Welcoming our daughter

Our daughter conceived with my sister's donor eggs arrived safe and well on February 13 - much to the delight of my husband and I, after six years' trying to conceive

Our dear daughter is now 11 days old. She is absolutely beautiful and perfect in every way. She hasn’t even inherited my one-eared deafness which I mentioned in my last post, which I inherited from my own aunty.

She arrived safely via c-section on 13 February and every day since then has been wonderful but hectic – hence my tardiness posting this news.

We still can hardly believe she is here. I forget all the time that she was conceived with my sister’s eggs as she is very much my husband’s and my baby. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t tell her about her genetic heritage – we are being open about this with everyone we know well and will tell her of her special conception and birth story from as soon as she can understand.

Thank you to everyone for your love and support leading up to this – I just hope that everyone else in hope and need of donor IVF is as lucky as we are.

Monday’s child is fair of face

Our beautiful baby, conceived with its aunty's eggs, arrives by c-section tomorrow, and I can't wait to see who he or she looks like and to welcome it with open arms into our family.

Tomorrow we will have our long-awaited-for baby and I keep trying to imagine who it will look like – my sister, my husband or me?

Of course we won’t be able to see who it looks like until it is much bigger.  And some people will tell us that it looks like itself and that we shouldn’t try to make it look like anyone else.

But I’ve always loved making genetic links between family members. It’s something to do with a sense of belonging or clan, and understanding where someone comes from.

For instance – much to my mother’s consternation – two of her four grandchildren have her eyebrows which stick straight out rather than lie flat on her brow. They are very distinctive and obviously very dominant! (thank goodness I inherited eyebrows from my father which lie down flat and have a lovely shape, if I do say so myself).

And my aunty is deaf in one ear, as am I although no one else has this special feature in our family.

So given this baby is conceived from my sister’s eggs, what will she/he be like?  Is there a chance it too will be deaf in one ear like its genetic aunty (me) who is actually its mother?

Will it have my sister’s beautiful freckles and green eyes or will it have my colouring which is darker hair with blue eyes and white skin prone to moles?  Will it be tall and gangly like its Dad, with curly brown/red hair? Or will it be a throw back to someone else distantly related?

If we had conceived our baby with help from someone unrelated, I would still be having these thoughts. Traits are fascinating and are a unique part of everyone and something to be noted/proud of/mulled over/celebrated.

Whatever, this baby has been born out of much love and is/will be truly treasured – and even if it inherits its grandmother’s unfortunate eyebrows (sorry Mum!) it will be beautifully fair of face in our eyes.

What a difference a year makes

Waiting for a baby can seem interminable but it only takes a year - sometimes less - for things to change completely

Waiting to conceive a baby can be unbearably long, lonely and painful but things can turn around so quickly.

In just a year, we have undergone donor IVF with my wonderful sister from New Zealand; conceived, miscarried, had a negative transfer, conceived again and are now awaiting the arrival of our first baby in five days’ time.

Conception and pregnancy followed six years of grief, uncertainty and personal growth, all of which began with my diagnosis of premature ovarian failure at 35.

I grieved then for my young womanhood (going into premature menopause made me feel like an unattractive old crone), my periods (truly!), the children we would never have; our first IVF cycle that yielded zilch eggs and for the life we’d had before my diagnosis.

More recently, we grieved for the little baby we lost last year to miscarriage – it felt like our hearts had been ripped out.

But all the grieving and uncertainty helped us to become more thoughtful, empathetic and kind. It made us rethink what being a beautiful, sexy woman or man really means (it doesn’t mean you have to be fertile) and what life would be like childfree (books called Silent Sorority and Sweet Grapes were particularly helpful).

So what a journey it’s been!  It has been truly remarkable for which we are very thankful.

If it can happen for us, it can happen for others too.  I can’t wait to read about other people’s success stories – I know they are out there, or about to begin.

Sixteen days to go

Walking our dog Daisy - I'm big but still mobile

“Oh my God – you look great! You must be due very soon!,” said my hairdresser yesterday. And she’d be right as there are only 16 days until our baby arrives by c-section – unless he/she decides to come early.

At 36 weeks, the only ailment I have is really sore feet – my heels are swollen, hot and bruised. When I get up every morning I hobble around on them like how I imagine the little mermaid walked when she traded in her tongue for feet.

I’ve been so lucky this pregnancy – many women suffer from bad backs, bad skin, varicose veins (in your bum and your legs!), stretch marks and other delights. But I’ve just got bigger and bigger – and I haven’t even started waddling yet. It’s sounds like I’m gloating but it’s just so nice to be able to do being pregnant well – especially when it was so hard for us to fall pregnant.

But much more exciting is feeling and seeing our baby move in my belly. It literally looks like my stomach is having a mini earthquake when the babe gets going – my belly rolls, dips and jerks. The thought that there is a little being in there moving spontaneously around is just amazing.

I wish everyone had the chance to feel these sensations – it is such a privilege.

Childbirth – a pain in the bum

One of my workmates says her sister in law won’t have children as she’s too scared to go through the pain of labour.  I don’t blame her really, especially when I hear all the horrible stories of blood, guts and poo from my friends and family who have already gone over the to other side ie: gone through labour.

But I am beginning to ask seriously – why is it that we are expected to go through all this pain, when for any other procedure in which pain is expected, pain killers are made available?

I have had a several operations over the years, including bilateral bunion surgery, laser eye surgery and two incised bartholin’s cysts (not fun and very painful). I have also had all my wisdom teeth and four molars out (thank god we live in the era of orthodontics as without it I would have had a serious mouthful of fangs).  For all procedures, I have been knocked out under a general anaesthetic with lovely analgesics to ease me through the first few painful days afterwards.

So why are we still expected to suffer the purported agony of childbirth?

Does it tie back to the bible in some way? Or is it linked to some kind of misogyny?

Or is it that women themselves want to experience that pain and wear it as a badge of honour? Listening to some women comparing notes about labour is fascinating – it is like they are posturing and jostling for the position of the woman who had the worst/longest/most dangerous/most painful experience – why??

Does anyone have the answer to this?  Why don’t we all just have epidurals or spinal blocks right at the start of labour, or cesareans, so we don’t have to experience apparently excruciating pain? Would this be so humiliating if it meant avoiding what is sometimes days of painful labour resulting in painful, stitched-up derrieres, blood loss and exhaustion?

Swallowing our anxiety and treasuring this pregnancy

Our ceramic welcome swallows are our first purchase for our baby's nursery - but we still can't quite admit it for fear of jinxing our pregnancy!

Yesterday we bought our first things for our baby’s room – they might look a little kitch but they are little ceramic swallows from an antique shop which we’re going to put on the wall – but we couldn’t bring ourselves to openly admit they are for the baby as we’re still so scared to jinx this pregnancy.

We admitted to the shop assistant, when she asked us (while eyeing my big belly), that they were for our baby, but on the way home we said that they would also look very nice on the wall of my husband’s record room (he is an ex DJ and has lots of vinyl records).

There is currently this subtext to everything we say and do – ie: that we are planning for our baby, which will hopefully arrive safely at the end of February – but that we can’t allow ourselves the luxury yet of just assuming that it’s going to happen and that all will be OK.

We were the same last weekend, when we went to a Baby Expo in Melbourne but couldn’t bring ourselves to buy anything.

Every week that we get through, we count if off as one week closer to the safe delivery of our baby.

But at the same time, I really want to treasure this pregnancy and not wish it away. I was reminded of this when reading a post on another blog, by a woman who is just about to have her baby tomorrow by c-section.

It’s not that I don’t treasure my pregnancy. I am in fact revelling in it and absolutely loving it – but I think my husband and I need to make sure we don’t wish it away on our journey to parenthood – as it’s as much a part of our baby’s development (as ours) as the birth and parenthood afterwards will be.

Has anyone else felt like this?

An unnnatural conception – and delivery

Like the clouds from this spray can, my pregnancy is completely manufacturered and quite magical

The only thing unmanufactured about my pregnancy is my pregnancy itself, which explains in part why I am expecting to have a cesarean delivery.

The conception of our baby was entirely aided by synthetic hormones and IVF. I took oestrogen to thicken up my womb in readiness for the wee embryo I received in June, while my sister took drugs to stimulate her ovaries and release her eggs to donate to me. During the conception period, I filled myself with progesterone pessaries to create a welcoming environment for the embryo to settle into, and hey presto, after lots of manufacturing and unnaturalness, we have a pregnancy!

The pregnancy itself is chugging along nicely without any drugs – my placenta has now taken over that role. So that is natural and normal.

I love that something so fantastic can come out of something so manufactured – it makes me feel very borg-like and connected to the future. I am eternally grateful to have the science available to us to be able to create life within us – to me it is a real crossover between science and magic.

So why not continue the artificiality with a cesarean – it only seems natural (!).

My obstetrician brought up the subject of delivery on our last visit, saying that given this could be our only baby, we should consider a cesarean to avoid any potential birthing complications. And having watched several knuckle-biting episodes of One Born Every Minute, I’m very happy to accede to his recommendation!