When IVF fails, how can a loving wife give her husband the baby she believes will save their marriage?
This story is probably true.
In our city there are no less than two world class IVF clinics, and we have several friends who work in the field. During a dinner party one evening in which the red wine flowed rather too freely, we began to challenge them – mostly playfully - about the cost of programmes and their success at making money out of people's misfortune as well as babies.
It wasn't a fair criticism but it did prompt a raft of stories around the table, one of which concerned 'Charlotte , a long-term client of theirs who, after years of unsuccessful treatments, suddenly produced three healthy babies in quick succession – apparently naturally.
Our friends were much too discreet to let slip the identities of the individuals involved, but they are fairly confident from consultations after the first natural conception of the 'donor's' and his relationship to their client.
I found the whole idea intriguing and could possibly even imagine myself in similar circumstances...
I hope you can too.
Jenny x
***
The happy sounds of small children laughing and splashing echoed off the white painted walls of the neatly kept villas that surrounded the clear blue water of the large, private swimming pool. I took another sip of my gin and tonic and watched my grown-up son and his wife playing happily with their three year old boy in his armbands and their eighteen month old daughter who bobbed in the water in her bright yellow swim ring.
I looked across at my own lovely wife Jane who sat reading her book across the table from me in the shade of a large umbrella. Even after all these years she was still very attractive. It was hard to think of her as the mother of a grown up child and a Grandmother too but then, I mused, we had started our family when we were still quite young. There was a lot to be said for an early start to a family, as I now knew very well.
As if knowing instinctively I was thinking of her, Jane looked up from her book and smiled at me. I smiled back, nodding towards the young family before us. She grinned indulgently and went back to her reading as I watched the heart-warming scene a little longer, thinking how much it brought back happy memories of the two of us in the same pool with our own child over twenty years before.
The playing slowed a little and Charlotte – 'Charlie' to the family - our pregnant daughter-in-law, stood up in the shallow water before taking her son Jack by the hand and leading him up the shallow steps towards their sun beds and the pile of towels lying there. As she began to dry him carefully, I was reminded just how beautiful she undoubtedly was; even more so when, as now, she her pregnancy was starting to show.
Although a difficult time for many, some girls seemed to take pregnancy in their stride, I reflected, and Charlotte was definitely one of the fortunate ones; her long dark hair positively shone, her eyes sparkled and her slightly tanned skin was fresh and clear. She still moved gracefully despite the swelling in her belly that was now becoming noticeable and, if her previous two pregnancies were anything to judge by, would continue to do so almost to the very end.
That was ironic, I thought, given that it had taken so long and so much unhappiness for her to conceive in the first place.
To me, the biological father of her two children and the unborn child within her belly, she seemed especially beautiful. But that was a secret only she and I shared and one which we must take with us to the grave.
Charlotte turned away for a moment and I chuckled as her cheeky son made a quick dash back towards the pool. His mother gave playful chase, skipping after him across the grass before scooping him into her arms a few feet from the water and tickling him enthusiastically in mock punishment for his attempted escape. Once his compliance was assured, she surreptitiously re-adjusted her miniscule clothing. I pretended not to notice.
Once satisfied with Jack, Charlotte dried herself off on another big blue towel, laid it out on the sun bed and stretched herself out after rubbing both herself and her son liberally with sun cream while my son Adam played with little Emily a while longer. They were obviously father and daughter. Everyone said so - she clearly had his features which, as he and I are very obviously father and son, should be no surprise. Indeed this was one of the main reasons Charlotte had asked me to impregnate her three times.
As I watched surreptitiously, Charlotte rolled over onto her side to watch over Jack playing with his toys - lying on her front in her condition was now uncomfortable if not yet impossible – and in doing so unconsciously turned her slim, feminine, barely-covered bottom towards my wife and me. I glanced across at Jane whose gaze was still firmly fixed on her book then back at the shapely, sexy figure before me.
How many times had we made love? I closed my eyes and thought back. It had taken nearly three months of lovemaking to conceive Jack; barely eight weeks for Emily and fewer still for the baby growing inside her now.
More than enough to provide lifelong memories of delight. I lay back in the sun, closed my eyes and remembered how it had all started some four years ago.
***
Charlotte and our only child Adam had been happily married for more than ten years. Both high-flying Graduates with research posts at the top University at which they had studied, met and married, at first they had concentrated hard on their careers.
For many years it had never quite the right time – professionally - to start a family. They had worked and studied very hard and had been blessed with considerable academic success, but as is the way with academia, the financial rewards had been somewhat meagre.
Eventually however, the sound of body clocks ticking had become louder and louder until at the age of thirty they finally began 'trying for a baby'.
After a few years of trying and with no subsequent pregnancy, it became clear that something was definitely wrong. Charlotte being the practical half of their relationship, it fell to her to do something to improve the situation and, after a few heated conversations, Adam finally agreed they should both go to see their doctor.
To cut a long story short, they found out that there was a problem and that the problem was Adam. Typical of our beloved only son, Adam's problem couldn't have just been a low sperm count that could have been fairly simply addressed. No, his situation turned out to be a complicated issue involving malfunctioning sperm which he apparently produced in prodigious quantities but which were mostly incapable of fertilising Charlotte's eggs.
Natural conception was deemed highly unlikely so, in their mid-thirties, they embarked on a series of complicated IVF programmes designed to select the best, most promising sperm and assist them artificially in the onerous task of fertilising Charlotte's eggs. This involved her going on powerful fertility drugs for long periods which played merry hell with her hormones and resulted in more frequent and more emotional rows than their happy marriage had so far encountered.
The first two rounds of IVF were paid for by the National Health Service but when these both failed the couple were on their own financially. IVF programmes are extremely expensive and Adam's 'problem' meant that they needed treatment at the higher end of the already high cost scale, but as they grew older and increasingly desperate to have a child, they spent more and more money on more and more rounds of IVF until eventually all their savings had gone, along with most of the equity in their Victorian semi-detached house.
Unhesitatingly, Jane and I loaned them enough money for two more programmes – both predictably unsuccessful – but after that we had no savings left either, apart from my meagre pension fund. Charlotte's parents were in no position to help at all, her father having died a few years previously leaving her mother with a comfortable widow's pension but with no spare cash.
There was nothing to do but save. After a year's frugal living and by selling Charlottes' car and borrowing against the final bit of equity in their house, they were at last able to afford a seventh round of IVF, using a new, recently developed technique.
At first, to our astonishment, this seemed to have been successful. Charlotte had even said she felt different inside – her hair had gone glossy - and for a few blissful weeks we all started to believe that they might actually, finally, have conceived, although none of us dared to say this out loud, as if terrified of 'tempting fate'.
Nevertheless we all began to make secret plans for having a baby in the house. Having no cash meant that DIY was very much a necessity and I took some time off my work as a builder in order to help repair and decorate their badly maintained house. A good two weeks' work would be required just on the exterior woodwork which meant that I would be around their house a great deal. Adam and Charlotte were still working full time so I had the house to myself, which frankly I prefer. I can concentrate better and work faster if I'm not disturbed.
It took three full days to make good the worst of the damage that years of neglect (and insufficient money) had caused, and I was about to begin the lengthy process of painting the results of my handiwork when I heard an unexpected sound from inside the kitchen.
Believing myself to be alone in the house, at first I suspected a burglar but, as I climbed down the ladder and crept round the corner to the kitchen window, I saw my beautiful daughter-in-law Charlotte sitting at the kitchen table, a bloodstained cloth in her hands, her shoulders heaving up and down silently.
