Theresa Miller - Making Babies: Personal IVF Stories

Scribe Publications
MAKING BABIES

Theresa Miller has twenty years experience in the media. Her first job was as a reporter for Channel Nine News in Adelaide. She then moved to Europe for six years, where she worked as a producer for Good Morning Britain, BskyBs 24-hour news channel, and The European Business Channel, and reported for the CNN World Report. Since her return to Sydney, Theresa has freelanced as a reporter, presenter, and producer for Channels Nine, Seven, SBS, and ABC TV.

In 2000, Theresa was a media adviser to the Sydney lord mayor during the Olympics. Since then shes worked as a media trainer and journalism lecturer, and produces for ABC Radio Nationals Life Matters.

Theresa has also appeared in numerous theatre productions, TV soaps, and commercials. She and her husband Stuart live in Sydney with their IVF daughter, Zo, and their recently born home grown baby, Sienna. Her website is www.makingbabiesivf.com

making babies

THERESA MILLER

Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
PO Box 523
Carlton North, Victoria, Australia 3054
Email: info@scribepub.com.au

First published by Scribe 2007

Copyright Theresa Miller 2007

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Designed and typeset in 12/15.75 pt Granjon by the publisher
Cover design by Nada Backovic Designs
Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Miller, Theresa.
Making babies : personal IVF stories.

9781921753015 (e-book.)

1. Fertilization in vitro, Human - Australia.

2. Infertility - Treatment - Australia. I. Title.

618.1780599

www.scribepublications.com.au

To my mother, Alina

Contents

This book would not have been possible without the people who opened their hearts and minds and shared their important stories, including those whose interviews did not make it to publication. I am also very grateful to the on-line community of essentialbaby.com.au for responding so enthusiastically to my ad for IVF stories. Their overwhelming response confirmed to me that this book was indeed needed.

Thank you to my friend and coach, Bernadette Schwerdt, whose encouragement and inspiration helped me get this idea out of my head and onto the page.

To my husband Stuart Ziegler, I am forever grateful for the support, space, and love he has given me to write. His diverse skills as daddy-day-care and rigorous book editor are unrivalled and much appreciated.

Thank you also to my agent, Benython Oldfield, for taking a punt on me, and to Henry and Margot Rosenbloom at Scribe for jumping so quickly and keenly on this project.

Thanks also to my writing cheerleader, Libby-Jane Charleston, and to Katherine Roche at Sydney IVF for supporting this concept and coming up with the books title. Im also very grateful to Stephanie Miller for promptly and efficiently transcribing my recorded interviews.

And, last but not least, thank you to my miracle babies: Zo, whose IVF conception inspired this anthology; and my second, surprise home grown pregnancy, which kept me company by wriggling inside me during the latter stages of editing. It was a photo-finish between her due date and my publishing deadline.

I was conceived accidentally by a couple of teenagers in the back seat of a 1960s pink Ford Zephyr at the drive-in movies in Adelaide. I dont know what was playing that night, but it obviously didnt capture my parents attention. Four months later, my Catholic grandparents marched their disgraced children down the aisle.

Except for my grinning father wearing a tight, borrowed suit, my eighteen-year-old mother and the rest of the family looked grim-faced in the wedding photos. My parents went on to have my little sister three years later. Their marriage lasted fifteen years, which is not a bad track record for a shotgun wedding.

And so it was that my mother warned me not to make the same mistakes shed made. Dont get married young, see the world, go to university, have a career, have lots of boyfriends before you settle down and, most importantly, dont get pregnant accidentally!

Dutifully, I followed my mothers instructions. I went to university and studied journalism, landed a job as a TV reporter, worked in London and Europe for six years, lived with my violinist boyfriend in Switzerland, and travelled the world.

When I met my husband-to-be, Stuart Ziegler, in Sydney, I was 31 and ready to settle down. Within a few months, I fell pregnant accidentally. I was excited, but Stuart wasnt so thrilled. Our relationship was still new and he was worried about how hed support us. My mothers words were ringing in my head: Dont ever make a man marry you because youre pregnant. So, with a heavy heart, I had a termination. This was a decision that we both came to deeply regret.

Six months later, Stuart and I were married. I threw my contraceptive pill away and we tried in earnest to start a family. Nothing happened after the first year, but I wasnt too worried. I was working as a TV reporter and travelling often. It was probably just bad timing, I told myself. After the second year, I began to worry Id damaged my fallopian tubes, somehow, with the termination. But tests revealed that everything was fine.

By the third year, the strain was taking its toll on our marriage, and I blamed Stuart for making me have an abortion. We began to argue more than we were having sex. By the fourth year, family and friends stopped asking about the pitter-patter of little feet. When I heard about friends falling pregnant easily Id smile and congratulate them, and go home and cry.

I started to investigate IVF, but the only books I found were technical manuals and a devastating memoir by a woman who tried unsuccessfully for years and suffered terrible side-effects from the drugs.

At first, I stubbornly rejected IVF, saying, Weve conceived once naturally; we can do it again! Instead we spent a fortune on acupuncture, naturopaths, Chinese herbalists, spiritual healers, and ayurvedic medicine. By now my sense of humour was drying up and, according to my doctor, so were my eggs.

Around the time of my 37th birthday I met a woman at a party who told me shed just had twins using IVF. When I told her my age, and that wed been trying to conceive for five years, she said, For Gods sake, woman, get yourself down to the Baby Factory and get on the IVF program. Youve got no time to lose!

So thats exactly what we did. After talking to the nurses at Sydney IVF, I threw down my Visa card and said, Book us in. At last I felt like we were doing something proactive. Every morning Stuart would inject me in the bottom and, except for one jab, which made me feel like my legs were crawling with ants, I didnt have any adverse reactions to the drugs.

I didnt tell anyone at work what we were doing, but every morning I felt buoyed by my secret when I logged on to my computer with the password Zo Ziegler.

Harvest or egg pick-up day was the first anniversary of September 11. As I placed my legs in stirrups and winced while the doctor extracted eggs with a long needle from my pumped-up ovaries, I wondered what sort of world I would be bringing a child into. But the human instinct to procreate seems to override logic, good sense, and even fear.