Richard and I couldn't have wished for better. We came out to the church to be met by bright sunshine of a June afternoon and showers of confetti. Everyone was saying how lovely my wedding dress looked and Richard looked amazingly handsome as we made our way to the limousine and climbed into the backseat. It was everything I had ever wanted and just what I had always hoped my wedding day would be like.
Once the car set off to the reception at a nearby hotel Richard turned and looked at me, he has the sexiest blue-eyes I have ever seen. "I love you Mary I really do."
"I love you too darling." I replied.
That was ten years ago my life with Richard has been wonderful, well apart from one thing which has dogged us both ever since that wonderful day. We had no children. We had all the tests and Richard was devastated when he learned that he had a very low sperm count considerably reducing any chance that I would ever get pregnant and provide him with the boy he always wanted.
Richard's personality slowly changed as depression set in and, regardless of my efforts to reassure him that if we kept on trying miracles do happen, Richard could not be reconciled to the idea that he might not father a child and especially a boy.
Richard has always loved sport, football, cricket, golf and any other sporting activities he could become involved in and he desperately wanted a son, a son to share his love of sport. But I had a problem too.
As time passed, and no matter how we tried, I did not get pregnant, and it seemed that the one-hundred-thousand to one chance the doctors had calculated as the possibility that Richard would ever make me pregnant, had to be faced up to and it started to raise the prospect of adoption but that was not what I wanted. I wanted to be a mother and experience having a child of my own, my own flesh and blood. It was about my very femininity and womanhood.
I did feel so sorry for Richard but my own need for a child conceived in my womb was what I had wanted ever since I married Richard. Once Richard realised that for me adoption was not an option he raised the issue of In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF). The thought of it repulsed me and the idea of removing my eggs and fertilising them with a needle and then replacing them in my womb, when the chances of success can be as low as 20% - 25%, even in young women, further repulsed me. At 32 the odds would be less I thought.
If I agreed how many times would I have to undergo the procedure? It all seemed wrong to me.
The very thought of my baby, whose father would forever in my mind be a hypodermic syringe, as far as I was concerned, was equally out of the question. I told Richard that I would prefer not to have any children at all and that both adoption and any surgical procedure were both non-starters. To be fair to Richard he was very understanding in the circumstances and for the best part of a year we both settled down to the possibility that there would be no children unless the one in one-hundred-thousand chance came along and blessed us.
Yes, there were times when my maternal instincts almost overwhelmed me. All my friends had babies. Whenever we met up or had a girlie evening the conversation would quite naturally revolve around babies and children and pregnancy and I felt very much excluded in a way only women would understand, but I lived with it. If it was fate or it was ordained that Richard and I could not have babies then that was something we had to live with. We have a rich marriage; we love each other as deeply as the day we got married. We have great holidays, we have travelled the world together, we share romantic evenings out and at home, but we did not have it all, something was missing and that something was children.
As we lay in bed together after one such lovely evening when we had a nice meal-in and a few glasses of wine. Then Richard dropped his bombshell. We had gone to bed and as I was snuggled comfortably in his arms, with my head resting on his firm chest he slow, tentatively and very nervously suggested that his best friend Tony might make me pregnant.
I was staggered and my first instinct was again revulsion. I pushed away from him and turned over but he put his arms around me and held me.
"Just think about it sweetheart, Tony is a good friend, he is someone we can trust. He would never tell anyone else and as far as everyone knew, the baby would be mine."
Spinning to face Richard I snarled at him.
"Have you discussed this with Tony already?
"Of course not, I would never have done that without talking to you first."
"Well you can just dismiss the whole idea from your head. Have you completely lost your mind?. How could you suggest that I have sex with another man?"
I paused for a few seconds to clear my head before repeating, "How could you Richard, how could you?"
Suddenly I was thumping his chest with my fists until he clamped his hands on my wrists to restrain me.
"I have tried everything I can think of," he shouted back at me, "and you have rejected every suggestion. I want a son damn you."
"There is no guarantee that any baby would be a boy, are you mad?"
"Maybe not, but there is at least a chance, right now there is no chance. Look, let's sleep on it and talk tomorrow."
Sleep on it? I didn't sleep a wink all night. He was right in one respect, I had turned down all the other solutions but surely this was even worse. In my mind I re-visited the possibility of adoption whirling it around in my mind. It did not sit easy with me and robbed me of my birthright as a woman. Equally what would seem to me like a laboratory baby repulsed me and would provide no guarantee of success, not to mention the worry of whose baby it would be.
I knew Tony, he was Richard's best friend and they went everywhere together. Tony was a very nice man. He was definitely very attractive, about 27 years old, single and I could imagine that he would keep a secret forever. But the baby would be his. He would be the father not Richard. As I thought about all the aspects of what Richard had suggested it did provide Richard, if it was a boy, with the one thing he needed to complete his life but what about me?
Well, I would get to be a real mother with a child I had given birth to by natural means, something I desperately wanted.
Could I have sex with Tony? Could I lay with another man who was not my husband? Could I submit to another man and allow him to make me pregnant, plant his seed inside me and have his baby?
The next morning I was up before Richard and got breakfast ready. I heard Richard taking a shower and he came down and sat at the table looking very fresh and handsome. The he asked me if I had thought over his suggestion. He was obviously not about to give up easily.
"Let us discuss this." I said, "I am not sure you have thought this though."
"I think I have." He said as he raised his cup of tea to his lips.