throbbing and my belly is swollen and heavy and I can’t get into a comfortable position. Instead, I get up and complain to Dom. He’s as sympathetic as he can be but no-one, not even Dom, can take away this pain for me.

At one point I run to the toilet thinking I am going to be sick, but it doesn’t happen. I know it’s going to get worse as the week goes on as my eggs are hanging around in my ovaries. Because I have taken a drug to stop ovulating, they are not going anywhere—they’re just hanging out. And it’s not a fun party. I can’t wait for my second scan tomorrow.

I know I’m jumping the gun, but I can’t resist looking up the Chinese birth chart that was found buried in a tomb near Beijing, where it had been hidden for 700 years, to see what sex my baby would be if I had one. Since we are guardians of my nephew, it would be nice to have a little girl. So, I look up the month the child is conceived, which will be June if this works, and the age I would be when I give birth, which will be 38, and it says I’ll be having a girl!

DAY TEN—25 JUNE 2012

The discomfort and headaches haven’t let up. At least I know this has to be a good sign. I am whipped into Dr Fisher’s office and asked to take off my pants. He has more success with me doing this than my husband at the moment! As I’m getting undressed behind the screen, I tell Dr. Fisher that I’m very uncomfortable.

‘Is that a good sign?’ Dom asks.

‘Of course,’ he replies. ‘Put it this way, if they were your testes, you’d be carrying them around in a wheelbarrow! They are three times their normal size.’

I’m waiting with my legs apart for Dr Fisher to do his thing. I love how he makes small talk about minor things to cover up the embarrassment I am enduring.

‘So what time did you finish work?’ he asks as he lubes up the wand and slips it in. It’s mortifying. But then again, I’ll be exposing a lot more in childbirth, should I get the chance!

‘We came straight from work. We had a staff meeting and KFC delivered lunch, so excuse me if I smell of fried chicken!’

The follicles have grown slightly but we’re still counting about seven. It looks as if I will be ripe for the picking on Thursday. I am so excited I practically skip out of the treatment room! Then Dom asks a question.

‘How do you know what’s good sperm?’

‘You can’t tell,’ says Dr. Fisher. Then he said, ‘But how big is a chance? We’re in with a chance.’

DAY ELEVEN—26 JUNE 2012

The migraine is not good. How can I describe the pain? It’s like someone is chiselling into my left temple. I’m light sensitive and because I’ve been moaning about my swollen belly and my achy head all week, Dom is now immune to my complaints. And now I need a cuddle and some sympathy. Dammit. I’m left feeling like the boy who cried wolf.

The good news is I need to give myself the last injection of this cycle later tonight—of Ovidrel—to trigger the release of my eggs, so they’ll be ready for collecting in 36 hours. My egg collection is scheduled for midday Thursday so I have to set my alarm for midnight tonight to take the Ovidrel! Okay, so technically that’s going to be on Day Twelve. Anyway, I need to get used to broken sleep if I’m going to have a baby.

DAY TWELVE—27 JUNE 2012

My alarm goes off at midnight and Dom jumps out of bed in a panic. I have to laugh— he thought it was 4 a.m. and we needed to get up for work. I tell him to go back to sleep and make my way to the kitchen for my last injection. It only takes a minute or so and I’m done. Now, it’s up to the egg gods.

Getting back to sleep is an issue. I’m aware of my ovaries and lie awake waiting for them to hurt even more. Plus, I love sleeping on my stomach. With my belly as full as it is, I can’t—I drift in and out of sleep all night.

When the alarm goes off at the usual time of 4 a.m., Dom gets up but I don’t. I have another killer headache. When I get up to go to the toilet, I feel slow and sore. I decide I need to rest so I take a sick day because of the egg collection tomorrow. I think I’ll also need tomorrow and the day after—I will be very bruised and weak.

My headache gets worse and I stay in bed until 3 p.m., which is totally out of character. It’s rare that I’m in bed past 9 a.m. even on a weekend. I hate wasting the day and I hate lying around doing nothing, but my body is telling me to stay put. Dom is very supportive, which is nice.

DAY THIRTEEN—28 JUNE 2012

It’s EC Day, as we call it in fertility circles—EC is short for egg collection. It’s booked for midday. I’m not as sore this morning but I am really excited. I’m not allowed to eat after 6 a.m. so I get up at 5.30 a.m. to eat something then I go back to bed. I’m out of bed again by 8 a.m. I tried to stay in bed to shorten the time I’m awake but unable to eat—my body seems to need food every three hours. I’d love a cup of tea but I can only drink water until 10 a.m. and after that it’s nil by mouth.

I wear my loosest jeans without a belt and get my kit organised—it contains all the used needles and other gear that I need to return to the clinic.

I am a wee bit nervous because I really want lots of juicy, plump, fertile eggs for Dr Fisher and his team to play with. Imagine if I got more than one embryo and we could freeze some? That would be a dream—it hasn’t happened before.

Still, I remind myself that our odds are lower than normal. The thing I think is the biggest risk with me is the implantation. So far, I haven’t been able to sustain a pregnancy even with a good embryo. I don’t want a miscarriage. I need to have a baby. I’m absolutely ready for it and I have my heart set on it.

As we are about to leave for the clinic Dom says to me, in a heartbreakingly sad voice, ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if I can’t be a father.’

At the clinic, I have to wee three times before I go in—nerves, I guess. We are led to a private room to wait for the EC and where I will recover afterwards. Last time we were in here, Dom was having his TESA. It’s my turn to sit in the flash chair today!

Shirley, the nurse, comes in and asks me to insert the pad into my knickers to wear afterwards. Oops—I’m wearing a G-string! That means I’ll have to wear hospital-issued mesh undies. Gross. Glam fashion is definitely not a priority around here!

My weight is recorded, blood pressure taken, another form is filled out, and I’m given Utrogestan vaginal pessaries to take home with me. Three times a day after the egg collection until my pregnancy test, I need to insert these pesky things inside me to help line the uterus in preparation for the embryo implantation, but they are so very messy.

I joke to Dom, ‘No more sex for you for the next couple of weeks.’

‘Add that to the Great Drought of 2012.’

At least we could still laugh about it! It’s good to have a sense of humour in these times of stress. Yes, so maybe we haven’t bonked like rabbits as much this year but I have been battling depression and anxiety and haven’t been at my best. Now I’m focused on the IVF, and we have a lifetime ahead of us. Surely he can forgive a small lull?

Shirley gives me a few instructions for after the procedure. ‘You must go home and rest. You know you can’t drive for 24 hours?’

Dom pipes up, ‘Well, she can’t anyway!’

‘Not helpful,’ says Shirley.

I am left to change into the hospital gown to be ready to meet the embryologist and it’s not Crazy Bert—it’s Rachel. She runs through what will happen with the eggs they collect. Any that are not mature enough to be injected will be used for training purposes, as agreed, and the rest will be injected with Dom’s thawed sperm this afternoon.

Rachel says she’ll call us in the morning with a progress report. She asks if we would like one or two embryos put inside me. I really don’t want to make that decision until I know how many we have and what quality they are.

Ideally, I would just go for one, but if things aren’t looking too good, I’ll consider two. The idea of twins freaks me out, but at this stage I’ll take what I can get. Dom’s definitely keen to put all available embryos inside—spot the guy who doesn’t have to carry the baby or birth it!

Rachel tells us she has been an embryologist since she finished university. She used to work with animals, doing IVF with them. She worked all around the United States artificially inseminating sheep and goats before she began working with people.

‘You’re experienced with all species!’ I laugh. ‘Who’s the easiest to inseminate?’

‘Probably goats,’ she says. ‘You actually tip goats upside down. They’re fine. Pat them on the head . . . no anaesthetic, nothing. They’re quite smelly though.’

It’s not long until I’m led into the operating theatre and a needle is shoved into my arm. I make Dom record everything on my smartphone because this is the last thing I’ll remember!

I’m mortified listening back when I announce to the room, ‘You’re all going to see my vagina. This is so embarrassing.’ Shirley and Dr Fisher assure me, ‘We’re not embarrassed.’ And then I continue, ‘I may have gone overboard with the waxing.’

Way too much information, Jay-Jay! Then, Dom jokes, ‘This is the reward after looking inside my scrote. This is dessert.’ Classy. And then there is a bit more to-and-fro that makes me squirm to hear, so it won’t be appearing here!

Dr Fisher finds my right ovary is hard to access—same old problem. This means he is going to have to push down on my belly as he sucks the eggs out. So, he starts with the easy—left—side.

‘Dr Fisher is very gentle,’ I mumble in my drug-induced state.

Dom counts the eggs as they come out. When we get to the third egg he is excited. ‘Third egg!’ he announces.

‘Wahooo. Where are the party streamers?’ I ask. The final count from Rachel is five eggs from the left ovary and four from the right—nine eggs!

‘That was a fairly rewarding trip to Vagina Town,’ Dom quips. ‘No wonder you were sore.’

‘It’s more painful than a TESA,’ Shirley tells Dom, as she puts mesh undies lined with a sanitary pad on me.

I’m walked back into the recovery room where I sit in the chair and fall asleep. When I wake up, about 20 minutes later, I am given some toast and jam and a cup of tea. I still feel dozy but I have to get myself ready to go home.

I am so excited that we got nine eggs. I almost can’t believe it and it gives me great hope. Dom can’t believe it either. He’s already fantasising about the big brood we could have.

It’s overwhelming to know that right now nine of my eggs are getting injected with Dom’s sperm in the lab. There is some serious Petri-loving going on in this building.

I go home to sleep off the drugs and await news from the clinic about my eggs.

When I wake, I’m sore—the drugs have worn off and I feel bruised, especially on my right side that was hard to access. I feel like I have been stabbed in the stomach and I can barely walk. Even sitting down is very uncomfortable. I yelp in pain every now and then and paracetamol doesn’t help.

I have trouble sleeping at night, too. I prefer to sleep on my stomach but I absolutely can’t and I hate sleeping on my back—it feels like a coffin position. Yes, I know that’s a weird thing to say, but I can’t help it. My sleep is unsettled.

GROWING AN EMBRYO DAY ONE—29 JUNE 2012

In the morning I wake up feeling a lot better. It’s still tender, but I feel well enough to walk down to the supermarket slowly. While I’m there, Rachel calls.

‘Out of your nine eggs, six were mature enough for sperm injection, but only two have started dividing.’ My heart sinks. For the first time since I started this cycle, I feel a little bit scared.

Rachel says they’ll keep checking on the embryos and call me again this afternoon with an update. I call Dom, who sounds a bit gutted, but relieved we have two to base our hopes on.

Rachel calls again and leaves a message on my phone. ‘I’ve just spoken to Dr Fisher. He would like to do a day-three transfer. He wants to see how these embryos develop. We will both give you a call back later today.’

So now I have to sit and wait—there is so much waiting with IVF. Dr Fisher calls at 2 p.m. There is no joking in his voice. Today, he’s all business as he says, ‘I know it’s disappointing to only have two possible embryos, but we’re in with a chance.’

He explains our options. He would like to see how the embryos develop until day three, so we can get a better idea of why I haven’t been able to sustain a pregnancy in the past, but if the embryos show signs of weakness he’d like to transfer them tomorrow, on day two.

There is a risk—if we wait until day three, we may have no embryos. But if that’s the case, they wouldn’t have implanted anyway. It makes perfect sense to me to wait. Dr Fisher says he will call me tomorrow anyway.

I’m feeling unsettled—the optimist in me has gone. I’m fretting. So is Dom. Seven is home from school and he wants to know if he’s having a ‘cuzzie-bro’ or a ‘cuzzie-sis’.

How do I explain what’s happening to a nine year old? So, I take a deep breath and I tell him we had nine eggs and two of them are trying to grow into babies. He says, ‘We might have twins!’ And then he says, ‘But what if one dies? Will we still have one?’ When I tell him that’s possible, he says, ‘That’s alright. One is enough!’ Kids are so innocent, and he is right—we do only need one to succeed.

I am able to get around the house a bit, but by 5 p.m., I am in agony. I have cramps that have me doubled over. My stomach is as hard as a rock. Am I bloated? Do I have an infection? It is a close call for me not to go to the hospital and at one point I am convinced I am going to throw up.

‘Dom,’ I wail, ‘Please get me a bucket and a towel.’ I am feeling hot and dizzy and so, so crampy. I am crying out in pain regularly. It hurts so much I even have a few tears that ruin the tear-free record I was going for this cycle.

At 7 p.m., Dom fills a hot-water bottle and sends me to bed. Lying down is probably the best thing to do, so I put on the ‘Journey To a Baby’ DVD from our introductory pack from Fertility Associates.

I’m lying watching TV and my stomach is cramping even worse, so I limp to the toilet wondering if I am simply constipated. No matter how hard I push, nothing is coming out, so I don’t think it is constipation. At about 10 p.m. I take a sleeping pill and go to sleep.

DAY TWO—30 JUNE 2012

I wake up, still feeling a bit crampy. Waiting to hear from Rachel this morning about how our embryos are progressing is as painful as anything I’ve experienced so far. Yesterday we only had two. Were the two we had continuing to divide evenly and look like beautiful, strong little embies? Or, how could I think it, had they died? Would the other four, by some miracle, have kicked into life?

Until yesterday, I was feeling positive about this cycle. Now, all my being is fighting for the life of those two embryos that are our last chance. All of a sudden, Dom is pessimistic and concludes it’s over.

‘What will we do if it doesn’t work?’ I ask him. ‘Who knows,’ he says and it’s clear he’s angry. He does not want to face that possibility and nor do I. It has to work. I am not ready for bad news. Hey, it’s not over until the fat lady bleeds.

Dr Fisher calls at 1.30 p.m. and says, straight up, that one of our embryos has stopped dividing but the other one is kicking on. So we have one shot. One little embie that we hope like hell keeps dividing evenly like a good embryo should. Dr Fisher tells us it’ll be good to give it one more night so we can check its quality in the morning before transfer. He promises he will be honest with me about what he thinks.

Dom has his head in his hands and I try to be optimistic. It’s true we feel disappointed and I’m also nervous as hell because we can’t afford to lose this one. It’s quiet at home. Dom and I are just sitting here not saying anything. ‘There goes our twins,’ I say to break the silence. Dom is bummed out and winces, ‘All those things we did in preparation made no difference whatsoever’.

At about 4 p.m. the cramps start up again and I’m supposed to be going to a charity dinner for the New Zealand Black Sticks, the women’s hockey team. They are about to leave for the London Olympics and we want to support our friend and team member, Melody Cooper.

I read a brochure Fertility Associates gave me after my egg collection about ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome or OHSS, which is a complication that happens in five out of every 100 000 egg collections. I learn there’s a chance of death. The brochure rates the chance of death at one or two out of 100 000 egg collections, but to make you feel better about that stat, it points out that the chance of dying in a car accident is 25 out of 100 000 people per year.

The symptoms include tummy pain, bloating or swelling, nausea or vomiting, decreased urine and severe headache, and I have all of those . . . I start panicking. What if I die?

I’m so sore I call Dr Fisher on his personal cell phone. He told me I could call anytime, but it’s Saturday. I’m sure he needs a rest, but I’m desperate. He is cheerful when he answers the phone and there is background noise. It sounds like he’s at a bar or restaurant.

‘I’m so sorry for calling you,’ I say.

‘Don’t be sorry. That’s what I’m here for. That’s why I gave you my number,’ he assures me. I tell him about my cramps, the pain and the headaches. He asks me if my ‘bottom’ hurts, to which I reply ‘No’ and wonder why that would be. He calmly tells me I just have fluid in my stomach from the egg collection and it’s nothing to worry about because it’s quite common.

Of course, I’m trying to sound cool, calm, collected and brave, so I say nothing and keep listening. Dr Fisher tells me to call him anytime, even if it’s the middle of the night, if things get worse. The pain was pretty steady overnight and I take another sleeping pill, so I don’t need to call the doctor again.

DAY THREE—1 JULY 2012

Embryo transfer day! I have to be at the hospital by 11 a.m. I haven’t had an update about our embryo since yesterday so I have no idea if it survived the night. So I go about getting ready as instructed.

I’ve been using the vaginal pessaries three times a day and I have to have a full bladder to make it easier to access the uterus. At the clinic we’re waiting in our private room and I get to sit in the flash chair again. The leg rest pops out and a tray is attached for any food or drink that may be delivered. I take off my undies and slip into the hospital gown.

We sit and wait. Ten minutes pass and Dom whispers, ‘It has to work. If it doesn’t work and we can’t have kids, then what are we here for?’

‘What do you mean, “what are we here for?”’

‘You know, on the big scheme of things.’

‘What are we here on the planet for?’ I ask.

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you think our sole reason for being on earth is to procreate?’.

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘That is our job in life?’

‘It is,’ he responds. It sounds like the Catholic is coming out in him.

‘I don’t know. I thought we were here for a good time,’ I laugh. ‘Not everyone can do the job. You’ll just have to find another reason for being. Entertain the nation, that’s your reason for being.’ Then I ask ‘Will your life really be that bad if you don’t have a kid?’

It takes Dom eleven seconds to answer—holding my breath, I count each one.

‘Yep. There’s a big part of me that will be unfulfilled.’ It breaks my heart to hear him say that and see the sadness in his eyes.

‘Are you crying?’ I ask.

We continue to sit in silence until Dr Fisher arrives with the best news possible—our embryo has survived the night and is looking good. He asks me how I’ve been feeling since the call yesterday. I tell him I’m still crampy, but he dismisses it as normal. Then he talks about what’s happening next. He is reassuring.

‘This is a nice embryo,’ he tells us. ‘It’s as good as any other day-three embryo, so we’re in with a chance.’ I think but don’t say that’s how I feel whenever I buy a Lotto ticket, but I don’t always win.

Dom asks what happened to the others and Dr Fisher says they ‘fell apart on the way through’. And he said that although we’d got heaps of sperm, most of it looked unusual—different shapes and different sizes.

A woman in a white coat walks in and is introduced to us. Nerupi has been looking after our embryo.

‘You’ve been babysitting?’ I ask her.

‘Yes,’ she says with a smile.

‘If our embryo doesn’t survive, can we adopt you?’ Dom asks. She laughs and says, ‘Yes, absolutely!’

‘It would be the oldest adoption ever!’ laughs Dr Fisher as he excuses himself, leaving Nerupi to prepare me for the transfer.

‘We have a nine-cell!’ she tells us. ‘All it needs to do now is get in there and find a little posi and start developing.’ She goes on to say that the best thing I can do is be relaxed. I was fully relaxed up until my nine eggs dissolved into only one embryo and Dr Fisher commented on Dom’s sperm.

When Dr Fisher returns I say, ‘Dom is upset because his sperm are ugly.’

‘Well there was heaps of it,’ he reminds us. ‘Most of it is an unusual shape. I don’t know what that’s about. But it’s likely that it’s having a significant impact on outcome. I think we’ve always made the assumption that, despite the surgery to remove the tumour, there was no good reason your sperm should be different or abnormal or behaving differently than anyone else’s, but I think I am changing my view about that . . .

‘The prime determinant as to why things haven’t been going as well as you would like is probably the sperm. It’s always going to be a probable, it’s never going to be a definite. However, having said that, we looked really carefully at the sperm and we chose the very best ones we could find. Not just the good-looking ones but ones that were actually functioning well. So if we’ve got that right, and this is a beautiful embryo, we’re in with a real chance.’ I’m sure that’s his favourite line.

My bladder is full but not to bursting, thank God, and it’s time to get going. As we walk into the treatment room we can see our embryo on the computer screen.

‘Awwww!’ Dom and I say together. It’s kind of ugly and messy looking, but this one looks beautiful. We can see nine fairly even-sized cells sitting inside a circle with only slight fragmentation around the outside of the circle, which doesn’t seem to be of concern.

I lie down on the bed and I’m dreading Dr Fisher looking under my gown because of the pessaries—they are so messy. Of course, he is unfazed and tries to help me relax by saying it’s perfectly normal. The radio is on in the background—some easy-listening, golden-oldies station. It makes a nice change to the top-40 pop we always play.

Dr Fisher inserts a speculum—one of those metal things they put in you to open you up when you are having a smear test. He does a quick scan to make sure my ovaries look healed. Then he goes to insert the catheter that has my embryo in it but finds my cervix is closed up. He asks his nurse to grab an instrument from the other room that will open the hole.

Soon, as we watch the screen, we see the catheter enter my uterus and a small, white blip float from its tip out into my womb. It’s really incredible that we get to see this stuff.

‘See you in nine months little embryo.’ Dom says. ‘The eagle has landed.’

‘See those bubbles come out the end?’ Dr Fisher asks.

To be certain, Dr Fisher hands the catheter back to Nerupi to check that the embryo isn’t in it anymore.

‘God speed, little fella,’ says Dom to the embryo as Louis Armstrong’s song, ‘What a Wonderful World’, is playing in the background.

‘That’s a good song for putting the embryo back,’ says Dr Fisher.

Dom takes a photo of the monitor. ‘That’s amazing aye?’ I have to agree—it really is! After that, I’m pleased to get off the bed and have a wee. It feels good to be PUPO—pregnant until proven otherwise—and we head out into the sunshine to complete the dreaded two-week wait.

We had tickets to see Flight of the Conchords tonight at Vector Arena. We were going to be in the fourth row. I was very excited. But my boss, Leon, called me and insisted I didn’t go.

‘But how can sitting on a chair, watching comedy be stressful?’

I ask him.

‘Because it’s freezing outside and you’ll have to walk half a kilometre to get inside and you’ll probably have listeners coming up wanting to talk you.’ He had a point. ‘And don’t come to work tomorrow either. Take a few days.’

Firstly, I’ve well and truly used up my sick leave already this year from when I took two weeks off after my meltdown in March and I can’t rest for eleven days. I tell Leon I’ll skip the Conchords, but be at work tomorrow.

DAY FOUR—2 JULY 2012

I’m PUPO and I can’t wait to tell the women on the secret Facebook group. Someone posted that I needed to eat French fries the day after embryo transfer to help implantation, and that suited me just fine. After work I head off for a greasy lunch—Dom thinks it’s a joke, but it can’t hurt and it may help.

Tonight we went to a movie preview of Ted, a new comedy starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis and Seth MacFarlane. That was really funny. I don’t see how it could have harmed my embryo by going to that—they say laughter is good for us. Other than that, I am trying to keep a clear diary as much as possible.

DAY FIVE—3 JULY 2012

By now our embryo should be a blastocyst—a cluster of 70 to 100 cells. I try to visualise it. I also try to feel it inside me but all I feel is crampy from the egg collection.

I’m back at work and my boss, Leon, has been quite supportive and is insisting I take it easy.

I work in radio, how much easier can I take it? I can actually sit down on the job. I could wear my pyjamas to work if I really wanted to—after all, our listeners don’t see me. I love how sympathetic he is being, quite unexpected for Leon because he’s not very sensitive usually.

He’s right, though, and I go straight home after the show to do my usual preparation for the next show, and then have a two-hour nap.

DAY SIX—4 JULY 2012

Today is the day our blastocyst should hatch out of its shell.

My boob hurt for a second—is that a sign? And what about cravings? Is it too early? Because I am hanging out for scrambled eggs on toast. I am usually very happy with yoghurt, fruit and a muesli bar for breakfast when I’m on the air but today I’ve been hanging out for scrambled eggs. As soon as I get home from work, I make some.

After dinner, even though I am full, I really want some pancakes —I make a couple. Is it mind over matter or am I just a pig?

I see a list of the top trending baby names of the year online and can’t help but read it. They seem to be inspired by The Hunger Games trilogy and celebrities.

I’ve only thought of baby names once before, during my last, brief pregnancy. I liked the name Devon, but Seven got here first and Seven and Devon? That isn’t going to happen.

I also quite like the name Harvey but that’s obviously not happening, either—that’s Dom’s surname. Meet our baby Harvey Harvey! Nobody will think we’re weird and the kid would never be teased . . . Yeah, right!

I don’t really like any of the trending names on the list, so that’s a bonus—we don’t want a kid who has the same name as five others in their class. Seven has had two or three girls named Molly, ditto Olivia in his class almost every year. And don’t get me started on how many Jacks and Jacksons he knows. And it’s way too soon for us to start thinking of baby names.

DAY SEVEN—5 JULY 2012

My blastocyst may be attaching itself to a site on the lining of my uterus. ‘Stick little embryo, stick!’ I think to myself. I am relieved that the cramps have stopped at last.

The boss takes us out to lunch to say goodbye to our producer, Chang, who’s off to work somewhere else. We walk into the restaurant and are met by the owner who’s keen for us to try some of the craft beer he has on tap.

‘I’m doing Dry July!’ I lie, ‘It’s like FebFast. I’m giving up alcohol for July to fundraise for charity.’

‘No wonder business has been slow this week,’ he replies. Phew—looks as if that excuse will work for the rest of this month.

When we are seated, I find it’s really hard to find something to eat on a menu that is heavy with red meat. I eat chicken and fish, but the seafood on the menu is raw. PUPO people can’t eat raw meat or fish at all. I settle for French onion soup, a spicy chicken wing and a bowl of chips. No wonder I’m getting fat.

I end up having to use the Dry July excuse again when Dom and I go to out for a coffee and a promo girl is giving out samples of wine. It’s 3 p.m. and Dom has a coffee in his hand but I guess any time is a good time to have a wine and I do like the wine on offer, so I say, ‘Sorry. I’m doing Dry July.’

‘You’re not the first person to say that today,’ she replies.

DAY EIGHT—6 JULY 2012

By now the blastocyst should definitely be burying into the lining of my uterus—I wish I could feel the embryo burrowing in.

It’s Friday and I can’t believe I still have six days until my pregnancy test. It’s such a drag because it’s all I can think about—getting a big fat positive.

Dom and I go to see Melissa Etheridge in concert. We go out to dinner first and I eat so much that my pants are so tight around my stomach I want to undo them. I wish I’d worn a dress. If I had though, I would have been the odd-one out at the concert. I’ve never seen so many women with short hair and flannel shirts in one place!

The concert is amazing but I stay seated the whole time to avoid stress for our little embryo.

When I go to the toilet a woman there stops me and, because she’s excited to meet me, asks if she can give me a hug. She rubs my back and says her ex-girlfriend would be so jealous of this. Then she asks how our baby-making is going. I don’t like lying or even misleading people so I almost tell her I’m PUPO. Then I remember the promise I made to myself to keep our news quiet. ‘No, not yet,’ I say and she wishes me luck. I am touched by her support.

DAY NINE—7 JULY 2012

It’s Saturday. Seven is away for the weekend with a friend so we can fully relax and take it easy. Dom and I decide to take our mums out for brunch. It’s an easy thing to do—my mum is living with us and will probably stay until Christmas and Dom’s mum lives around the corner, about 500 metres away.

They’re both excited by the thought that we may have a baby.

Sue tells us she’s cut down her hours and likes the idea of having time to spend with our baby.

My mum, Robynne, gives me a look that makes me think I’m going to have to draw up a roster. At least if I am lucky enough to get pregnant, there won’t be any shortage of support from the grandmas!

DAY TEN—8 JULY 2012

Implantation should be complete, so the cells that will eventually become the placenta and foetus should have begun to develop. That is, of course, if we’re still in with a chance. I am feeling quite good though.

Although we aren’t close friends with many of our neighbours, we do know most of them, at least by sight. One of them popped a book into my letterbox with a lovely note saying she’d heard me on air and thought it might help. The book was Rushing Woman’s Syndrome—The impact of a never ending to-do list on your health by Dr Libby Weaver (Little Green Frog Publishing, 2011). I am humbled by her thoughtfulness and promise myself I’ll try to find time to read it. Although, I am a bit useless at reading books like this when I have Fifty Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games—both trilogies—still to get through!

I have been sent many gifts—other books and DVDs full of advice, including self-hypnosis for increasing the success of IVF!

DAY ELEVEN—9 JULY 2012

I hope the placenta cells have begun to secrete human chorionic gonadotropin or HCG into my blood. Only three more sleeps to go until I get my blood test. This is the longest wait of my life. It’s torture!!

I want a sign—a twinge, anything. I have been having crazy dreams—I’ve dreamt I miscarried, I’ve dreamt I had a baby, I dreamt I gave birth to a monster. I’m guessing if I am pregnant, the monster dream is more likely! Yes, I want to have a little monster.

We had our house painted at the beginning of the year and Paul, the painter, called tonight. I was a little bit miffed when he said he was painting for a woman in my secret Facebook group who had told him I was waiting for a pregnancy test. It’s a closed group and everyone in it promises to keep things said in the group confidential. I don’t want to announce on there that I’m pregnant and then have the whole world find out about it.

But I had to be pleased when he said he just called to tell me that he and John—business partner—are Christians and they’d said a prayer for me and Dom. How sweet is that? I’m not a religious person at all but I really appreciated the gesture.

DAY TWELVE—10 JULY 2012

By now, the foetus and I should be an HCG factory. I have been taking it pretty easy since egg-collection day—keeping my diary relatively clear to avoid overexerting myself but today I was in the kitchen from 4.30 to 8.30 p.m. baking batches of Whoopie Pies for an on-air challenge between me, Mike and Dom, plus cooking dinner.

For the challenge we each have to make Whoopie Pies to be judged in the morning. Listeners vote for who they think will win and if they are right they are in the draw to win a prize pack. Dom and I are particularly competitive so, even though it’s not a big deal, Dom disappeared for the afternoon to sort out his entry.

Dom cannot cook. He definitely cannot bake. In the thirteen years we have been together, Dom has only ever made lolly log, which isn’t cooked, and grilled salmon and steamed broccoli. Seriously.

He sneaked off to his friend Rob’s house. Rob is the promotions manager at The Edge and he is also an amazing cook and baker. He brings his baking in to work and we all tuck in. Dom has persuaded Rob to make his Whoopie Pies for him and he arrives home feeling pretty good about himself. I know the competition is on and I have to win it! So, having never made Whoopie Pies before, I make two batches—one from a packet and one from scratch.

On my feet in the kitchen for hours, I start to get a sore lower back and my stomach cramps up a little. Then I got a headache. When I say I think I’ve overdone it, Dom isn’t impressed.

At about 7 p.m. I go to the toilet and find brown blood on my panty liner and pink blood when I wipe. I’ve been feeling crampy and start to feel panicky. Why is this happening again?

I start to go over all the things I’ve done and wonder if I caused this. Did I get too hot with the electric blanket? Was it the decaffeinated tea? Did I really overexert myself today? I’m hating myself right now and wonder if I’m going to tell Dom. I decide to wait until I need to go to the toilet again. Back to the kitchen and, of course, it’s all I can think about. Half an hour later I go to the toilet and find a tiny bit more blood. As I walk slowly into the lounge and look at Dom, he can tell by my face that I have something not so fun to tell him.

When he asks and I confirm there’s blood, he says he is resigned to the fact that we have just lost our embryo and I feel the same way. I just can’t believe it. I had already fantasised at length about how we would announce our pregnancy news to the nation. I always thought if I ever got pregnant I’d be so excited that I’d want to shout it from the rooftops, and I imagined getting a megaphone and doing just that! And I’d get a billboard—I’d want everyone to know about this ‘once in a lifetime’ event. Would it be announced in an exclusive story in a magazine or would I announce it on air?

I go the toilet a couple more times before bed and there’s only a bit more brown blood—not enough to call it a period, but more than spotting, I think. In bed, Dom is really showing the stress. I wonder if he has been crying. He blames himself and his voice breaks.

‘It doesn’t matter what I do, naturopath pills, alcohol, meditation, fucking vegetable juice, whatever. I’m just not meant to have kids. You’re just going to have to go and have kids with somebody else. I just can’t have kids.

‘I’m just mad,’ he sighs, ‘and I’m sorry for holding you back.’

‘You’re not holding me back!’ I tell him and my heart is heavy.

DAY THIRTEEN—11 JULY 2012

If the foetus is developing as it should, my HCG level should be increasing. I woke up with just a tiny bit of brown spotting and a killer headache. I’m so worried I check in with the secret Facebook page and post the following:

Hi girls. One more day before my pregnancy test, but I don’t think it’s good. There was blood last night (only a little bit but more than a spot) and I am feeling headachy and crampy.

I get loads of supportive feedback and these make me feel better and give me hope.

And just when the stress was getting too much to bear they went and made early pregnancy symptoms the same as pre-menstrual ones just to f*** with your head a bit more! Hang in there Jay-Jay!!!

—Karen

You are doing so well Jay-Jay! I really admire you how you can keep it cool at work. I was listening to the Edge on my way to work this morning, and seriously you sound so fun and professional. Don’t give up girl, we are all thinking of you here xx —Nat

I get nervous every time I go to the toilet and Dom is on my case the second I walk out of the bathroom door. ‘Any blood?’ he asks frantically. My answer changes every time because sometimes there is and sometimes there isn’t. What there is is mostly brownish.

Dom has decided it’s all over and he’s looking pretty sad and angry.

In other news, I did win the Whoopie bake-off—at least all that baking paid off.

DAY FOURTEEN—12 JULY 2012

It’s Pregnancy Test Day—The Dreaded Two-Week Wait is officially over today!

I wake up with a little more spotting and see a bit of red blood later on. I feel like Dom’s right and we’ve lost it, but I need to hear it from the nurses. I leave the studio just after 8.30 a.m. and go for my blood test—the diagnostic lab is just 300 metres up the road so I am only gone about 15 minutes. I am not even missed!

The ladies at the lab are excited for me—they know how many times I’ve been in there over the last few years. It’s nice to receive positive energy from them to help me through until a nurse from Fertility Associates gets the results and phones me. The day drags on.

I ask Dom how he’s feeling and just as he says, ‘I’m alright, but I’m expecting it to be bad news. Aren’t you? Anything other than that will be a surprise,’ the phone rings. Shirley checks I’m okay to talk then says, ‘I haven’t got good news for you’. My heart sinks.

I yell the longest and loudest ‘fuck’ that has ever come out of my mouth. Dom moans in the background.

‘I know, I know,’ Shirley responds. There is a long pause.

‘I knew it,’ I say. ‘Fucking hell, I’m so mad.’ I put my head down and wail, ‘Oh, Shirley!’

‘I know love, I know, I know.’ It must suck for her having to call people with this news.

‘Far out, this sucks!’ I blurt out half crying, half nervously giggling.

‘I know . . . it does,’ Shirley agrees.

‘Well, thanks for telling me anyway,’ I say to her.

‘Alright, well stop your pessaries and I’ll give you a call tomorrow.’

At least there’s a plus side. I don’t have to stick those horrid little balls up my vag anymore. But I’d do it forever if it meant I could have my own baby.

I look over at Dom and he looks blank. He gets up and comes over to hold me. I’m sobbing now and all I can say is, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m really sorry,’ over and over again.

‘It’s not your fault, it’s mine,’ he says.

‘It’s nobody’s fault!’ I tell him back. ‘It’s not your fault you can’t have a baby. Stop blaming yourself.’

He’s not crying but I sense he wants to. My head is pounding and I cry out loud for a few minutes. And then we sit in silence for a long time.

I email my boss and Mike to tell them the news and word soon gets around work. It’s not long before an enormous bunch of flowers arrives. We’d only told sixteen friends and family members so I text them all as soon as I can get it together. My phone goes crazy with text messages and emails.

Dom and I don’t really talk much about it for the rest of the day. There is nothing to say. I help numb the pain with a glass of wine after dinner and turn to the secret Facebook group for support.

What next?

We visited Dr Fisher as soon as we could to review the cycle and discuss plans to move forward. It would have been so easy to quit right then, but I’ve always known how much it means to Dom to be a father. I felt I had to find a way to make his dream come true.

‘What a bugger,’ said Dr Fisher. ‘There’s always some mystery in it,’ he says. ‘Aside from the one you miscarried, it’s probably the best looking embryo you’ve had.’ Then he told us if one thing stood out in this cycle it was really how complex Dom’s sperm abnormality was. There was a pause and then Dom laughed—after everything we had been through, it really was laughable.

Dr Fisher told us trying to select good sperm was really tough and he said, ‘I would have thought it was becoming a bit debilitating to you now.’ I agreed—it does wear you down after a while. Dom asked if we should carry on and wondered if it was becoming an obsession. Dr Fisher agreed that was a risk. He said around the world, it was not uncommon for people to do five or six cycles, but it was pretty unusual in New Zealand. He thought it was a bit about funding and a bit about Kiwis being practical people who, when something doesn’t work, decide they’ll do something else instead.

‘I don’t think you’ve been obsessed at all,’ he said. ‘I think what you’ve done is entirely rational and entirely reasonable. But it’s getting pretty tough.’ All of a sudden, I felt a bit down in the dumps.

‘Do you think my eggs have anything to do with it?’ I asked. He said before we started this cycle he thought that was the more likely thing, but now it seemed less likely. He flicked through his notes and said he now thought it was much more likely to be about the sperm.

Dom was laughing his uncomfortable laugh as Dr Fisher explained it was not about the surgery and the plumbing problems. It seemed to be a mystery. He also said my ovaries responded in a normal way and the eggs looked okay, but we could not be sure.

Then he raised the possibility of donor insemination.

He talked about an image he had of people who do lots of IVF treatment. It was like an ancient Roman statue—every time you saw them there was another bit missing. First, the nose was knocked off and then an ear. Then an arm fell off. Every time they have treatment, another bit was knocked off. Then, wise as ever, he said, ‘You want to be the same people you started as.’

I told him we are resilient and he agreed, but Dom admitted it was getting harder not easier. Dr Fisher said people can train for most things, but we couldn’t train for repetitive disappointment. He always says the most insightful things.

When I asked, he agreed he thought we’d have a much better chance of conception using donor sperm, but just because it was a simple procedure didn’t mean it would be easier to deal with a negative pregnancy result. Most people weren’t quite as upset as if they’d had IVF but it still knocked the stuffing out of them. His last comment was, ‘Whatever you do, you should do it soon.’

That was enough for us. All of a sudden we were excited about the prospect and impatient to get going. Time was ticking by—neither of us was getting any younger! Dr Fisher took us in to Shirley to explain how donor insemination worked and to talk about the cost. We joked with her about how they decide who has to deliver bad news, as she had four days ago. Dom asked if they play paper, scissors, rock! She said she volunteered because she felt it was part of her job.

Shirley told us we’d need to see the counsellor twice, three months apart before we could try again with donor sperm. At the second counselling session we could choose a donor from the bank. Dom asked about BYO sperm—we’d already had offers—and was told it’d need to be screened like the rest. She also explained I’d need blood tests to track ovulation before being inseminated. It sounded too easy.

As we were leaving Dr Fisher came to tell us there were six donors in the bank and we joked about how good-looking they might be, showing a preference for Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp. Walking to the car, Seven started yabbering away like he always does, and asked if we are sad we weren’t going to have a baby.

‘Yes,’ Dom told him.

‘Well, at least you tried,’ reasoned Seven. That’s what we always tell him—trying is better than winning. Sadly, I think that theory doesn’t work in this case.

We started to talk more seriously about donor sperm. I thought that after nine months, it was going to feel like our baby—it didn’t matter who the father was. Dom has to be certain so I told him I’d go along with what he wanted us to do. Without hesitation he said, ‘Let’s do it!’

Looking at possibilities, we started with the four people who had already offered to donate sperm to us. Dom’s brother had the closest biological link to us, but Dom didn’t think the biological link was a sticking point. He thought the main thing would be the path of least resistance. What’s going to be the easiest, not just in terms of getting it up there and the cost, but the follow through stuff as well? He knew he’d prefer a friend over a donor from the bank.

‘You want someone you know but that you’re not going to see all the time,’ he said. That ruled out two of our close friends, but Dom’s brother was living in Australia and Dom had a good friend living in another city and they were both possibles.

But how do you ask someone to donate sperm to you? It’s so awkward. If you ask to their face they may feel pressured to say yes. We didn’t want that. Then again, it’s not really something you should do by text or on Facebook. Dom said it needed to be done in writing to give the person time and space to think about what it actually meant before responding.

I wondered aloud whether asking a single person to donate would be easier because they don’t have a partner and kids to consider. But Dom disagreed—they would work out what a big deal it was once they went to the counselling.

‘What about our gay friends?’ I asked. Dom wasn’t keen, saying, ‘No, you don’t want to use someone who will see it as an opportunity to have their own family.’ Maybe this was because two of our gay friends had joked that they would donate to us and we could share custody.

Seven had been listening to this conversation from the back seat and he asked why we had to do IVF at all. I explained that we can’t have babies like normal people can.

‘Cos Dad had that surgery?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.’

Eight seconds of silence passed and then Seven had a great idea. ‘Why don’t you just follow the book that we read?’ He was talking about Where Did I Come From? The facts of life without any nonsense and with illustrations by Peter Mayle, which I read to him when he asked me about how babies were made. Dom and I burst out laughing.

He can be so cute and funny sometimes and he doesn’t even realise it. He was nine years old at this point and had lived with us for almost half of his life.

He had started calling us Mum and Dad in January after staying with my mum in Waverley. In the van on the ride home he said to Mum out of the blue, ‘Do you think Jay-Jay and Dom would mind if I called them Mum and Dad?’

Mum said, ‘I’m sure they would love that.’

Seven went on, ‘Because they are kind of like my Mum and Dad now, aye?’

Mum agreed, and nothing more was said.

About an hour after Seven arrived home he said to me and Dom, ‘I’m going to start calling you Mum and Dad now.’ We were very surprised.

Dom replied, ‘Sev, you can call us whatever you want, as long as you’re happy, but we would love you to call us Mum and Dad.’ And with that, he started calling us Mum and Dad immediately.

He also made us call him Son, and he would correct us if we called him by his name. ‘It’s SON, not Sev!’ he’d say.

It took me a few weeks to get used to the idea. I felt quite uncomfortable with it at first because I felt guilty. I know my brother would be furious if he knew Sev called us Mum and Dad. He’s extremely protective of Seven in this way.

Sev would call across the house to me, ‘Muuuuuum!’ and it would take me a few seconds to register that he was talking to me.

I’m used to it now, though, and ever since Sev started calling us this, his behaviour has improved and he has become a lot more affectionate. (He’s not very affectionate by nature. It takes a lot of effort to get a cuddle out of him.)

All of a sudden we were beginning to feel like real parents.

At the time I was writing a weekly celebrity column for New Idea magazine—my humorous take on celebrities’ lives as well as sharing some of my personal experiences with celebrities. The editor asked if they could interview Dom and me for a story after our last IVF cycle.

I have no problem getting publicity for anything I do on my radio show, but I always feel uncomfortable opening up about my private life to journalists. I think it’s because I often end up saying too much and regretting it later. But since I write for the magazine and have friends on the staff, we agreed. Here is an extract from the interview.

On tenterhooks waiting for the call from the fertility clinic, they hoped that this time it would be bring them joy not heartache.

But the news was a hammer blow because it marked the end of Jay-Jay Feeney and Dom Harvey’s dreams of conceiving a child naturally together . . .

When the devastating call finally came from the clinic, it marked a sea change in the life of New Zealand’s best known radio couple.

‘It’s been two years since our last attempt, we’re now pushing 40 and it’s just devastating because it’s so final,’ Jay-Jay, 38, confesses.

Behind the public face of the cheeky husband-and-wife double-act who front The Edge’s breakfast show with Mike Puru are a devoted, down-to-earth, home-loving couple who simply want to have a baby of their own.

Hoping against hope that their dream would become reality, they have ridden an emotional rollercoaster and spent thousands of dollars on fertility treatments.

But Dom is now coming to terms with the fact that he will never become a biological father and give his beloved wife the baby they yearn for.

Dom’s low quality sperm means his chances of having a child are minimal.

It’s a cruel shock for the 39-year-old. He’s the antithesis of his on-air persona, a sensitive and articulate guy who has a natural way with kids, and who believes that becoming a father is the reason for living.

‘For me, a life without kids feels like an empty life,’ he says. ‘Being a dad is something that has always been really important to me. You think about the big scheme of things and what are we all here for.

‘I think having kids, and going through that stage of your life, and then being grandparents is what it’s all about.’

Jay-Jay doesn’t share the same philosophy but is driven by the desire to complete their close-knit family by producing a child and heir.

‘I’m not the sort of person who has always wanted to have kids my whole life and I didn’t think I would until I met Dom,’ she says, giving her man an adoring look.

‘But now I do want them because I am in love with Dom.’ . . .

Now, at this major crossroads in their lives, they are determined not to obsess about their failures and instead look to the future.

Artificial insemination

Considering donor sperm

When I started writing this book, we were about to start our fifth IVF cycle. I thought it would be great to share our story and, maybe, inspire or comfort others in the same situation. After our fifth failure, I couldn’t bring myself to touch the book for six months. How could I finish it?

It couldn’t have a happy ending. I hadn’t been depressed about it, but equally, I didn’t want to go back and live it again.

When we heard Dom’s sperm was mutant and took time to think about everything, we realised it was time to accept that Dom was never going to be a biological father. It was devastating for him because it had been his biggest dream in life. He realised it wasn’t just about the biology and we had other options. It was time for us to try something completely new—artificial insemination by donor sperm.

The doctors and nurses at both FertilityPLUS and Fertility Associates had suggested early on that we could take a short cut to a baby by using a sperm donor. But it really isn’t an easy decision to make. The first instinct is to want a biological child—one that resembles you, one that has similar characteristics, one that continues your family blood line. But when this can’t happen, for whatever reason, you start to re-evaluate why it is you want a child and whether biology is as important as everyone thinks it is.

For us, we always held out hope that we could somehow create a biological child—not so much for me, but for Dom, who wanted it more than anything. Over time he has come to realise that biology is not that important. We look at celebrities who adopt and see how strong and colourful their families are and how much love they share, and we see it doesn’t matter.

I also get inspiration from my niece who my sister adopted out at birth. She is seventeen now and I see her regularly. She was adopted by an incredible family who gave her so much more than my sister ever could and she is delightfully happy. It makes no difference that her mum and dad do not share her genes. And I see my nephew Seven who has lived with us since he was four and I know how much Dom and I both love him—we are fiercely protective of him. I know that no matter where we get our baby from or how it comes to us, it will feel like our baby, and we will love it, no matter what.

In a funny way, I also know what it’s like to be a sperm-donor child, because I am one. When Mum told me my Feeney dad wasn’t my real father, I was six. She told me it was a secret and I kept it a secret until recently, when she helped me find Malcolm, my biological father.

I grew up knowing, but it didn’t make an iota of a difference to me. I didn’t think about it much at all when I was young. I loved my dad and I’m pretty sure he loved me. More recently, as Dom and I have been trying to have children, I’ve felt a burning desire to find out where I came from. As an adult, it has bothered me. What did he look like? What characteristics do I have of his? Does he have any other kids? What did his parents die of?

I found it hard to search for him because I knew Dad and my siblings would have to find out but in 2011, at the age of 37, I decided I was allowed to know and everyone else in the family was old enough and big enough to deal with it.

Mum was staying with us for a few days so I asked her for Malcolm’s full name. She knew it, but didn’t know how to spell it. And she knew where his parents used to lived, so we looked up variations of the surname in the phone book and found what we thought was his parents’ address. Next, I searched for Malcolm on Google and found a profile on the old friends website that looked as if it might be him. Running through his past I saw he had lived in Auckland at the time of my conception and that he was a photographer and DJ—like Mum had said. He also used to work in radio, hosting the night show on a popular radio station in the late seventies. I could not believe it. How freaky is that?

I searched his name on Facebook, and quickly found his profile. He had lots of old photos of himself in the seventies on his page open for anyone to see. Mum shrieked, putting her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh my God, that’s him!’ She looked quite green all of a sudden and had to leave the room. She was in a state of shock because it was the first time she had seen him since that single romantic night when she was fifteen!

I was shocked, too. I had an image in my mind of what my father looked like, and I guess it was of him when he was twenty—I hadn’t imagined him ageing. My imagined father was six foot tall, athletic, blonde, with blue eyes, well dressed and charming. He even had a little bit of rock ’n’ roll cool. Instead, looking at me from Facebook was a 60-year-old man with a grey mullet and a beer gut. He looked like a real estate agent and I found out later that that was what he was. This old man staring back at me was the man who helped create me. I was laughing and crying at the same time. I can’t explain how I felt—it was surreal.

I decided to request friendship. I didn’t think past this point. What would I do when I found him? A couple of minutes later he accepted my friend request and I saw he was online. This was all happening so fast. I only started the search about an hour ago! I ran out to the lounge squealing at Mum, ‘He’s accepted me! What should I do? Do you think he knows who I am?’

Mum was no help. ‘I don’t know honey,’ she said. We both collapsed on the couch and continued laughing and crying together. I think she felt a bit protective of me and was afraid this guy might swoop into my life and claim all the credit for my success, but Mum deserves it for bringing me up on her own. I assured her I didn’t want a new father—I just wanted to learn more about myself.

I wasn’t really thinking clearly and I’m a very spontaneous person who often reacts before she thinks. I opened a chat window in Facebook and started typing.

JAY-JAY: Hi Malcolm

M: Hi, how’s the radio business?

JAY-JAY: Do you know who I am?

M: Breakfast on the Edge

JAY-JAY: Do you know anything else about me?

M: I know what’s on your Facebook page, and I have seen you on TV when I was living in NZ

JAY-JAY: Do you remember Robynne Andersen?

M: The name doesn’t ring a bell, sorry

I uploaded a photo of mum at sixteen.

JAY-JAY: Does she look familiar?

M: Sorry, don’t recognise her JAY-JAY: Think back to 1973

M: 1973—I was living in Papatoetoe, working at a pharmaceuticals company and had a night job as a photographer in night clubs and pubs. I don’t recognise the photo though.

JAY-JAY: Just funny because she is my mother and says she knew you and partied with u one night at a club then went back to your flat in Papatoetoe.

M: Wow, she remembers me from that far back? As a photographer and later a DJ I met so many people my memory banks are overloaded.

JAY-JAY: You must be unforgettable!

M: I’ve been told that lol

JAY-JAY: I have something really CRAZY to tell you . . .

M: I like crazy, fire away

Oh. My. God. There was no backing out now. I sat back in my chair, breathing heavily for at least a minute or two before I continued writing.

JAY-JAY: You are my father

And then I waited. I was so nervous, my heart was beating through my chest. What would he do now? Would he log off? Delete me? Abuse me? Deny it? What? I couldn’t handle the suspense. About a minute or two later—that felt like an hour—he responded.

M: OMG you weren’t wrong that’s pretty crazy! I have a daughter?? AMAZING

I was so relieved.

JAY-JAY: Do you not have any other kids??

M: 3 sons

JAY-JAY: Well, you have a daughter too. And she’s 37

M: I’m glad I’m sitting down

JAY-JAY: Hahahaha

M: Funny, I saw you in the media once and thought you looked a bit like my sister

JAY-JAY: I’m sorry—I have been trying to find you for YEARS and well, I just stumbled across u tonight and thought ‘What am I waiting for?’ There is no easy way to say it.

M: And I’m glad you did, everyone should have the chance to know their parents—and their children

JAY-JAY: I don’t want anything . . . I was just always curious as to whether I look like you . . . and I heard u were a DJ which is SO CRAZY that I am too!!!

M: I was a disco DJ for 27 years, and in that time I spent several years on radio—I was night jock on a radio station. It is crazy!

JAY-JAY: How do u feel now? I am really sorry to do this to you.

M: I feel very nervous and excited. Don’t be sorry!

I have an album on Facebook of old family photos, have a look through

JAY-JAY: I already did! Hahaha. The resemblance is uncanny. And it really was. As a baby, I was the spitting image of Malcolm as a baby. It was scary. No wonder I never looked like my brothers and sisters.

JAY-JAY: I hope I haven’t upset you. I know it’s shocking. It’s true though.

M: I’m not upset, I’m happy knowing that I have a daughter who is so attractive and obviously intelligent

JAY-JAY: I’m crying and laughing at the same time

M: I should be there to offer you a hanky

JAY-JAY: I have a big nose like u! hahaha

M: All the better to appreciate a fine wine

He went on to tell me a little bit about his family.

JAY-JAY: Oh shit . . . the penny just dropped. I HAVE THREE

BROTHERS!?!? And three more nieces. What a big day this is.

M: Did your mother call herself Bobby?

JAY-JAY: Yes she did

M: I think I remember

JAY-JAY: She is 53. Still hot though.

M: So am I J

JAY-JAY: Hahaha. You have a good sense of humour.

M: I’m a born entertainer, I was quite sad when I stopped working in the business, but it was my time to bow out

JAY-JAY: It gets in your blood. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

M: As you’re a breakfast jock you will no doubt have a similar sense of humour

JAY-JAY: Apparently

JAY-JAY: I am not throwing myself on u. You don’t have to tell me anything.

M: Throwing yourself on me? I have a strange urge to throw my arms around you.

JAY-JAY: Awww!! Do you mind if I keep in contact via Facebook?

M: Hell no! I’m just sorry we didn’t make contact earlier.

JAY-JAY: Oh my God, this is crazy

M: Totally

JAY-JAY: Well have a great night. talk to u soon. Jay-Jay xox

M: Bye bye daughter xoxox

JAY-JAY: See ya DAD!! hahaha.

M: OMG

JAY-JAY: OMG

Over the next few weeks I chatted to Malcolm a lot on Facebook and I decided to meet his sister and her daughters—my aunty and cousins! They were excited to meet me and tried hard to answer all my questions. I even flew to Brisbane to meet Malcolm and I was so nervous I wanted to throw up, but he was very friendly and definitely has a warped sense of humour.

His whole family, including my new brothers, have all been very supportive and we have all become friends with no pressure. I don’t feel as if Malcolm is my dad, and that’s not what I wanted anyway, but since I found him I have found peace within myself. It’s weird. It’s also made me appreciate my mum, who brought me up and confirmed it really does not matter where you come from—it matters who you have around you to support and nurture you through life.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—COPING WITH JAY-JAY’S NEW FAMILY

Being from a fairly boring, normal-ish family dynamic myself (four kids, all with the same parents), my mum and dad pretty much hated each other but stuck it out for us kids, and THEN broke up. (How romantic of them.) I always found Jay-Jay’s situation a bit odd.

The bloke she called Dad is good guy. A bit unreliable and hopeless with remembering birthdays and other dates that people seem to think are important, like Christmas. But a good dude nonetheless. Maybe more of a mate than a dad. But as a kid you could do a lot worse for a father figure.

The weird thing is, he knew he was not Jay-Jay’s biological dad, as did Jay-Jay, but neither of them knew that the other person knew. So it was the elephant in the room. Actually, it was more like a fully grown elephant in a really small room. Jay-Jay only knew because her mum told her one day as a kid and Jay-Jay never forgot. She knew her biological dad was a guy called Malcolm and had a general idea of possible last names. The key piece of information, really. She knew he had some link to radio during his career but that was all the information she had, and previous attempts to find him had just drawn blanks.

One night Jay-Jay and her mum sat down at our place and had a conversation about this part of Jay-Jay’s life that was not complete. She had always wanted to find out some answers. And at this time Jay-Jay hadn’t heard from Gavin for over two years. No calls, no contact at all. And no response to messages, cards and gifts sent to him. It was almost like they had had a big falling out without actually having the incident that triggers the silence.

In the end, the puzzle was solved with the help of good old Facebook. Jay-Jay and her mum sat round the laptop typing in possible spellings of his last name. They eventually stumbled across the profile picture of an older, grey-haired man that Jay-Jay’s mum had considered handsome enough for a brief unprotected encounter some 38 years earlier. (There are some things you just do not need to know about your in-laws!)

Jay-Jay made contact with Malcolm, and they got talking through Facebook messaging. This progressed until a week or so later when Jay-Jay was ready to take things to the next level and have a Skype date with Malcolm.

We then travelled to Brisbane to meet him and have a lunch. He is a good guy. He has been really good to Jay-Jay, answering any questions she has and letting her decide what the relationship between them should be. I mean, obviously it is father and daughter; but when you meet your dad for the first time at the age of 37, I would think he has probably missed the window of opportunity to call this near-middle-aged woman next to him ‘Buttons’, ‘Poppet’ or ‘My little ladybug’.

Getting this over and done with has, I think, been a pretty cathartic experience for Jay-Jay. It’s hard to explain, but I guess she just feels like she fits in somewhere and has another place, another family that she is part of. Malcolm’s family in New Zealand have been very warm and inviting. And they all seem quite normal. When you have dealt with the amount of bullshit Jay-Jay has with her family, normal is a good thing. Normal is perfect.

After all that, we decided that a sperm donor would not be such a bad thing. The next decision to be made was do we choose one from the sperm bank, select one of our friends who have offered, or ask someone else? It turned out to be, quite possibly, the most difficult decision we have ever made together. We brainstormed a few ideas, including putting all the possibilities on pieces of paper and drawing one from a bowl, numbering the options and getting Seven to pick a number between one and ten, and holding a tribal council between our friends to vote possible donors out of the running. In the end, it was a decision we had to make ourselves, but it came after a great deal of discussion.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—CONSIDERING DONOR SPERM

IVF is the business of hope and with each failed attempt a little bit of hope dies. By the fifth cycle I was in a fairly negative headspace, which is not ideal. But Jay-Jay and I are realists—we don’t see any use in flogging a dead horse. We reasoned that if it was going to happen, it would have happened after five cracks at it.

So, although the whole sperm-donor thing takes a while to get your head around, we edged a little bit closer to accepting the idea with each failed IVF cycle. It became a bit clearer each time that I would not be able to father my own biological kids, my own flesh and blood.

After the negative result at the end of this, our final IVF cycle, we moped around for a couple of days as we mourned our loss. Not only was it the failed IVF we were mourning, but for me it also was accepting that I had failed—not even advanced science could help me be a dad.

In the end, the decision to use donor sperm was a no-brainer. No, I would not be a biological father. But I would be a dad and that was all I ever wanted anyway. Also, Jay-Jay would be the biological mother—that would help reduce some of the massive weight of guilt I was lugging around with me as the cause of the infertility treadmill we’d been stuck on for so many years now.

Selecting a donor

We had a lot to think about as we picked our way through the process of selecting a sperm donor. I made it clear to Dom, right from the start, that I would be completely happy with donor sperm as long as he was. And I thought he should make the final decision about where it came from.

It was important for Dom to be 100 per cent happy with the choice of sperm donor. After all, the child would be half mine biologically speaking and I would be carrying it inside me for nine months.

As it had become increasingly likely IVF would not work out for us, some friends had offered us their sperm. This is a remarkably awkward conversation to have with someone and it’s the most amazingly generous and unselfish offer a friend could make. We suspect there were other friends who would have liked to offer but couldn’t think of a way to talk about it.

The four offers we had all came from married men with their own children. Two of the guys had had vasectomies—one of them had some frozen sperm he told us we were welcome to use and one of them offered to get his vasectomy reversed.

Dom’s younger brother Daniel, who lives in Perth with his wife and three children, also offered us his sperm. Going with Dan would have made the most sense in many ways. He and Dom look quite similar and share some genes, so there would be a chance any children would resemble Dom a little bit, which seems important to society. The first thing most people say when they see a newborn baby is usually a comment on which parent the baby looks like.

In the end, Dom felt having kids that looked like him was not part of his motivation to become a parent. He said it was more likely, if we were able to have our own biological children, he’d breathe a sigh of relief if they looked like me rather than him!

After talking about the offers we’d received and considering sperm from the bank at the clinic, we talked about other friends and whether we could ask someone to help us by becoming a donor. Eventually, Dom emailed an old friend of his—someone we both love and respect, who already had a great family of his own. Dom told him about our five failed attempts at IVF and the reasons for our infertility, before he talked about our last avenue possible—donor sperm.

Here is the end of the email Dom sent to his great mate.

This is a bit of a big deal because I suppose it means your kids will have a 1/2 brother or sister. And you would be a father . . . but in a biological sense only.

It’s pretty crazy stuff. But stuff that we have had years to get our heads around so to us it’s just science and the process we need to go through in order to (hopefully) have a family. I can understand this will be a huge call for you, though, especially getting an email like this from out of the blue.

Your answer may be an outright no. Or you might have a shitload of questions. Either way, please do take this email as a huge compliment!

Dom.

After Dom clicked on Send, we both felt an instant relief followed by a wave of anxiety. When would he read the email? Would he respond? What would he think? It was incredibly nerve-racking. To relieve some of the tension, Dom sent him a text to tell him to check his inbox. An hour later we got a reply.

Hey guys

Not an awkward email at all. I’ve been wanting to give Jay-Jay one for a long time. Lol.

On a serious note, I would be honoured to be able to help you guys out. Let me know when you’re free and we can have a chat over the phone.

You’d think we had just won Lotto with all the squealing and hugging that was going on in our house and as soon as we’d calmed down a bit Dom picked up the phone and called his friend ‘Johnny’ (not his real name). It was a weird conversation for two mates to have—men seldom share intimate details with each other about serious issues other than beer and sport. I felt privileged to hear it.

I contacted the clinic immediately to let them know we had decided on a sperm donor. None of us realised how much of a process the donor would be put through until then. Johnny and his wife had to go to counselling and he had to have all the screening blood tests we’d had in the beginning.

Then he had to make four separate trips to his nearest clinic to donate sperm. He had to have two–three days without sex—but no more than five days—before each donation so the sperm would be suitable to freeze. The sperm had to be quarantined, usually for six months—we managed to get it down to three months because we know and trust our donor. Then there were more blood tests and, finally, one more counselling session. Dom and I had to have two lots of counselling, too, and we were not allowed to use the sperm until after our second counselling session.

We worried that all these demands would scare Johnny off, but he happily attended every appointment and did what was needed. And we were all surprised when his sperm results came back. Usually a donor gives four deposits to allow for about ten inseminations—in case you want a sibling down the track. Most men have about twenty million sperm per sample, but Johnny had 106 million! After just two deposits, we had enough for sixteen inseminations! He not only had a lot of sperm but his sperm was also extremely fertile, so he was able to stop after just two visits to the specimen room.

People at the clinic were very impressed and affectionately called him ‘Super Sperm’. We felt very hopeful this would work. If I couldn’t get pregnant from Super Sperm, something was seriously wrong! Johnny kept us up to date on all of his visits to the clinic, usually by texting Dom. Meanwhile, I was getting regular updates from his wife.

He has done his blood tests and we are booked in for the interview.

It’s not really me or my body, but we are glad to be able to help. I really hope this works for you guys, you two are amazing people who will be—and already are—awesome parents.

I did know you were going for the last round of the IVF and had been thinking about you. The sperm donation also crossed my mind and, although Johnny and I never talked about it, I had always thought of him as a donor option. He and Dom are very similar in some ways . . .

Anyway, I think it’s awesome and we feel very honoured and privileged to be able to help.

Much love

I was overwhelmed by her generosity and care.

The first time I talked to Johnny on the phone, it was a bit weird—awkward weird. He was Dom’s friend and I hadn’t had a very personal conversation with him before. We usually just chatted about what friends chat about. But he was cool and it was great to hear it in his voice.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—SELECTING A DONOR

Over the years, friends had offered to help in any way they could, including four offers to become a sperm donor. It is bloody humbling, this stuff. Discovering you have friends that would be as unselfish as that is mind-blowing.

Shortly after, we decided to go with a sperm donor and talked about all the options, including a donor from the bank. Eventually, we talked about an old friend of mine and we agreed he’d be the perfect donor for us.

How do you approach a good mate to ask if he would consider being a sperm donor? I thought it’d be best put in writing so he would have time to digest it, think about it, and talk about it at length with his wife. I have to say it was a bizarre email to write and send.

We’d been mates for about twenty years but we live in different cities, so it is not uncommon for us to go a whole year without seeing each other. For selfish reasons, this was fairly important to me with the donor. If we were lucky enough to have kids this way, I didn’t like the idea of the child’s biological dad being too much of a presence. I think I would possibly feel a bit jealous. Writing that down I know how stupid it sounds—selfish, even. But until you are in this situation you can honestly not predict how you will feel.

This friend was perfect in so many other ways. He already has kids of his own, so his motivation would be about helping us have a family. Our personalities, beliefs, values and work ethic are incredibly similar. And I have so much respect for this guy that any child who had the characteristics of Jay-Jay and him would be an incredibly lucky human being.

The counselling

We had to have two compulsory counselling sessions at Fertility Associates before we are allowed to use Johnny’s donor sperm. Dom and I feel very confident in ourselves. We were also confident about the decision we’d made. We are also busy people. We didn’t feel we needed counselling and we were not excited about spending an hour in a quiet room talking about our feelings—but we saw it as a means to an end.

Our counsellor, Joi, was an older woman, perhaps in her late fifties or early sixties. She had a quiet, calm, voice. She wanted us to think about the choices we’d made and asked us to think about possible outcomes. First, she wanted to know how we came to choose Johnny and why we had chosen a friend over Dom’s brother.

We told her we considered the relationships after the donation. We felt a family member may have a more emotional connection with the child and feel more entitled to influence our parenting, whereas our friend was happy to donate and run!

She questioned whether our relationship with the donor would change if we had a child with his sperm. We did consider it might be a bit strange the first time we saw him with our baby, but we both felt, after the first initial awkwardness, it’d be fine. We couldn’t see the relationship being much different from now. Perhaps we would make more of an effort to call and visit.

We’ve had so many friends and strangers joke about giving us sperm. To actually go through the process and do it to help create another human being takes a generous spirit—it’s a pretty major gift to give someone and there’s a lot to take on mentally, as well. We told Joi how grateful we were to Johnny, but also to his wife. Joi told us we didn’t have to feel beholden to the donor. Sure, she said, we can be eternally grateful but she emphasised that we did not owe him anything.

And, talking to Dom about having another man father his child, Joi asked if he’d thought about what he’d be giving up—a genetic connection to the child and being able to pass on his family history. Dom was quick to reply, ‘I haven’t given it up, it was stolen from me!’ We all laughed and then he said what he has said all along, ‘I just want to be a parent.’

Joi confirmed what a lot of men in that situation say—they have to pinch themselves to remind themselves of how their child was created because the child becomes their child. We both agreed that we were sure that was what would happen for us.

Joi said, ‘It’s kind of like saying goodbye to the child you hoped to have together, in order to say hello properly and well to the one you can have.’

And then there was the big question about who would know—that’s quite a dilemma given our radio careers and the writing of this book. How might a child feel if everyone knows they were a donor-sperm baby? Then we talked about being in the public eye, and everyone knowing how we had a baby and our story.

But we aren’t ashamed and we aren’t afraid, so we have no problem sharing our story. Quite the opposite—it’s quite hard for us to keep it quiet because our whole life has been on the radio and we are in the habit of sharing some of our selves.

Joi made a really good point, too—children who have been born through donation have never been given away, as an adopted child has. The adopted child always has to accommodate that they had a set of biological parents who, for whatever reason, gave them away.

Joi sure made us think about things. She certainly challenged us and made us sure of our decision. We’d started the counselling sessions a bit reluctantly, but having completed them we understood why the clinic made it a requirement to treatment involving donor sperm.

IN HIS OWN WORDS—THE COUNSELLING

I found the counselling a little awkward, actually. Probably because it all seemed a bit unnecessary for Jay-Jay and me, and my mate who had agreed to help us out. After years and tears of IVF disappointment, this was the next logical step for us to take. So, after agreeing this is what we would try, there was no turning back. Nothing a soft-spoken counsellor whose voice was drowned out by the ticking clock behind her could say that was going to sow a seed of doubt.

My mate is pretty similar, too. He is a man of his word so I thought it would be highly unlikely his position would change after two counselling sessions, but you never can be sure.

Also, he was in a very different position to me. He hadn’t had long to think about this. I asked and he said yes that same day. There was potentially a lot of stuff he hadn’t considered that could be raised. For us, this day had been in the back of our minds for years, so it seemed like just another one of the many formalities couples must go through when you deal with the fertility stuff.

Having done it, I would imagine it would be extremely beneficial for some couples. You do walk away with a few things to ponder that would probably not cross most people’s minds, like how would we feel towards the donor if the baby had any disabilities? Pretty heavy stuff. Not something you really want to think about or consider. More a ‘cross that bridge when we get to it’ sort of situation.

Of course, we would love that child regardless and definitely not hold any blame towards my mate who has done this tremendous favour. I’m pretty sure most wannabe parents would be on the same page with that one. Surely nobody thinks babies are like consumer goods that can be taken back to the manufacturer if the product fails to live up to expectations!

The counsellor also wanted to know if my relationship with my mate would change after the baby was born. Again, you can only speculate this stuff, but I cannot imagine this would ever be an issue for either one of us. Especially him. Me? I could perhaps feel a little jealous, but hopefully not. Who knows. Time will tell. Touch wood!

With the counselling done and dusted, we had the green light to get going, or ‘proceed with the seed’ as the fertility doctors probably don’t say ever.

Inspermination

Once we’d got through all the hoops and tests and were good to go, I called the nurses on the first day of my next period, 29 November. Eight days later, I had to have daily blood tests to monitor the rise in my oestrogen levels. Three days later, the clinic called to say I needed to go in at 2 p.m. that afternoon for insemination—in an hour and a half ’s time.

‘Today?’ I was stunned, excited and scared shitless. It was real! After a few minutes of mixed emotions, I settled on ‘excited beyond words’ and couldn’t wait to get in there. We got to the clinic at 2 p.m. exactly—I hate to be late. I thought I’d be more nervous, but we’d had about seven years to get used to the idea. Dom was his usual low-key self. ‘Let’s not get too excited. You know the odds are against us . . . It’ll probably end in disappointment.’ I knew what he was trying to say but I couldn’t help feeling excited, even optimistic—it’s a good feeling and I’d rather feel like that than down in the dumps.

After parking the car, Dom said, ‘There’s no backing out now . . . It’s our first chance at our last chance.’ He was smiling. He had a point. It was our last option—we were now, officially, too old to adopt. If this didn’t work, we would have to accept that our future was going to look very different to what we’d originally imagined.

All class, as usual, Dom joked, ‘We got a park close to the entrance so the jizz won’t slip out on the way back to the car.’ Inside, we found out I was about to be impregnated by a woman. Tanya greeted us and showed us into the treatment room. She explained everything that was going to happen during the insemination. It’s basically like an uncomfortable smear test with a plastic catheter that would be inserted up my vagina, through my cervix and into my uterus. After that, I would have to lie on my back with my legs up for fifteen minutes.

A friend had asked me if I had to be aroused when getting inseminated. I almost spat out my cup of tea—I had never thought of that. I was too embarrassed to ask Tanya if it was true and hoped it wasn’t. However, Tanya told me to avoid overheating my body for the next two weeks—no hot baths, no hot pools, no exercise that was likely to make me hot. We’d just had a pool put in—a heated pool—and we were planning a pool party for the upcoming weekend. It was going to seem odd if I don’t jump in, but I was pretty good at making excuses, after all the practice I’d had.

Tanya pulled out a vial with about a centimetre of cloudy liquid in it. ‘There’s 7.5 million sperm in there!’ she told us. ‘Laura in our lab says it’s the best donor sperm she’s ever seen.’ Right then, we thought that had to be the biggest compliment you could pay a man, so Dom took a pxt and sent it to Johnny.

It was now time to get down to business, so I stripped from the waist down and lay on the bed with my feet in the stirrups. Luckily, I know Tanya had seen it all before. By the time the catheter went in, I was cramping up and squeezing Dom’s hand. Quite quickly, Tanya told us the sperm had been placed in my uterus and was on its way to the egg.

It’s so hard to believe—I imagined millions of tiny tadpoles swimming up my fallopian tubes searching for the golden egg. After fifteen minutes, I was PUPO and it was time to clean up and head home to begin another two-week wait for a pregnancy test.

That meant the test would be on Christmas Eve, so it was either going to be a very happy Christmas or a sad one.

The next week I was on high alert for any signs of pregnancy. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, sometimes I forgot and had to stop myself from jumping in the pool or reaching for a wine.

At least sperm donation was much easier on my body than IVF. I wondered why we didn’t do this sooner. There were no raging hormones from the IVF drugs, no mood swings, no egg collection, no pain afterwards, and it was a lot less stressful. A couple of blood tests after your period, a smear-test type procedure and voilà! You’re done. The worst part was probably the $1200 bill each time . . . and the two-week wait. Every day was another day closer to the pregnancy test, but each day seemed so much longer than the day before.

Halfway through the second week I finally started to feel something. My boobs were sore, really sore. My nipples were itchy—was this a sign or did I just sleep on them last night? I mentioned it in passing to Dom’s mum and sister. His sister Charlotte shrieked, ‘That’s how I knew I was pregnant before I had a test!’ For the next two days I kept squeezing my tender boobs and then the soreness disappeared.

The day before my blood test was due I felt crampy and tired and I had a headache. My lower back was aching—I knew the feeling and I didn’t like it! My period was due in four days but a trip to the loo confirmed my worst fears—there was blood. We went to the movies as a distraction, but I found it hard to concentrate.

‘At least you’ll be able to have a glass of champagne on Christmas morning,’ Dom said, trying to make me feel better. My whole body screamed, I don’t want champagne—I want a baby!

I had my blood test at 9 a.m. on Christmas Eve and expected the results around 1 p.m. I’d popped out for some last-minute Christmas shopping when Shirley, the nurse, phoned earlier than expected. I asked if she could call me back in half an hour. I wanted to be home when I got the result. When my phone rang again, I knew, deep inside, it wasn’t going to be the best Christmas of my life.

‘Hello Jay-Jay, it’s Shirley. I haven’t got good news.’

I sat with my head in my hands for a good few minutes.

I felt robbed even though nobody had stolen anything from me. I wanted to cry but the tears didn’t come. I felt tired, exhausted, worn down. I had my hopes pinned on Super Sperm. I knew the odds weren’t in my favour, but I’d heard so many stories about other people having miracles. Why couldn’t I have a miracle of my own? Why couldn’t I have some good news for Christmas?

First thing on Christmas morning, we cracked open a bottle of expensive champagne. I had been given a bottle of Louis Roederer Cristal Champagne—it’s the real deal, and I’d been keen to try it. Since I was not pregnant, I decided it was time to crack it open to celebrate Christmas and the family I was lucky enough to have! I have to say it’s the most delicious and light champagne I have ever had. There sure is a difference between expensive French champagne and bargain-bin bubbles!

After the excitement of Christmas, we started to look forward again. It was a New Year and we had enough sperm in the bank for fifteen more attempts. Because it wasn’t as taxing as IVF we could think about making an attempt every month—at 38 I didn’t have any time to lose, so we booked in for another go in January.

I told Dom I was prepared to try as many times as I could over the next year and then I’d be done. If we hadn’t succeeded by Christmas 2013, I was giving up. I could not spend my forties flogging a dead horse. Plus, I didn’t know how we were going to afford the $1200 each month for a year—I’m not the world’s best saver. All I know is what will be will be and any future baby’s life is in the hands of fate.

Okay, so Dr Fisher told me there was a less than 15 per cent chance each month of donor insemination working, but that there was a greater chance over time. It feels as if I’m riding an evil merry-go-round.

One of my best friends has been trying to get pregnant naturally with her partner for about a year. Every month on her fertile days they hump like rabbits and wait to see if her period comes. When it does, they do the same thing over again. When we talked about things, she said what she hates is putting her life on hold. After eight months, when she felt as if all the romance had been robbed from her life, she decided to just live her life as much as possible and take what comes. As she said, if people can get pregnant on a big night out and the kid is fine, why should she stress so much.

Back on the merry-go-round in January and, after my second blood test, a nurse from the clinic called to tell me to arrive for an insemination at midday the following day. When Dom asked me if I was excited, I thought for a couple of seconds before replying. ‘Not really.’ I realised I was feeling blasé. He seemed surprised. Unusually, this time I was feeling blasé and Dom was feeling optimistic.

I guessed blasé was a better way for me to feel—so far, excitement had always turned to disappointment for me. I hoped by feeling ‘whatever’ about it meant I wouldn’t be too disappointed if things went wrong. As it happened, I needed another blood test and the second insemination was carried over a day. The procedure was the same as the first time, but with a different nurse. Erama knew what she was doing and it was very quick and painless. Once again, I headed home PUPO.

At home, a colleague of mine turned up unexpectedly and asked how I was going with the fertility treatment. I told him I had just been sperminated and he asked me if I wanted a baby now. ‘What does “now” mean?’ I asked. He told me he had a 21-year-old employee who had found herself pregnant and she didn’t want to keep the baby. ‘She wants someone like you to have it,’ he said. ‘I’m against adoption so I’ve tried to talk her into keeping it but she thinks like a 21 year old. I want to tell her that you guys will take her baby.’

I really couldn’t consider adoption right then and suggested he put her onto an agency—there are so many good people wanting to adopt. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘We’ll just let the universe do its thing.’ After he’d gone I felt uncomfortable. Why did I feel stressed all of a sudden? Did I do the right thing?

I have to say, what followed really was the longest two weeks of my life. I assumed it would fly—I was still on holiday for the first week and the second week was my first week back at work for the year. I thought I would be so busy I wouldn’t notice the time go by.

By the eleventh day I’d had three headaches and a couple of twinges but it was impossible to imagine an embryo nestling in there. I really wanted this to work, but all of a sudden I felt desperate. I was so over all the treatment. I’d had enough.

The following day I started to get antsy. That night we went out for dinner with a couple of friends and I started to wonder if I had a drinking problem—I had an overwhelming urge to sniff everybody’s drinks. One by one I picked up each glass and held it to my nose before taking a long hard sniff. So good! And then I ordered a pineapple juice with a cocktail umbrella so I could feel as if I was joining in the fun.

With two days to go, I wondered if I should cheat and do a home pregnancy test. The clinic discourages it but I was feeling pregnant and I wanted to be put out of my misery. At home, after I’d unsuccessfully fossicked through our big toiletries cupboard, Dom offered to head out to the supermarket. I was so worried he might be spotted I swallowed some paracetamol and went to bed.

In bed, I felt a few twinges and a bit of lower back discomfort. I drifted in and out of sleep for the rest of the night wrestling with the discomfort. I woke up with a headache, went the toilet, let out some air and felt a whole lot better.

One more day to go! For the first time this whole insem I was feeling a wee bit hopeful. I kept thinking about that home pregnancy test—day thirteen, and all I could think about was how I needed to know, right then, whether or not I was pregnant. It’s not like me to want to ruin a surprise—I’d never been so impatient before.

Besides, not knowing was making it really hard to plan ahead. For example, we were planning on doing a silly stunt for our show that week, trying to eat a burger while riding the roller-coaster at Rainbow’s End. If I was pregnant, I wouldn’t be able to participate, which would have people asking questions. If I wasn’t pregnant I’d have to cancel my hair appointment for that afternoon! Yes, I know, First World problems.

I woke up on the fourteenth day and it was a Monday. Feeling really good, I bounced out of bed. No headache, no tummy tingles, I figured it was going to be a good day. Not long into our show, I started to feel pain in my ovaries . . . and my head hurt. I was feeling pre-menstrual. By 9 a.m. I was down in the dumps—like so sad I could cry. At one point, I had my head in my hands and I could feel the burn of tears behind my eyelids.

‘I can’t imagine what you must be feeling right now,’ said Mike, my co-host.

I left to go for my blood test but I was sullen-faced—I just knew it couldn’t be good. What is the point of the test when I know what the outcome will be?

At the blood lab, my favourite nurse, Marji, asked me how I was doing.

I think she could tell by the look on my face that I wasn’t feeling great and she tried to cheer me up by saying, ‘Let’s hope for the best, aye?’

I said she’d likely see me in two weeks for another crack at it. But I realised as I said it, I didn’t want another crack at it—I was tired of the merry-go-round. I wanted to get off the ride.

I needed to vent so as soon as I could I posted on the secret Facebook page. The women there always make me feel better. I’m glad I have them. I knew the lab results would be late and I had a lunch booked at 1 p.m. that day with the publishers of this book so I emailed Fertility Associates and asked them to call me after 3 p.m. Lunch was nice but I found it hard to focus—I was dying to know my results. I talked at lunch about the writing and how I didn’t have an ending, yet. I felt I needed a happy ending. All good stories have a happy ending, don’t they?

Finally home, the phone rang. The nurse said, ‘I’m really sorry. It’s a negative.’

Gasping for breath, I said, ‘That makes me so sad!’ Dom came over to hug and kiss me. He is quite resilient and I guess I am, to a point, and it would have been a huge surprise to us both if the result was positive.

Nicci, the nurse, was comforting and said Dr Fisher would like me to do another HSG test to check my tubes were clear since even Super Sperm couldn’t seem to penetrate my old, tired eggs. But I really don’t want to do it.

Feeling tired of it all, I couldn’t be bothered trying again, but I’d committed to finishing the year off so I asked to be sperminated again. Dr Fisher wasn’t keen without an HSG test—it’d been seven years since the last test. Reluctantly, I agreed to book in.

This time, Dom wasn’t allowed into the room with me, which made me slightly nervous. To help me relax the radiologists, Marianne and Jane, chatted with me about this book and Dom’s book, Bucket List of an Idiot. I could see what was happening on the screen and I felt the dye go through my tubes. It was nowhere near as painful as it had been the last time. I was relieved and even more relieved when I saw the dye come out the ends of both tubes.

That was such great news. Later that night, while Dom and I were chilling on the couch with a glass of wine, Dom proposed a toast to ‘our good news today’.

‘Cheers to fertility!’ I said as we chinked glasses.

Boosted by the good news, I sent the nurses an email pleading for another go as soon as possible, only to find I couldn’t have an insemination attempt on the same cycle as an HSG because the dye is radioactive. It wasn’t the news I wanted to hear but, hey, after seven years what’s another month?

Postscript

I’ve been feeling a bit insecure about myself lately. Okay, a lot insecure. I’ve put on quite a bit of weight and when I look in the mirror I don’t see the cool Jay-Jay I used to be. I feel frumpy and mumsy. I don’t want to be mumsy. I want to be cool again.

It didn’t help that I had a celebrity guest, Gaz, from the MTV reality show ‘Geordie Shore’, confirm my worst fears in print. He came to New Zealand to do some promo work and visited The Edge studio where he was quite the hit with the girls in the office. I started to feel a bit old, partly because I felt no attraction. Later, asked to rate ten high-profile Kiwi women for a weekend paper, this is what he said about me.

I’m sorry, babe, but no way. She was the nicest girl in the world, but she looks like your mum, she talks like your mum, acts like your mum.

Well, guess what, Gaz? I am a mum! I suddenly realised I am young no more. It’s time to get serious and embrace the mumsy mum in me. I will turn forty soon. I’ll stick to our plan of trying donor sperm insemination every month until the end of the year. If I’m not pregnant by then, we’ll have to accept it’s not meant to be.

Right now, I have a feeling deep within me that it will work—after all, my tubes are clear and we have Super Sperm on our team! Whether it works or not, Dom and I have to look ahead to the next half of our lives. It may be that our nephew, Seven, will remain a spoilt only child and we will have to learn to appreciate the fact that we’ve never had to change a dirty nappy. All I know is nobody can say we didn’t give it our best shot.

I’ve been wracking my brains to come up with a decent ending to this book. When I started writing it there was really only one happy ending I had in mind, but putting my life down on paper has made me see there might be more than one kind of happily ever after.

I was going through an old box of letters and cards recently and found a handwritten letter from John Hudson, the presenter on our Sunday documentary.

Dear Jay-Jay,

Now that I have your attention, let me tell you a story.

It’s about a dream I had about a loving, compassionate couple who adopted a young boy.

The couple loved the boy and they cared for him really well, always making sure he was happy.

But then something sad happened. The loving couple desperately wanted to have a baby. They tried and tried but through no fault of their own it just didn’t happen for them.

For a long time they were sad.

Their good friends were sad as well because they didn’t like it when the loving couple were hurting. They could only imagine the frustration and pain their friends were going through.

Eventually, though, the sadness began to fade. The loving young couple had each other and the beautiful son they nurtured turned into a lovely young man who realised he was very lucky to have loving parents and a secure happy family.

I hope this dream comes true.

John

John is a wise man and his words comforted me then, and they still comfort me now. He inspired me to step back and take a look at my life. I have an exciting job, a loving husband and a happy marriage, a gorgeous nephew who calls me Mum and Dom Dad. I have great friends, lots of life experience, a nice house . . . I have so many things other people don’t and I feel truly grateful for all the things I have. And that’s what I will focus on for now. The things I do have, rather than the things I don’t.

I have life and I have love. It’s all I really need.

Acknowledgements

I could not have written this book without the support of so many people, including my husband Dom, who has put up with me and all of my issues for over fourteen years now. I’ll be talking to the Prime Minister about getting you a knighthood!

My mum Robynne—we’ve been through some hard times together Mum, but you have always supported me and encouraged me to live my dreams. I love you so much!

Super Sperm—special thanks to our donor and his wife for giving us the greatest gift of all. I will never be able to express how much it means to us and how much we love you.

To all the amazing staff at both FertilityPLUS and Fertility Associates—thank you for trying your best for us every time and for tolerating our TV cameras and recording devices.

To the Boys Club mums—Katie, Jo, Sharon, Janet, Jenny, Carey and Sonya—you have absolutely no idea how much your friendship means to me. I am so grateful for all the support and advice you have given me over the last five years. I love you a lot!

To Dom’s mum Sue and my friend Katie—I appreciate you reading my draft and offering me your honest opinion about this book. It was because of you that this finished product looks so different to my first attempt. It means so much.

We spent a whole day taking about two thousand photos for this book cover and a lot of people helped me out.

Damian Alexander (www.krop.com/damianalexander), you are a superstar. I am so glad you agreed to help me with my cover. You take the most beautiful photos and have so many edgy ideas. I loved every minute working with you. Thank you.

Helen Luo from Smashbox, Ponsonby. One of the best makeup artists I have ever had the pleasure of working on my face! Helen, you are incredibly talented and I consider getting my makeup done by you at Smashbox as one of the greatest pleasures in life. Thanks for helping me look so stunning during the cover shoot.

Brad Lepper from French Revolver Studio, Auckland. It’s like an angel sent you to me. I am so glad we met. Thank you for working your magic on my hair for the cover shoot. You are so clever and I cannot thank you enough for donating your time and talent for me.

Vanessa Quin—the MITA hair extensions were incredible! You are such a generous, kind friend. I love you to bits.

Leah Light—you have brought my nails to life on so many occasions and made me feel so cool! Thanks for teaching me that nails are not to be ignored, and thanks for always supporting me and being so generous. I love you.

Charone at Glamour Boutique—your dresses are spectacular. Thank you for dressing me for some of the shots.

Geoff at Proctor & Gamble—even though they didn’t make the cut, it was very generous of you to give me that huge pile of Clearblue pregnancy tests. I’m sure I’ll get through them eventually!

And thanks to you for reading my book. I hope you enjoyed it.

Jay-Jay xox

Table of Contents

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

FAMILY BACKGROUND

GETTING TO KNOW DOM

DOM’S MEDICAL EMERGENCY

FACING INFERTILITY

WHY DO WE WANT CHILDREN?

DOM’S JOB

FIRST IVF CYCLE

SECOND IVF CYCLE

THIRD IVF CYCLE

INSTANT PARENTHOOD

FOURTH IVF CYCLE

TIME TO REASSESS

RECOVERY

ALTERNATIVE TREATMENT

PREPARING FOR OUR FIFTH IVF CYCLE

DOM’S DELIVERY

FIFTH IVF CYCLE

WHAT NEXT?

ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION

INSPERMINATION

POSTSCRIPT

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS