The Hollow Heart: The true story of one woman's desire to give life and how it almost destroyed her own by Martina Devlin

Author:Martina Devlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: eBookPartnership.com
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

In this beleaguered state we geared up for a second IVF attempt. Afraid to try again, and even more afraid not to try. We were leaving a three-month gap between cycles – the bare minimum. Now I know it was too short. My topsy-turvy hormones needed time to recover, more breathing space than I was prepared to allow them.

We mourned together over that first failure, Brendan and I. We were puzzled that medical science had disappointed us, because medical science was meant to rescue us, not leave us marooned. We seemed able to produce eggs – was that not supposed to be the hard part? I’d heard other women had trouble in that department but I was a natural-born battery hen. So why wasn’t IVF working? But we’d definitely be lucky second time out, we consoled one another. We chattered loudly and insistently about how we were virtually guaranteed a positive result next time. But we never spoke about what was really important: the impact this treatment was having on our marriage, the strains under which our relationship was starting to buckle, and the subtle shifts in our attitudes to one another.

That tendency to jibe at one another, suspended during IVF treatment, resurfaced. As a reprieve from the IVF roller-coaster, we went on holiday for a week to New York between cycles. I discovered there is no break from obsession, though; my thoughts were a monorail. I bought a black embroidered skirt with an elasticated waistband, thinking I’d be able to wear it in the early stages of pregnancy. Then I chose some art deco-style dinner plates in a huge china emporium called Fish’s Eddy, still trying to nest. Typical tourists, we visited Central Park, the Empire State Building, Ellis Island, SoHo, Times Square. But all the time I was counting time, wishing my life away.

I sobbed at any setback. When I stepped off a steep footpath to cross a busy road and fell, tearing my new skirt and bloodying my knees. When I lost my sunglasses. When I bought the wrong CD and couldn’t find the receipt to change it. I could not distinguish between reasons to cry and reasons to reserve my tears; I was ready to weep for a stranger’s misfortune, I was incapable of not weeping at my own.

We flew home again and soon I was back at the HARI unit, IVF cycle number two under way. Some couples left a year’s gap between attempts to give their marriages, their lives and their health a fighting chance of recovery. Brendan would have been happier taking a longer break between the first and second IVF sessions, sensible as I could not be, for I was incapable of deferral. I would have started again the next day, never mind three months later, if the doctors had authorized it. I couldn’t have put it out of my mind for a year – every month I’d have been angst-ridden over another wasted chance. Pregnancy took so long at nine months – I’d be almost a year older before I was a mother.

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