On how I actually became a parent
Talking failed IVF and house moves, with extra recommendations
This month, the interview that I was supposed to conduct for the newsletter fell through, and so I am writing to you in a new way. I had been planning to do this at some stage anyway because I thought it would be nice to continue with the Q&As but to introduce more personal writing, too, as well as recommendations.
You could even comment on the articles; we could have conversations there! I hear people do that on Substack – and given that this newsletter is called How’s Everyone Doing?, that could be very appropriate… Nice even…
This newsletter is about parenting and parenthood – but for most of my life I wasn’t a parent.
I remember the first time a person asked me “Do you have kids?”. I was 28 and at a party in a club that no longer exists in Dublin but used to be the kind of place that would host literary events and theatre after-parties.
I forget the reason I was there, I think it was for the launch of a literary journal – but anyway this man I had recently interviewed for the magazine I worked at asked me if I had kids.
I thought it was a preposterous question. I was a mess. I was genuinely shocked that anyone would ask me that. It seemed borderline irresponsible of him to even suggest it.
Anyway, things change and five or six years later, the time came when I was ready to have a baby (and actually I had always really, really wanted to have a baby, even when I was a complete mess). I was married and I had a different job that paid a bit more than the job at that magazine in Dublin. Here we go, I thought. But then it didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen for years. To have my daughter, my husband I had to raid our bank accounts (and those of generous family members), attend dozens of doctors’ appointments (semen analysis, blood tests, transvaginal scans, hysteroscopies) and go through four rounds of IVF.
After being diagnosed with infertility, we waited patiently on an NHS waiting list for 10 months before treatment could even commence. Then we did a round of IVF at Homerton, our local hospital, that required us to freeze the embryos we had created, and we had to wait four more months before we could transfer one of those.
After they transfer the embryo, you have to wait two weeks before you can do a pregnancy test. Actually, you can probably do it a little earlier, especially if you buy one of those more sensitive and expensive types, but I didn’t know that then and waited the full two weeks.
I bought the test on my home from work, in Boots in Dalston, and I had it in my bag on the 15-minute walk home. I was so desperate to know if I was pregnant, I considered squatting and peeing on the test by the side of the road. It was dark, maybe no one would notice, I thought. I could do it without getting undressed because I was wearing a dress.
I waited until I got home, of course I did, and the test was negative. A couple of weeks later the UK went into lockdown and they shut down the IVF clinics.
The next year, my husband and I had our baby daughter, conceived at a private clinic in Ireland, and I don’t think about that experience at Homerton very often these days, but I was reminded of it all a few weeks ago when the top story on the BBC news was about the Homerton Fertility Centre.
The UK fertility regulator had suspended its licence over “significant concerns”; some people had lost frozen embryos.
An hour or so later, I got a text from the clinic, a generic one urging anyone with concerns to call a helpline. But I didn’t have any embryos left at Homerton. We had transferred that one just before the pandemic, and then another one later that year at a clinic on Harley Street (Homerton was still closed as the hospital was inundated with covid cases, and we had paid to have the frozen embryo transported across town).
This is a poor quality embryo, the extremely expensive doctor had told me, while reading my file, and he was right, it turned out.
It’s hard to rate a fertility clinic with any degree of impartiality. There were pictures of kids on the walls at Homerton, babies who had been born because of the work and talent of the centre’s doctors, nurses and embryologists. Those kids’ parents would probably give the place five stars.
I didn’t have a baby there, however, and they made mistakes like losing important blood tests.
My husband had been treated elsewhere in the hospital for a separate illness, and the staff in that department had been conscientious and unusually kind: a nurse had given me his mobile number one Friday and told me to ring me at any time over the weekend, his days off, if I was concerned about my husband’s health or even if I just needed to talk.
The receptionist at the fertility centre was rude. It was kind of funny, she was that rude. If you attended the Homerton Fertility Centre over the past decade, I am sure you know who and what I am talking about. She was contemptuous and brusque, even if you were crying or bleeding.
If you know someone, who is trying to have a baby, or is going through IVF, or has gone through failed fertility treatment, do not be contemptuous and brusque to them. Be so nice to them. It is perhaps the hardest thing I have ever experienced.
If you are trying to have a baby, or are going through IVF, or have gone through failed fertility treatment, I send you love. It is perhaps the hardest thing you have ever experienced.
Things I have read this month
I think some of you are here via Marisa Bate and Frankie Graddon, two brilliant writers I worked with at The Pool.
If you are, then you already know all of this, but they both produce excellent newsletters.
In Writing About Women, Marisa writes movingly about becoming a mother and parenting a young child, touching on the accompanying inertia and panic and contradictions and deep, deep love.
Frankie has recently launched Mumish, a newsletter about what to wear after you become a parent. Frankie has always had excellent recommendations for clothes that are nice but not insanely expensive – I miss working in an office where people look chic and smell gorgeous like Frankie does – and now she shares those recommendations with everyone! Very generous!
Eli Goldstone writes another Substack I love, which is often but not always about parenting. Her writing is beautiful: vivid but understated, and so touching.
I read my friend Niamh Mulvey’s brilliant debut novel The Amendments, which is published by Picador in April. It, like two other excellent Irish novels I read this year (Megan Nolan’s Ordinary Human Failings and Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident), considers what happens in a country where abortion is illegal (which it was in Ireland, until recently). In The Amendments, there are nightmarish consequences but, sometimes, things work out OK, too. This is a novel about religion and love, and home and parenthood – all the good stuff. It’s about how complicated life is, and how tricky it can be to be a mother and to be a daughter. You can pre-order it now.
I enjoyed this New York magazine article on the term “dysregulated”, which I don’t think I had actually heard of before having a kid and coming across it on parenting Instagram. It’s an interesting piece about the language we use to describe our psychology and mental health problems and whether or not those terms are actually useful.
I always end my interviews by asking the interviewee how they are doing today, so I’ll ask myself that now… How am I doing today?
Today, I am moving house. It is obviously quite stressful to move with a young child and you may have detected a manic tone in this newsletter because I am exhausted and wired – but our new place is, coincidentally, very close to where I considered pulling down my pants to pee on the pregnancy test on a dark and cold night 4 years ago so even though I am very tired and stressed, I also feel very, very lucky about how things have worked out.
As ever, thanks for reading, for putting up with the typos, and for the £££ if you’re a paying subscriber.
How are you doing today? You can let me know in the comments or you can email me or drop me a message on the Substack app.
Welcome back to London, Lynn! 😎
Hullo Lynn! I keep hoping to see you in these North parts but I've lost track of where you are, and now you're moving. This was a good thing to read and a good reminder to think of what people are going through. I gave birth (not IVF related) at the Homerton and, oof, so much to say. Very good in parts, and also very much not so.
Also used their A&E with a sick child a couple of times but had to leave because a medic accused me of trying to read another patient's notes. It was the most bizarre accusation I could imagine - in fact I still can't quite imagine it. Had been waiting with genuinely sobbing child (we'd been in a minor car crash, whiplash) for hours and not yet seen. No pain relief. I went and tried to ask someone, whose desk was kind of in a corridor, if there was any chance we were near the front of the waiting list. She accused me of trying to access other patients' confidential information over her shoulder. It was so utterly bizarre that I just took my little kid home and gave her all the meds I could find at home. Tried again the next day. Finally went private. Fuck me - we live in strange times. I send my love to all of those embryos xxxx