‘You’ll never see as many women out pushing babies in strollers as you will while you’re struggling with infertility,’ says Fiona, who shares her story this week. Fiona was 32 when she started trying for a baby with her husband, Tom, who had a 16-year-old daughter after he and his high school girlfriend had a baby at 16 themselves. Four years later, they were considering how they might afford another round of IVF after years of heartbreak, when Tom’s daughter dropped a bombshell…
TW: Infertility, IVF, Miscarriage
Welcome to our series, The Motherhood Diaries – a safe space for you to share your experiences, advice, hopes and heartbreaks. We’ll be hearing from industry experts giving practical advice alongside Capsule readers (You!) sharing your firsthand experiences. We’re looking at everything from fertility, trying to conceive, pregnancy, the fourth trimester, newborns, toddlers, children’s mental health and teenagers, fertility issues and everything in between!
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When Tom started at Fiona’s workplace, she immediately felt a spark between them.
She started to think that maybe it wasn’t one-sided when she noticed that Tom seemed to quite often come into the kitchen to make a coffee while she was already in there.
“He ended up being the brave one and asking me out and we had this secret relationship for a few months, then everyone cottoned on and were fine with it – actually happy for us,” she says.
Tom and Fiona were both 28 back then. They were both hard workers, with ambition, who shared a love of live music, large dogs and hiking.
One thing that set Tom apart from most people Fiona knew around their age though, was that he was a father.
Tom and his high school girlfriend had a baby when they were both just 16. They’d been together since they were 13 and stayed together until they were 20 – there was so much pressure on their relationship and they’d changed so very much over those years.
“It was something about Tom that I was really impressed by though,” says Fiona. “He was a really hard worker – everyone at work thought that – and he’d have days where he’d be leaving early to pick his daughter up from school or would be off for school holidays. He was really committed to being a parent and there was something very attractive about how seriously he took his responsibilities.”
Fiona and Tom moved in together a year later, and she was now often under the same roof as a 13-year-old girl, Mel.
“It wasn’t all smooth sailing, obviously,” says Fiona. “But it helped that she wanted her dad to be in a relationship. Her mum was already married to someone else and she didn’t seem to have any kind of yearning of having her mum and dad back together.”
They became so close that when Fiona and Tom got married, Mel was one of the two bridesmaids.
Both Fiona and Tom were keen to have kids together – ideally two, so shortly after they were married they started trying quite seriously for a baby. They were both 32 (with a 16-year-old often under their roof).
“At that time, nearly all my friends were either pregnant or had a baby – or a couple of kids – at home,” says Fiona. “I was so naïve, I didn’t give it a second thought. We started trying at the very start of the year and I figured we’d have a baby at Christmas. I had it all planned out in my head with matching Christmas pajamas and how we’d juggle the day with our families.”
Instead, by the time Christmas rolled around, Fiona hadn’t so much as taken a pregnancy test – her period arrived like clockwork every month, a brand new wave of disappointment each time that another month had passed, without a baby on the horizon.
“I remember I was so unhappy that Christmas – just distraught,” she says. “I had this feeling like I was just a failure – Tom already had a kid, he could get someone pregnant – why wasn’t I getting pregnant?”
She’d seen a doctor after six months of trying who did some tests and didn’t think there was anything to worry about, but that they’d send her a referral if they’d been trying for a year with no luck.
That date arrived and so begun years of appointments at fertility clinics.
“The hardest part of it, I think, was that after all the testing – on both of us – they couldn’t find an obvious reason as to why we weren’t conceiving,” says Fiona. “I started desperately wishing that they’d call up and go, ‘Oh, we found it! There’s this thing we need to operate on you for and then you’ll be golden’.”
They tried IUI unsuccessfully and then finally a round of IVF. Heartbreakingly, the blood test after the transfer showed that Fiona was not pregnant.
“I will never forget getting that phone call,” says Fiona. “It was a kick in the guts. I had a baby shower I was supposed to go to the next day – I’d thought it was a good omen and I could head along with my own little happy secret. Instead, I was just stuck in bed for a couple of days, just grieving.”
Tom was already stuck into spreadsheets though, working out ways in which they would finance another go at it.
They managed to find the money and this time they got a very, very happy call. Her HCG was rising – she was pregnant. A few weeks down the track a scan showed a flickering little heartbeat on the screen.
“I cannot tell you how happy we were,” says Fiona. “I was just over the moon.”
Tragically though, at eight weeks Fiona began bleeding and they could no longer find a little heartbeat on the scan.
“A miscarriage is the hardest thing I’ve been through,” says Fiona. “There’s this insane crash from feeling the happiest you’ve ever felt in your life, to having it ripped away and now landing in the deepest spot in hell. In those weeks of being pregnant your whole life has changed, you’re on another path entirely. You’ve planned out the next nine months, but also the next 18 years – the whole rest of your life looks different. And then in an instant that’s gone and you’re dropped back into your old life, but nothing makes sense anymore.”
Tom and Fiona began to wonder, if maybe a baby wasn’t in their future. It certainly looked so far out of reach.
Then, months later, Tom asked Fiona if he could show her a spreadsheet – maybe there was another way to afford a last shot at it.
“I was 36 at that point, and wow, we really have this message for women that you’re past it then,” says Fiona. “But I wanted it so badly – we both did – so we started on that path.”
The next week, Mel – who by this time had moved out and was living with her boyfriend – came over for dinner. She was acting a bit out of sorts.
“Tom asked her if she was ok, and she got her bag and handed him a present,” says Fiona. “It wasn’t his birthday – or anywhere near Father’s Day – so it was confusing.”
Tom unwrapped the present and inside was a t-shirt. It said ‘The Man… The Myth… The Legend… THE GRANDAD’
“Our heads were spinning,” says Fiona. “There were a thousand different emotions – 20 is so young for a baby. It feels awful to say, but I was also like, ‘why not me?’ and even wondered if Tom might not want a baby now that he was going to be a grandad! I really didn’t want her to think we weren’t excited or happy for her, but it was a massive shock and a real mix of emotions. Tom was speechless. His first instinct was to be worried for her. And he was worried how I would feel – we’d never told her about us trying for a baby or our IVF stuff.”
Fiona says they were in such shock, they called up to move their first appointment back at the IVF clinic for another month.
“We were just not in the right headspace for it,” she says. “There were a lot of emotions to process. The temptation was there to really just hurry the whole thing up and go, go, go, but I knew I needed to get my head straight before we started that whole saga again. It takes everything you have in the tank. Particularly after a loss.”
A month later, Tom and Fiona had started to get their heads around the fact that they were about to be grandparents – whilst they were in the midst of trying to have a baby themselves.
“Mel and her partner had not planned to have a baby so early,” says Fiona. “But, her partner is lovely and supportive and Mel is scared, but also very excited. Tom feels a huge responsibility to help her – he was living at home when Mel was born and her mum moved in with his family for the first four years of Mel’s life. His parents helped financially, and just physically and emotionally and he feels a responsibility to do that too. I get it! We just needed to work out how we would manage it all.”
There was also the emotional side of it all to understand and get through. “It’s ugly, but one of the hardest parts of having fertility issues is trying so hard to have a baby, but then seeing babies everywhere. You’ll never see as many women pushing strollers around as you do when you’re going through IVF. I had all these ugly feelings and felt so jealous and resentful when another friend would announce her pregnancy. So, yes, of course my stepdaughter announcing her’s stirred up some hard feelings.”
So, still feeling a little wobbly, but aware that the clock was ticking, Tom and Fiona headed to their IVF appointment. Tom headed back to work and Fiona ducked into a Labtests before going to her workplace.
“Honestly, after that appointment I was feeling really deflated,” she says. “The stats and graphs are hard to take and I have those demons of going through a miscarriage. I had a cry in my car before going back to work. I hated that I had those feelings but yes, I felt frustrated that it was so difficult to have a baby, yet I was becoming a grandmother just like that!”
But then, something wild happened.
Fiona noticed she’d missed a couple of calls during a work meeting – so she headed out to pick up some lunch and listened to her voicemails as she headed out the door.
“The blood test showed I was pregnant,” says Fiona.
“I assumed it was a mistake at first – how could I be pregnant? We hadn’t even started IVF.”
Fiona called the clinic and they said they were very excited for her, that yes, she was very early into a pregnancy.
Then, Fiona realised that yes, she was actually two days late. She called Tom as she went to a pharmacy up the road from her work.
“He was 10 minutes away, so he came down with me and I did a test in the bathroom at a mall,” she says. “We looked at the test together – there were two lines. It was incredible.”
It was a difficult pregnancy, particularly the first trimester – Fiona felt so much fear and anxiety after the last loss. But, after three months, they let their families and friends know, and told Mel that her son – who was now due in three months – would be getting an uncle in six month’s time.
“It was poor Mel’s time to be absolutely speechless,” says Fiona. “She was so confused and shocked she didn’t know what to do with herself. I told her about our difficult journey to get there and she was just so thrilled for us.”
It’s now three years since Fiona and Mel welcomed their sons. Their unusual situation often stuns people they meet at the playground, or trampoline park when they get together.
Now, Fiona says things are even more complicated.
“Mel says she wants another – but they want to wait a long time before having their next,” says Fiona. “We never even considered a second for us – until, I realised my period was late the day before my party for my 40th birthday. Sure enough, I was pregnant. It makes no sense, but somehow we got very lucky and I got pregnant entirely naturally at 40. I can’t believe it, but, we’ll have another baby here early next year.”
