Chapter 4
4
The Cookie Jar café in Port Agnes had always been one of Aidan’s favourite places to go for lunch. There was a deli counter, a small bakery section, and they also bought in a wider range of cakes and pastries from Mehenick’s Bakery, on the harbour. It was a good job he lived in Port Kara, about five minutes from the hospital, because if it had been possible to walk to either The Cookie Jar, or Mehenick’s Bakery, on a daily basis, the chances are he’d have been at least three stone heavier. It was all well and good promising Jase he’d lose the weight he still needed to shift, in order to get back down to the twelve and a half stone he’d been when they met, but he was only human and a salted caramel brownie was not something he was equipped to resist on the best of days. As it was, he was stress eating, because it was the last meeting of the infertility support group before he and Jase had their interview at the clinic.
The group met after The Cookie Jar had closed to other customers, and this week there were so many questions Aidan wanted to ask, but he was terrified he was going to forget something. Jase was running late from work and there was a chance he might not make it at all, so it was up to Aidan to gather all of the information they needed to give them the best chance of success. It wasn’t just the interview on his mind either. When Isla had first offered to donate her eggs, he’d felt as though someone had offered him the moon on a stick. But then doubts had started to creep in.
Knowing the donor personally could make things complicated down the line, especially if they wanted to maintain their friendship and continue working together. Isla might have strong ideas about how he and Jase should do things, and the thought of being part of some kind of throuple when it came to parenting sounded like hell. There was also a risk that the clinic they’d chosen wouldn’t support the idea, and it had taken them so long to find somewhere they felt comfortable with. All of which meant Aidan hadn’t even told Jase about Isla’s offer, and he’d been doing his best to avoid her at work for the last couple of days. He felt like the worst person in the world for even thinking about turning her down when she’d been so kind, and especially when she’d told him why she wanted to do it, but he still had no idea if saying yes was the right thing to do. Or how Jase would react to the fact that he’d all but accepted the offer without even talking to his husband about it.
‘Are you okay? You look like you’re training for a competitive eating competition the way you’re shovelling that in!’ Caitlin, one of the other members of the group, looked at him and laughed. ‘My three-year-old is like that if he gets his hands on a brownie.’
‘I think this is what they call mindless eating.’ Cakes were without question Aidan’s favourite food group, even if none of the dieticians were willing to give them their own slot on the nutrition wheel. But he’d barely even tasted the one he’d just demolished. ‘I don’t even think I’d notice if Harry Styles had served the brownie up to me, wearing nothing but a smile.’
‘I would have noticed him for you, trust me. So come on then, what’s up?’ Caitlin gave him a gentle nudge. She’d had her little boy through IVF and had already had three more rounds trying for a second baby. The kinds of stories that were exchanged at the infertility support group left no room for shyness, and she clearly wasn’t going to let him off the hook about what was bothering him.
‘We’ve got the interview with the surrogacy clinic in four days’ time and it’s all I can think about. There’s no plan B if they turn us down.’ He couldn’t risk telling Caitlin about Isla’s offer, because it would be very hard to explain why she couldn’t breathe a word of it to his husband. One thing he knew for certain was that he was never going to have an affair. Keeping secrets wasn’t his strong point; it was just a shame that stress didn’t burn calories, otherwise he’d have been able to eat as many brownies as he liked and still have had a body like a Greek god. At this rate, all the comfort eating was more likely to result in him ending up looking pregnant, and that was the kind of irony he could definitely live without.
‘They’re not going to turn you down; you and Jase are great.’ Just like Esther had, Caitlin made it sound like a certainty and he wished he could believe that, but he’d done enough research to know that something could disrupt their chances of becoming parents at every stage of the process.
‘I mean, you know that, and I know that.’ Aidan smiled for the first time, when she laughed. ‘But even if we manage to convince the clinic of that too, they’ve still got to find us a match. Who’s going to put down on their preferences that they want to help a middle-aged gay couple, one of whom has a ridiculous phobia of balloons, which is going to make celebrating our kid’s birthday an exercise in hysteria. And another of whom still can’t ride a bike, or catch a ball, and will have to hope that any offspring prefers Irish dancing to sport.’
‘I didn’t know you could do Irish dancing.’ Caitlin looked him up and down, her eyes settling at more or less the same spot as the brownie had.
‘I’m not a stereotype!’ Aidan feigned indignation, trying not to laugh. ‘Jase is the one who did Irish dancing from the age of eight; I swear to God he was only interested in me at first because of my heritage, thinking I might share the same passion. And I’ll have you know I’ve been riding a bike without stabilisers since I was twelve.’
‘ Twelve ?’ Caitlin shook her head, both of them laughing again and it felt so good to be able to do it. The desire to have a baby had fast become all-consuming, but Aidan hated the thought of it robbing him and Jase of their sense of humour. Laughter had been what had bonded them together from the start.
They’d both had their challenges in life. Jase had been bullied at school, when the need to lip read had marked him out from everyone else. He’d told Aidan that one of the reasons he’d loved Irish dancing so much, was because he’d been able to feel the rhythm pulsing through his body. But it was hardly the sort of hobby that had helped him blend in with most of the boys at his school, and the bullying had been pretty much relentless. Jase had refused his parents’ offer to take him out of mainstream education, and he’d thrived academically, despite the challenges he faced and the impact of the bullying. It wasn’t until much later that he’d been given a life-changing cochlear implant. He still used lip reading to help him in busy environments, or when lots of people were talking, but he was now head of the best primary school in the area. He was a brilliant and empathetic teacher, with a particular patience for supporting children who had SEND challenges of their own. What he’d been through had made him the man he was, but Aidan still felt as though his blood was boiling in his veins when he pictured the bullies who’d taunted Jase as a child.
Aidan’s own challenges had been closer to home. Growing up in a household where heterosexuality and old-fashioned masculinity were the only things that defined a man, meant he’d felt like a square peg in a round hole for as long as he could remember. For a long time, he’d been in denial, before eventually finding the courage to be proud of the person he truly was inside. Except all the things that made Aidan who he was, had been seen by the people who should have loved him most as something to overcome, or to hide away, like the shameful little secrets he’d been told they were. There’d been times, before they met, when there hadn’t been much laughter for either Aidan or Jase, and he never wanted to go back to that. If he had a habit of making a joke of things, that was just his way of trying to make sure they never did.
‘It might not be the age that Olympic cyclists make it on to two wheels, but Jase would still need a trike even now!’
‘Okay, so that probably isn’t the most impressive list of attributes.’ Caitlin gave him a pointed look, suddenly much more serious than before. ‘But surely you don’t really have to put any of that on the forms?’
‘No, but if we get matched with someone, we’ll meet up, and it’s going to be like a blind date and I’m liable to blurt out all the worst things possible. The last time I had a date like that, I was so nervous, I kept laughing for no real reason. At one point I laughed so hard I started choking on my food, and a pea shot out of my nose and landed on my date’s shirt cuff.’
‘It’ll certainly make an impression if you can repeat that trick!’ Caitlin grinned, before reaching out to put her hand over his. ‘But anyone who meets you is going to want to be your surrogate. I know I would if I didn’t have a womb that expels embryos almost as fast as your nose fires out peas.’
Even as they started laughing again, he knew they probably shouldn’t have been, because there was nothing funny about losing a longed-for pregnancy, or not being certain if you’d ever be able to have a baby at all. But one thing Aidan had learnt in life was that sometimes, if you didn’t laugh, the only alternative was to cry. He might be longing to swap lie-ins for sleepless nights, and his two-seater MG for a people carrier, but he wouldn’t ever be willing to swap laughter for tears. Whatever happened, he and Jase had to find a way of surviving this and coming out the other side as the same people they’d been before, even if they didn’t have a baby in their arms.
The Port Agnes midwives had decided to set up the support group when a couple of them had begun their own infertility investigations and had discovered there weren’t any groups in the Three Ports area. It seemed ironic to Aidan that women whose whole careers centred on pregnancy and birth ran an infertility support group, and even more so that Jess – the midwife who now headed up the group – had never managed to have a biological child of her own. But it was also what made the group so inclusive. Jess had eventually adopted two children, and there were members who were hoping to become parents by a whole range of means – from IVF and surrogacy, to fostering and adoption. The process wasn’t what bound them together, it was the common outcome they were all desperately hoping to achieve.
‘Okay everyone, if you can just listen up for a minute please.’ Jess addressed the whole room, as the babble of chatter ebbed away. ‘As you all know, from time to time, I manage to get an expert to come in and talk to us about a particular issue related to infertility and I’m thrilled that today is one of those days.’
‘If you’re bringing in the woman who does the sperm counts at my clinic, to tell us she could count my swimmers on the fingers of one hand, then I’m out of here.’ Kane, who’d been undergoing ICSI with his wife since discovering that his sperm count was almost non-existent, raised his palms up to the ceiling. He was just one more member of the group using humour to try and make it through an incredibly difficult situation.
‘You’ll be pleased to hear it’s not her, Kane.’ As Jess scanned the room, her gaze settled on Aidan for just a fraction longer than it had seemed to settle on anyone else. ‘Instead, we’ll be joined by Jacinda, a graduate of the group who is now expecting her second baby with the same surrogate who carried her son. Jacinda will be talking to us about her experience of using an overseas surrogate from Georgia. I know there are a couple of members of the group currently pursuing surrogacy, and several more who might consider it, depending on the outcome of their current treatment. So I thought it would be great to hear what it was like for her. Welcome Jacinda, and thanks so much for coming along.’
Jess hugged the dark-haired woman who’d got up from a chair to her right, and Aidan muttered under his breath as he glanced at his watch. ‘Please hurry up, Jase, I don’t want you to miss this.’
It was five-thirty and the final bell had rung at his husband’s school over two hours before, but as a headteacher, the end of the day didn’t coincide with the children going home. The school was overdue an Ofsted inspection, and Aidan just hoped the inspectors wouldn’t coincide their visit with the run-up to the interview at the clinic. Although he had a horrible feeling they would.
‘As Jess said, I’m Jacinda.’ The woman smiled. ‘And it feels really weird being back here. For a long time, I thought I was never going to graduate from the group and it was one of the reasons why I wanted to come along tonight. Even though public speaking would make my ovaries shrivel, if I still had any!’
‘She’s one of us.’ As Caitlin leant closer to Aidan and whispered the words, he knew exactly what she meant. Jacinda had the same gallows humour almost all of the group possessed.
Normally Aidan would have shot back a jokey comment, but he didn’t want to miss anything Jacinda said, and she was looking in his direction as she spoke again. ‘I was born without a womb and, unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of my bad luck. I suffered hyperstimulation during treatment, which resulted in ovarian torsion.’
‘Ovarian torsion is when the ovary, and sometimes the fallopian tubes, twist. It cuts off the blood supply, which in Jacinda’s case unfortunately resulted in the loss of her right ovary.’ Jess reached out and squeezed Jacinda’s arm. ‘But if you’re going through IVF and you’re worried about hyperstimulation, ovarian torsion is a very rare side effect.’
‘Yep, with odds like mine, I should have won the lottery, but instead I’ve got a built-in noughts and crosses grid on my belly from all my surgery scars.’ Jacinda shrugged, but she couldn’t stop the slight catch in her voice. ‘After that round of treatment, I was really nervous about trying for egg collection again, but we got an amazing twenty-five eggs the second time around. Those little pieces of hope turned out to be even more precious than I imagined they would be, because six months later I suffered a burst cyst and lost my right ovary. Thankfully, by then, we’d managed to freeze nine good quality embryos and we were trying to get pregnant, with the help of our wonderful surrogate.’
‘Can I ask how you found your surrogate, and how you knew she was the right person?’ Aidan was open to the idea of finding a surrogate from outside the UK, but he knew Jase had a lot of apprehension about it, which was another reason he wished his husband was there.
‘We wanted to keep our surrogacy journey private, because we were concerned about the reaction of some of our family members. That was part of the reason we decided to use an overseas surrogate, but the main motivation was the availability of UK-based surrogates. I couldn’t bear the wait to find a match here and, by widening the net, I felt like I could do more to make it happen.’ Jacinda took a deep breath. ‘As for how we knew she was right for us, it’s hard to explain. All I can say, is that when we first met, I knew I could trust Olena. That was the biggest thing for me. I was putting my chance of having a baby into this woman’s hands and entrusting her with my precious embryo. I’ve got friends I’ve known for years, who I wouldn’t have felt able to place that kind of trust in. If you asked me to list the reasons why I felt able to do that with Olena, I don’t think I could come up with something that would make sense to anyone else. I just felt it in my bones.’
‘Is it okay to ask something really personal?’ Louise, another member of the group, who was in her late forties and who’d been trying for a baby for over a decade, put up her hand as she spoke.
‘Of course.’ Jacinda smiled. ‘You know what it’s like once you start this journey. No topic is off limits.’
‘You’re so right. I’ve been asked everything from how often I’m having sex with my partner, to whether I knew I had a bulky uterus!’ Louise shook her head. ‘So I’m really sorry that I’m asking this, but did both of your pregnancies result from the embryos you got, or did you have to go down the egg donation route in the end? I’ve finally had to accept that the age of my eggs is probably not going to result in a successful pregnancy, and so the next stage is deciding on a donor. And I wondered if that’s something you had to do too?’
‘Both pregnancies ended up being from those embryos I had frozen, but I wanted to be prepared to make that decision if none of our embryos had resulted in a successful pregnancy. My best friend had offered to donate eggs, and there were lots of reasons why that appealed, and some things that made me terrified about the idea. In the end, we didn’t have to pursue it, but I guess the biggest decision is whether you choose a known or anonymous donor. You also need to bear in mind that if you’re having treatment overseas, some countries don’t allow the use of known donors. Then there’s the question of whether anyone you know will be generous enough to make the offer in the first place.’ Jacinda breathed out slowly. ‘Despite my fears, I’m almost certain I’d have accepted my best friend’s offer, because any child I had as a result would know how much love had gone into creating them. Not just between myself and my husband, but between me and Aisha. But only you can know what feels right for you.’
Everyone turned to look, as the door to the coffee shop swung open, and Jase crashed through, knocking over a chair with his laptop bag as he did. Aidan might have an always-late, clumsy-as-hell husband, but Jase was the only person in the world he wanted to raise a child with. And suddenly he was just as certain that he wanted to take up Isla’s offer to donate her eggs, even if it meant moving clinics and delaying the prospect of finding a surrogate for a bit longer, because of the potential complications of using a known donor. As Jacinda had said, sometimes you just knew. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life, and he couldn’t wait to tell Jase that they might be a step closer to fulfilling their dream. He only hoped his husband felt just as sure.