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 co
mpleted 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.
Misconception Page 2