The End of Men. Christina Sweeney-Baird
conflicting ways. By the end of an eight-hour day deciphering the comments, I was so exhausted I wanted to throw my laptop out of the window. I suggested hopefully to my lovely boss, Margaret, that this probably meant I could ignore them, but she just tutted sternly and told me ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day.’
I explain the witch-costume situation and Anthony looks at me seriously. ‘That’s a good plan,’ he says. ‘Plan A: Witch. Plan B: Normal lady in black.’ The gravity with which he approaches these issues when we discuss them is one of the many things I love about him. He would never say, ‘This is such a silly conversation, why are we having it?’ Once, my friend Libby’s ex-boyfriend told her she was being ridiculous raising something – I can’t remember what now – when we were having a double date at a sushi place in Soho. Anthony said, without a trace of humour in his voice, ‘If she’s bringing it up then it’s not ridiculous. She’s not ridiculous.’
Libby says Anthony is one of the reasons she’s single, because she can see what love should be like. I try to remind her of what we were like at university. We’ve been together half our lifetimes now. You don’t become two halves of a whole overnight. I think I once might have said something about a relationship being a ‘journey’ and Libby refused to talk to me until I’d bought her a double gin and tonic.
After Anthony has finished clearing the plates away, which I kind of, sort of, definitely left for him to do because he’s tidier than I am, I sit back with a contented sigh. He’s looking at me intensely. He either wants to have sex or he wants to have the big F conversation. To have IVF or not to have IVF? The question that couples have only had the luxury of pondering for forty years. I saw in Anthony’s work diary a capital F in the corner of the page for Friday a few months ago. Immediately I assumed, despite no evidence whatsoever, that he was having an affair. Freya? Flora? Felicity? Who is she? For a few weeks I kept dropping women’s names starting with F into conversation, worrying that he’d go a bit pink and look guilty, but he just thought I was trying to subtly suggest baby names.
I kept checking his diary every few weeks after that, and kept seeing the F. I don’t know why I didn’t just ask him what the F was. He doesn’t lie to me and it was probably some boring work thing but something about it stuck in my brain. I wanted to figure it out for myself. And then, a fortnight ago I realised. The F was always on a day that we ended up having a conversation about fertility, or my lack thereof. I went back through my journals and there it was. On the day he would mark F, we would somehow end up sliding into our recurring conversation. Anthony is a planner and cannot let things just take their course. It’s wonderful for holidays as I don’t have to do anything and before I know it, I’m in a beautiful hotel in Lisbon that he booked for a decent rate eight months ago. It’s even better for date nights and school admissions. But for the Big Conversations that can ruin a Wednesday evening when you were hoping your husband was trying to seduce you, it’s a bit of let-down.
In some ways I envy the women who were in my position before the torturous miracle of fertility treatment. Lots of women had one child, or no children, and that was that. There would be tears and prayers, maybe some self-pitying wondering: ‘Why me?’ But there would be no choice in the matter. It would be out of my hands. I dream of such a lack of control.
We’ve been having these conversations for nearly a year now. We tried for a year before that, assuming it would happen. But then, nothing. Radio silence from my ovaries. I tried a drug called Clomid to ‘wake them up’ but they pressed the snooze button and rudely ignored my pleas for cooperation.
‘I was talking to my boss, at work today.’ I flinch at the mention of her; not again. She’s always trying to persuade Anthony to persuade me to start IVF. I’ve never met her but I loathe her. It’s none of her business. But I promised in our wedding vows to always listen and never judge. I was twenty-four! I didn’t know anything about how annoying it can be to have to listen when you just want to have a glass of wine. But I did promise, so I smile and ask, ‘What about?’
‘She was saying how much better things are for Alfie now that he has a sibling. He’s more sociable. Talks more. She thinks it’s made him more empathetic.’
I bristle at the implied criticism of my family set-up from this awful woman. As though I’m raising a creepily silent future sociopath because I haven’t produced multiple children. I make a non-committal noise and drain my wine glass; an act of defiance in the face of alcohol’s fertility-busting qualities.
‘We should do it,’ he says with a burst of reckless energy. I’ve heard this before. ‘I’ve really thought about it. We need to stop going back and forth on it. Neither of us is getting any younger. You turn thirty-four in two months’ time and the statistics for IVF only get worse as you get older.’ He’s looking at me as though the answer is simple, I just need to get on board and everything will be fine!
‘We’ve had this discussion before. We know about the statistics, but …’ I don’t really have anything to say that I haven’t said a thousand times before. If I could guarantee that a round of IVF would give me a baby – that new member of the family we’ve wanted for so long – I would do it in a heartbeat. But that’s not a promise anyone can make me. I know the odds of it working. They’re not good and I’ve never liked gambling. It feels nauseatingly reckless to start IVF when we already have Theodore and I can devote all my time to him and I’ve learnt to accept our family the way it is. What if I can’t look after him when I’m sick from the hormones they’d pump me full of or emotionally drained from the disappointment? What if in pursuit of a sibling I stop being as good a mother to the child I already have? Still, the desire for another Theodore, and to see him playing with another child, sometimes punches me in the gut and for a day I’ll understand Anthony’s steadfast certainty that we need another baby.
I go through phases. Sometimes I feel determined and ready. I can do this. Send me the needles, shoot me up, strap me down. I will do anything for a baby. Other weeks, the idea of all of those people and objects and wires and things being inside me makes me want to curl myself in a protective hunch. No, my body says. This is not right. Anthony’s more prone to baby-induced broodiness than I am. A friend’s snuffly newborn or his godchild doing something adorable will inevitably lead to an earnest declaration that we should just do it, let’s do it, what have we got to lose? Like tonight.
What do we have to lose? Everything, Anthony, I want to cry each time. Occasionally I’ll convince myself I can do this whole IVF thing but I can’t do it flippantly. For a man so keen on planning, he can be remarkably gung-ho about the impact of IVF and babies or, worse, IVF and no babies, on our lives. I need an acknowledgement of the potential worst-case scenario. I need him to understand how hard it’s going to be for me. Because, as with all things involved in the growing of a human child, it will be the woman in this equation who experiences the negatives. And that assumes it would even work; what if it was for nothing?
‘I need some more time to weigh it up, think about the pros and cons.’
‘Why do you always assume it will go wrong?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You do,’ he says, frustration moving right to the front of his voice and staying put. ‘You talk about the financial cost and the emotional cost and the physical cost as if it’s guaranteed you’re going to be having IVF for the next three years. What if it works first time? What if it’s a success? What if having a baby is completely within our grasp but we just don’t take the chance?’
‘Easy for you to say,’ I mutter.
‘What was that?’ he asks, even though he heard me. Of course he heard me.
‘I said, it’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who it’s going to happen to.’
‘We’re in this together, Cat. Please, I can’t do this for you. I know it’s unfair but I can’t. Please. Just think about it.’
We settle in to the sofa next to each other to watch something Anthony says is meant to be good and I realise that my heart rate isn’t up. I’m calm. These conversations used to leave me tear stained and weepy but