And there’s more. We decide to rent out our house in Oxford and move back to London. It is almost three years to the day since we moved in, and three years plus a week since I realised the move was probably a mistake. Whilst it did have the desired effect of stopping me from spending so much time at work, I simply swapped the office for a four-hour commute instead. I soon found myself regularly catching the train at 6.30 in the morning, getting home at midnight after an evening event, only to be back on the train first thing the following day. It felt like I was travelling a hundred miles a day just to go to sleep; it was exhausting and miserable.
With hindsight I do wonder why a moderately intelligent couple (us) would go away for the weekend; put an offer in on a house that they’ve seen only once in a city where they don’t know anyone; and then borrow hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy it. But I guess impulse took over, along with a need to have control over something in our lives to counter the other thing over which we seem to have no control at all.
London is a city of villages, and one of the most exciting things about coming back is deciding where to move to. I’ve lived north, south, east and west, and have favourite places in every area. However, I quickly decide that I am determined to be as central as possible. So we swap our three-bedroom house in Oxford for a tiny top-floor one-bedroom flat in Covent Garden. It’s heaven in a shoebox.
Friends just laugh and say, ‘Jessica! Only you!’
It’s true, there aren’t many people who would even contemplate moving to the centre of touristville, and admittedly it hasn’t got the boho-chic of north and west, nor the contemporary cool of south and east. But let me extol its virtues, just for a moment. It takes a maximum of thirty minutes to get to nearly anywhere in the city. Most nights out are only a ten-minute stroll home. And anything you could possibly need is within five minutes of your doorstep. It also has a unique sense of community, in that it’s a place where people live, work and visit. At 8 a.m. on a Monday it is full of people on their way to the office; at 8 p.m. on a Friday it’s full of people out on the razzle; and then first thing on a weekend morning the streets are deserted and you have the place to yourself. I love the juxtaposition of the buzz and the quiet. I love the anonymity. I even love hearing people walking drunkenly home through the streets in the middle of the night. It makes me feel that all is right with the world.
So, we are back in London and I have put in motion plans to take a sabbatical. Now all we need to do is decide what to do next in our quest for a baby. Like locusts, we’ve already eaten our way through three of the top clinics in the country and we’re still hungry. The question is, can anybody satisfy us? Every doctor we see says that there is nothing at all to indicate that we can’t and won’t get pregnant. Our consultant in Oxford has often said that, all things being equal, his recommendation would be to keep trying and eventually, by the law of probability, we will succeed. But I’m not a machine, and years of unsuccessful IVF take their physical, emotional and financial toll. I’m not ready to give up, but if we are going to go through it yet again I need to try something different, somewhere different.
It’s time to try Taranissi.
Dr Mohammed Taranissi is one of the most successful, but also one of the most controversial, fertility doctors in the UK. In 2007, the BBC produced a Panorama programme about him in which he was accused of administering costly and unproven treatments. These include the consumption of large quantities of milk; daily blood analysis; and the practice of immune therapy using unlicensed products – he is one of the few doctors in the UK who administers the treatments pioneered by the Californian doctor that our consultant in Oxford had told us about. Much of this is frowned on by the medical establishment, and Professor Lord Winston – the nice man off the telly who is one of the country’s most famous fertility specialists – went so far as to say: ‘He makes you weep for the medical profession.’
The Panorama programme caused a massive furore and even resulted in a police raid on Taranissi’s premises. All the charges against him were eventually dropped, but he is still regarded with a lot of suspicion, despite his phenomenal success rates, which, according to the HFEA (the UK’s independent regulator of fertility treatment), are practically double the national average. When I quizzed our consultant in Oxford about the practice of immune therapy, he told us that he was, in fact, one of the people who was sent in by the authorities to investigate Taranissi after the police raid. Whilst he said that he didn’t believe that his approach could be advocated on any medical grounds, he also said he had come to accept that Taranissi had utter conviction in what he did and that the care at the clinic was unparalleled.
At our follow-up appointment after our last unsuccessful round of IVF, I decided to ask our consultant again whether he thought I should go to see Taranissi for another opinion.
‘Jessica, if you’re asking me whether I think you have a better chance of getting pregnant there than anywhere else then the answer is no,’ he said. ‘But if you’re asking me whether I think you should try everything so that you don’t have any regrets later then the answer would have to be yes.’
It was good advice. The important thing is that when you get to the end of the line – and only you know when you’re there – you can look in your heart and know you’ve given it everything. Je ne regrette rien.
So one day, on my way back to the office after a meeting, I decide to take a detour and pay a visit to 13 Upper Wimpole Street, home of Mr Taranissi’s clinic – the ARGC – to make an appointment. I don’t tell Peter I’m going. I know he won’t approve, as he leans to the side of the medical establishment and is convinced this man is a quack who is just after our money. As I walk along the street to the clinic, it feels like I’m on my way to see a lover with whom I am having a clandestine affair. I am paranoid that someone will see me and wonder what the hell I’m doing in Marylebone on a Thursday lunchtime.
I reach the building, a tall Georgian town house with a rather-scruffy looking blue door. I ring on the bell and the door buzzes open. Although I’m now used to the oddness of fertility clinics, I’m not in the least prepared for the surprise of what’s behind it. From the outside it looks quiet and unassuming, but inside it is full of people: in the hall, in the waiting room, up the stairs and queuing out of the reception room at the back. It has not been nicknamed the ‘Argy Bargy’ for nothing. It’s extraordinary. Scores of women (and a few men) of all ages and races, all there for the same thing. A baby.
I fill out a registration form and within a few weeks we are sent a date for an appointment. I decide to wait until the weekend before coming clean with Peter.
‘Shall we go out for breakfast?’ I say as soon as we wake up on Saturday morning.
‘Sounds nice. I assume you have somewhere in mind.’
‘What about the café at the end of the road?’ I say. ‘The one that does an Italian version of a full English – it’s got the best sausages I’ve ever tasted.’
He smiles: ‘You love being back in London, don’t you?’
‘What’s not to love?’ I reply.
Later, after I’ve polished off my plateful, I decide to broach the ‘T’ subject.
‘Have you got your diary with you?’ I say, trying to sound nonchalant.
‘Why?’ Peter says immediately. ‘What have you gone and organised for us?’
‘I was just wondering what you’re doing on Thursday afternoon in two weeks’ time.’
‘I’m busy,’ he says suspiciously without even opening his diary.
‘Not to worry then,’ I say.
I turn back to the Saturday newspaper, knowing full well he won’t be able to leave it at that.
‘Why?’ he says.
‘Why what?’ I say, looking up.
‘Why do you want to know what I’m doing that afternoon?’
‘I just wondered whether you’d be free to do something with me.’
‘What?’
‘Just something. But don’t worry if you�
��re not free.’
‘Well I might be free,’ he says, reaching for his diary. ‘If you tell me what it is.’
‘It’s just that I’ve made an appointment to see someone.’
‘Not that dodgy doctor you’ve been going on about,’ he says instantly, closing it again.
‘That dodgy doctor has the best results in the country,’ I say. ‘He could be our last hope.’
After another two cups of tea and a long discussion he reluctantly agrees to come. I know he doesn’t approve, but I also know that this comes from wanting to protect me. When I am sent off for the immune tests – which involve taking twelve vials of blood and over a grand from my credit card – he is convinced that they are going to diagnose that I’ve got all the problems possible. Not because he believes I’ve got any immune issues but because he thinks that’s how they make their money.
When the results come back and say that my immune system looks more or less fine he has to start eating those thoughts. I, however, feel a bit mixed about these results. On the one hand, I’m pleased that things appear to be normal; on the other hand, I was secretly hoping it might finally provide an answer to our problems.
With the test results back, the clinic says that we can start treatment as soon as we like. But this time I’m doing things differently. I plan to start midway through my three-month sabbatical, giving myself a month to relax and get super healthy (five-a-day, eight-a-night, supplements, acupuncture, moderate-exercise, no-alcohol type of healthy). This will then leave a month for the treatment itself, and a month to adjust to the result. Positive or negative.
The Indigestion Diaries (A postscript)
Yes, you read that right. The Indigestion Diaries. It’s not a typo. It’s a one-off, special entry because I’m figuring you might want to know what happened on that front. Well, my indigestion symptoms continued on and off for over three years. I never found out what was wrong but I learned to manage it – mainly by making sure I didn’t eat much at night, which did have the rather nice side-effect of making me lose a bit of weight for a while without even trying. It wasn’t worth it though, not for the occasional agony. Then, almost as suddenly as it appeared, my indigestion disappeared, practically on the day that I organised my sabbatical and we moved back to London. It’s now been several months and I haven’t had a sign of it. I can happily eat a three-course dinner of potted prawns (in clarified butter) followed by steak and chips (with lashings of béarnaise sauce), followed by chocolate pudding (with cream or ice cream depending on the mood). Not even a twinge. It does make me wonder whether my body has been living some sort of double life.
PRICE PRITCHETT
I got home from work today to find a book on my pillow. Powder-blue with a black spine. The title: Hard Optimism by Price Pritchett.
‘What’s this?’ I ask.
‘A present,’ Peter replies.
It’s easy to argue against the merits of optimism if you’re going through IVF. Whatever way you look at it the statistics aren’t good. If you’re under thirty-five you’ve got a 33 per cent chance of success, and this drops to 13 per cent once you’re past forty. You’re probably more likely to win on the Grand National. This is good news for pessimists like me who are never happier than when imagining the worst. As far as I’m concerned, pessimism is the best protection from high-risk situations (i.e. IVF) and inevitable disappointment (i.e. IVF and me) – it’s basically the art of thinking it won’t work, so that when it doesn’t you’re not as upset as you might have been had you thought it would.
Price Pritchett, on the other hand, doesn’t set any store by the pessimist’s logic. For him, fortune favours those who are optimistic, and the good news for me is that this is a skill that can be learned if it doesn’t come naturally (which it doesn’t). His unique take on optimism is that it’s more than positive thinking; it’s the art of non-negative thinking, especially when you’re experiencing difficulties, failures, uncertainty and loss. So that’s me and the other 87 per cent of post-forty IVFers then.
In Price’s own words: ‘Optimism or pessimism – ultimately it’s your choice. You get to decide how you want to frame events. You choose how you’ll interpret circumstances. Each of us is the engineer of our emotional life, the architect of our own happiness. Change the way you look at life, and you literally shape a different life for yourself.’
Take IVF as an example. Granted, it’s not the way that anyone would ideally choose to have a baby, but there have been studies which show that families with children conceived by IVF are happier than those with children conceived naturally. The thinking behind this is that if you’ve had to go to extreme lengths to get something that you want then you appreciate it so much more once you’ve got it. So rather than being pessimistic about the process, Price would say I should turn my infertility into a positive. I have to admit it’s quite a nice thought that the harder we try to have a baby, the happier we might eventually be.
Price Pritchett soon becomes the other man in our relationship. Every morning in bed over a pot of a tea, Peter reads me a chapter of the book. Thereafter, whenever I show signs of giving in or giving up he says, ‘What would Price say?’
Price would say: ‘Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.’
Practise it.
The Infertility Diaries Part XVIII
Every time I start another round of IVF I count forward nine months and work out when I’m going to give birth. An autumn birth is good as it means our child will be the oldest in the academic year (and by default the cleverest). December or August is bad as I don’t want to inflict the ‘joint Christmas and birthday present’ or ‘everyone’s on holiday and can’t come to your party’ scenarios on them. Then I start planning Baby Number 2. I’m not going to wait long, even if it means it will be a lot of work with two toddlers under three. This is if I don’t have twins, which, of course, is a distinct possibility with IVF. Yes, I’m a pessimist, and I go into every round of IVF thinking it probably won’t work. But I’m also a fertility fantasist, planning a future that might never happen. Welcome to my schizophrenic world.
INADEQUATE
The alarm rings, which means it’s 5 a.m. I lean over in the darkness, feeling for the button to switch it off, then turn over, snuggle into Peter’s back and close my eyes.
‘Come on,’ Peter says. ‘You don’t want to be late.’
‘I’m starting to think this is a really bad idea,’ I say, sleepily.
‘What? Your sabbatical?’
‘No, thinking it was a good idea to do what I’m about to do on the first day of it. I should have given myself a bit more time to wind down.’
‘This might be the only way to make you wind down,’ he says.
The thing that I am about to do is an eight-day residential course known as the Hoffman Process. I first heard about it nine months ago at the anger management weekend I went on after my miscarriage.
On the last day Mike, the course tutor, looked me in the eyes and said: ‘Jessica, you need to do some work on your inner child. Otherwise she’s going to bring you to your knees.’
‘Really?’ I said. ‘How do I go about doing that?’
I wasn’t sure what my inner child was or, indeed, whether I had any interest in getting to know her, but I did want to know more. He said it with such conviction, it felt as if he knew something I didn’t.
It was Mike and that moment that led me to the Hoffman Process. As soon as I got home I googled it. Created by an eccentric American psychotherapist called Bob Hoffman in the 1960s, the process has slowly spread across the world and has been running in the UK for the last fifteen years. Bob, following in Freud and Jung’s footsteps, believed that our childhood, and particularly our relationship with our parents, is hugely significant in the way our adult life plays out. His unique theory is that in early childhood we are our true selves, but we soon start to emulate the negative behaviours of our parents in order to earn their love. He describes
this as the ‘negative love syndrome’. By identifying these negative patterns and releasing the anger and shame around them, we are able to find our true selves again.
The website said that they held regular open meetings in London to provide potential participants with further information. So one late October evening I made my way to the college in the centre of Regent’s Park to find out more. What had I got to lose? I arrived just before the proceedings were about to start and carefully avoided the woman behind a desk at the front of the room who was taking people’s names. I slipped into a seat at the back of the Victorian classroom and slouched down into the collar of my winter coat.
The room was fairly full and quite a few people seemed to know each other, hugging as if they were old friends and quickly locking into animated conversation. After about ten minutes a man stood up at the front of the classroom. He was in his fifties and wearing a leather necklace with a silver pendant. Hmmm I thought: a bit new age, a bit happy clappy. This isn’t going to be for me. I looked over at the door but quickly assessed that I was going to have to stick it out unless I was prepared for everyone to see me get up and leave – which I wasn’t.
The man in the silver pendant started to explain the format of the evening. He said that it was both a welcome home session for those people who had just completed the process, and an information session for people who were interested in finding out more. This explained why so many people seemed to know each other. He then asked if anyone who had just completed the course would be prepared to stand up and say why they had done it and what their experience had been.
The Pursuit of Motherhood Page 11