usuk2004
I'm ONE!
Member since 5/05 5150 total posts
Name:
Farah
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A little inspiration for you all
And written from a man's point of view too! this was in this morning's Daily Telegraph, so don't mind the English-isms! 
At 7.25, our daughter joined us
(Filed: 22/07/2005)
For the past 18 months on these pages, Imogen Edwards Jones has written about her three-year struggle to become pregnant - a journey that has cost thousands of pounds and involved countless doctors, procedures and health scares. Six weeks ago, her daughter, Allegra, was born and, here, Imogen's husband, Kenton Allen, describes the experience from the proud father's point of view
I really do not know what all the fuss was about. The moment all 6lb 4oz of a rather grey and slimy Allegra Carmen Elizabeth Allen popped into view, three years of heartache vanished in an instant. All those years of failure suddenly seemed like one bad night out in Birmingham. All those worries about miscarriage or having a small baby or the 400 other obsessions I had been taught to fret about by medicine's finest minds vanished in a heartbeat. And not just any old heartbeat, but a brand new heartbeat from a brand new person. A person I had become convinced would turn out to be a male midget with a cleft palate and the promise of a career with Billy Smart's Circus. The relief was palpable.
A family at last. After months of trying - Imogen, Kenton and their daughter Allegra
On initial inspection, my daughter looked surprisingly normal. Especially for someone who has the unfortunate gene pool of Imogen and myself. Even the injustice of being referred to as "Less Attractive" for 18 months in these pages was immediately reduced to a silly self-obsession as I was handed Allegra. The midwife cried a bit. I cried buckets. Imogen cried out in pain. She is beautiful, as you can see from the photo. And the baby is pretty cute, too. It was, as they say, emotional.
The journey to reach this magical moment began rather innocently about three years ago.
We were not trying to start a family. We were not, however, trying to stop a family starting, relying on the Russian roulette school of birth control. I think we were secretly hoping, without ever saying it, that Imogen would become pregnant without us really trying. This did not work and slowly but surely, all our friends were suddenly discussing pushchair manufacturers and whether it is possible to put an unborn foetus down for Eton (it isn't, by the way). A quick trip to the local lady doctor later told us all we needed to know. Everything seemed fine in all departments. It was time to get serious. It was time for - drum roll, please - "baby sex".
Apart from watching England play Germany in a World Cup semi-final, "baby sex" is probably the most stressful thing any man can go through. Baby sex is the point in a couple's relationship when they decide that nature is not taking its course speedily enough and they need to, quite literally, put their backs into making a baby. It is exhausting, humiliating and not much fun. I am a fit, young-ish man. My wife is as sexy as they come. The thought that after 12 hours at work I would come home and make passionate love to a beautiful women got me through many a difficult period in my early twenties. The reality of having to do it now was a nightmare.
None of this seemed to be getting results, so it was time to turn to private medicine. I was obviously, it seemed, the problem and was dispatched for a sperm test. Forget climbing Everest in your trunks and flip-flops. Taking a sperm test is the biggest challenge to a man's masculinity: it makes you feel impossibly nervous and inadequate.
Ultimately, it's the pressure to "deliver" the goods in a precise window of time (in my case, at 11.45 on a wet Tuesday morning) that gets to you. You feel like someone auditioning for a very low-budget adult film. Happily, according to the good folk at the Lister Hospital, I have "sperm like whitebait".
With her husband in the clear, the focus turned on Imogen. First came the innocently named Clomid. If you have a partner who starts taking this fertility drug, my tip is to remove all sharp objects from the house and wear a cricket box at all times. Unfortunately, Clomid made no difference at all, so the gynaecologist suggested we try artificial insemination - which, until then, I thought was only appropriate for stud animals.
After insemination, we had a tense two weeks in which I discovered we had spent, to date, about £1,000 on the baby game. A moderate hole in one's pocket for no return. But the crushing disappointment that follows an unsuccessful attempt leaves you with a bigger hole in your heart - a sad and lonely feeling that brings you closer to your wife than ever before while pushing you frighteningly far apart as the desperation of your situation looms larger. So, welcome, ladies, gentlemen, and my bank manager, to the wonderful world of IVF.
From a male perspective, IVF is just about the weirdest thing you can legally do to your wife. I think I have now injected Imogen in the thigh and bottom well over 1,000 times on the road to a baby-shaped nirvana.
I hope that if you are ever asked to inflict quite excruciating pain on your most loved one, you will also find that a bit of humour will help ease the pain and total hatred that your wife feels for you. As you gently ease a 6in needle into her buttocks for the 400th time, distracting her with your best material is a winner. It is always good to have something to chuckle about as you wipe the blood from your polished oak floorboards.
Of course, the process of IVF is physically and emotionally painful and tremendously difficult for a woman. I used to have an enormous amount of respect for my wife. Having gone through IVF with her, this respect now knows no bounds. She is an incredibly brave and strong individual with huge reservoirs of strength. She puts me to shame.
For both of us, the emotional fall-out from two failed attempts at IVF was devastating. We discovered that all our hopes and dreams had come to nothing. The process failed twice, in a very similar fashion. It was a normal Sunday afternoon, nine days after implantation of the eggs, and we were messing around at home. And then, from the bathroom, a low wail, followed by silence and the words, "It hasn't worked." Then tears, dread, guilt, hopelessness and a bill for six grand.
Some 11 months later, I am sitting in a delivery room at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Imogen is having contractions, my friend Theodora, the midwife, is checking for dilation and I am mopping Imogen's brow with a cool flannel (which I have, rather cleverly, I think, scented with lavender oil). And all because of one drunken night of passion.
I firmly believe Imogen became pregnant because we relaxed for a month and got on with our lives and behaved like ourselves for a few weeks. Imogen is convinced it is because she spent a month drinking some foul-smelling herbs she got from a bloke in Oxfordshire. Either way, I do not care. We were about to have a baby.
The birth was excellent fun and I would pay good money to do it all over again tomorrow. The fact that we did pay very good money, about £30,000, to get to this stage means that we will not be doing it all over again just yet.
We were admitted to the hospital at about 6pm on May 28. Imogen had been having contractions for about 12 hours before. After a couple of hours, there was a lot of sweating and shouting and I distinctly remember the phrase, "Give me the bloody drugs now!" being uttered a couple of times.
An epidural went in without a hitch and everything settled down nicely. So nicely that I was packed off home at midnight to get some sleep. I did not leave without having a bet with Theodora. I put £5 on a 5am arrival, just to make it a bit more exciting. She looked at me sagely and said. "Baby will arrive between 7 and 8am."
I wasn't sure about her forecast and I hate losing a bet. I returned to the hospital at 4am to find all was peace and calm. And the peace and calm continued quite serenely until 6.30 - and then it was time for the big push.
It is quite difficult for me fully to convey to you the beauty of this birth. After all the poking, probing, injections, and invasiveness that Imogen has gone through over the past three years, Allegra's arrival was more than a bit special. A totally natural delivery performed by Theodora, with me providing verbal encouragement, running commentary and that soothing flannel. No teams of doctors, no specialists with worried faces staring at growth charts. Just me, my wife and Theodora. At 7.25am precisely, our daughter joined us. A family at last.
The aftermath of the birth was less than perfect. Imogen's placenta was stuck. All of a sudden, the tiny delivery room was crammed full of people looking slightly concerned. Imogen was whisked off to have her placenta removed in what she later described as "a James Herriot incident". She is fine now, but is not planning to go water-skiing for another couple of months.
With Imogen in theatre, I was left completely on my own. We sat for almost two hours, my daughter and I. No nurses or doctors, just us, waiting for Mummy to come back safely.
I was left holding the baby - our baby. She was smiling sweetly and seemed very tiny in my big fat ugly arms.
I will never forget those few sweet hours. Allegra - or "the Passenger" as she was still known then - seemed perfect to me. Everyone who has subsequently poked and prodded her has pronounced her perfect, too, and she will remain perfect in our eyes, whatever journeys we go on together in the years ahead. So it seems there is such a thing as a happy ending. Even when you are only at the beginning.
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