14 May 2024

‘Thou hast dealt well with thy servant, O Lord, according unto thy word.’ Psalm 119:65

Greetings from 95 Harley Street, where I am attached to the machine that is currently delivering me a hit of steroids but will soon be the portal through which my now-best-friend Irene shall travel to meet me. I’ve never been so excited to have toxic chemicals pumped into me…

Nothing much new here, though, so back we go to summer 2012…

The Doing was a minor operation…the Undoing not so. It is a sign of true love that Steve was willing to undergo a general anaesthetic and night in hospital in an attempt to fulfil his wife’s out-of-control broodiness… (and also that he was willing for me to write about it… I am very grateful as it is all part of our story, as are the very sad bits of today’s chapter…)

As excited as I was about the whole thing, every minute that Steve was in surgery I was tortured by my feelings. Guilt- this was my doing! Fear- what if something went wrong? Nervousness- what if it was all for nothing? It was a huge relief when Steve was wheeled back, feeling fine and in good spirits. Phase 1 was complete- and I owed him bigtime…

Our self-obsessed teenagers didn’t notice a thing during Steve’s recovery period: we had got away with it! And now the big question: had it worked? We would have to be patient. Nothing was supposed to be possible for several months, and probably longer given the fact that we were both pushing 40…

Fast forward a couple of months to the day before the five of us were due to leave for several weeks in Florida. We had taken the children there when they were small, and had promised to bring them back once they were all tall enough to go on the biggest rollercoasters. The idea was also to escape from the 2012 Olympics: Steve didn’t fancy battling millions of tourists on his daily commute.

I popped into town that day to buy a few last-minute bits for the holiday- toiletries, sun cream, a pregnancy test…

Yup. And it was positive. Mere weeks after the op.. Yeah!! We still had it!!!

Obviously this timing wasn’t ideal though: what if I had lots of symptoms and the holiday was spoilt? What if the children guessed? But it was early days, and would hopefully be ok.

Apart from me visiting the loo more often than usual, which was bemoaned by the kids but not questioned, I felt fine and we had a wonderful holiday. There was a moment that really threw us however- in one of the theme park queues the girls started a discussion between themselves and presented the results to Steve and I:

‘We’ve decided,’ announced Lydia. ‘It’s a baby or a dog. Which one can we have?’

Did they know? Had they overheard something? More to the point, did they even know their own mother, that I am terrified of any dog too big to fit in a handbag?

‘You know how I feel about dogs…’ I reminded them.

‘Well a baby is a terrible idea,’ chipped in Michael. Steve and I exchanged panicked looks. Michael then gave a long list of reasons to back up his assertion. Uh oh. (However, this would later prove to be invaluable as evidence of the only thing that he has admitted being wrong about in his entire life. I say ‘in his entire life’ as it won’t happen again.)

Steve and I decided that we would tell the children near the end of the holiday, to give them time to process before we shared the news with wider family back into the UK. It was a big moment. Ariane tore out of the room as fast as her legs could carry her. Thankfully, within seconds she tore back, looking shocked but happy. 14 year-old Lydia was of course delighted. This was her chance to be a mini-Mum… and maybe she would spend less time on her make-up as a result… We did feel sorry for Michael and knew it was unrealistic to expect him to be over the moon: what 16 year-old boy wants to find out that their mother is pregnant? But to his credit Michael was quiet but considerate: ‘Woh….really?’, and did not reiterate his previous list…

So the five of us arrived back in the UK guarding a big secret- and one we couldn’t wait to share with the rest of the family. I can still picture their faces when we told them all: utter shock and disbelief followed by complete jubilation. It was a wonderful moment and we couldn’t have been happier.

I was almost 12 weeks’ pregnant by then and it was nearly time for the first ultrasound scan. The girls came with us, super-excited to see their new sibling for the first time. In the car on the way to the hospital, however, my own excitement was suddenly replaced with a huge feeling of dread, come from nowhere. I didn’t want the scan. I knew something was wrong. Maybe it was because I didn’t really feel pregnant, not having any symptoms. Or maybe I just knew.

I was right. ‘I’m so sorry, there’s no heartbeat,’ the radiographer gently told us. There was a still, tiny shape on the screen. My first thought was for the girls; they were only 12 and 14, and we had brought them to witness this.

Everything that followed was a blur… we would need to go from the QE2 to the Lister hospital for further assessment, as a result of which we were sent home to see if anything happened naturally within a few days; if not, I would be admitted and things taken care of.

There is no doubt that my body has always been good at hiding things… and also suddenly taking action…that very night, it all happened and our dreams of a baby were over. We buried the little matchbox coffin in the flowerbed with a garden gnome as the gravestone. In future years, Steve would build a model railway in that flowerbed and Isaac would spend hours watching the trains chug around, past the gnome.

We had never really known grief before, and those who have gone through miscarriage know that it brings a particular kind: grief for a future that you thought you would have, and grief for the future that you thought your child would have. We were in an alien world and didn’t know how to cope with it. I was sad all of the time. Steve struggled to keep his cool in stressful situations at work.

My heart goes out to those who go through this repeatedly, sometimes for many years. In the mercy of God, we only had to wait two tortuous months before those wonderful blue lines appeared again.

This time, we didn’t tell anyone anything at all until we had the 12-week scan pictures to show them that all was well. Even so, just hours after having the scan and mere minutes after sharing the happy news, I experienced bleeding and there was a rush straight back to the hospital, that same feeling of dread overwhelming me.

But Isaac was strong, everything was fine, it was a false alarm. I was paranoid for a good while after that, distraught at every little twinge and back and forth to the GP, who must have thought ‘Not her again..’ But I finally relaxed after the 20-week scan, when we found out that we were having a healthy little boy.

We hadn’t wanted to find out the sex of the others before they were born- I knew, anyway: my mother’s instinct has never been wrong- but the older three were desperate to know this time (well the girls anyway). We made a deal: we would find out the sex of the baby and tell the three of them, but keep it a surprise for anyone else.

Knowing that a boy was on the way meant that we could start to think about names. I had the romantic vision of the five of us sitting down together and agreeing on the perfect name. Ha! World War Three was very nearly started in our kitchen… and it all got way too personal: ‘That’s a terrible name!’ ‘No, it’s not! Yours is hideous!’

‘I have an idea,’ Steve said in hasty desperation. ‘We each write down our favourite name and have a vote. Disguise your writing so we don’t know whose is whose.’

Of course, this was equally disasterous. The girls would only vote for their own choices. Michael wasn’t bothered about voting at all.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘We will go with Dad’s choice: Isaac.’

Steve was incredulous: ‘How did you know that was mine?’

‘Your disguised writing was ridiculous,’ pointed out Lydia. She was right.

There were protests at the name but I put my foot down.

‘I chose all of your names when you were born,’ I reminded them, ‘mainly because Dad didn’t have any sensible ideas at the time. Now he has thought of one that doesn’t sound like a tart or a drug dealer, we should celebrate that. Isaac it is. He can have two second names: I will choose one and you lot can agree on the other.’

Isaac was a good choice: there were the links with Isaac Newton for Steve the scientist, and with Isaac Stern for me the violinist. Best of all, Isaac in the Bible was born to parents Abraham and Sarah, who were so old that they are described as being ‘as good as dead’- giving a humorous parallel with our situation. Isaac also means ‘laughter’ (Abraham laughed at the thought of having a child at his age): Isaac has without doubt brought us more happiness and laughter than we could ever have imagined, and our family unit is so much closer with him at the centre. And did this satisfy my longings? Did I feel fulfilled?

When I had first shared my feelings back in 2011 with Marvellous Monday Judy, sat in her jacuzzi bathtub in swimming costumes (as you do), she had replied: ‘I don’t think a baby is the answer.’ Like Michael, Marvellous Monday Judy is very seldom wrong. But she too was this time. A baby was the answer. I adored and appreciated every minute of every stage as Isaac grew. He will tell you himself that I have been as enthusiastic as he is about trampoline-jumping, sandpit construction and Brio train track engineering…

And we have shared the most wonderful music together through Isaac’s piano, flute and singing. Most recently, I have had the joy of witnessing Isaac being gripped, as I often am, by the ‘mad composer’ bug, improvising on the piano and running to the laptop: ‘I have to get this down!’.

So that is the story of how our littlest one came to be… Steve maintains to this day that Isaac was the best idea I’ve ever had (and I’ve had some good ones), and how thankful he is for him. More than ever now: Steve told me recently that Isaac is the most precious gift that I could ever have given him. If I am no longer here, Steve knows that he will have a constant companion and friend.

Back to Harley Street: the cocktails are flowing freely and I’ve just had a wonderful visit from bouncy, smiley Nurse Kristine, who was excited to share some more good news with me: my CEA (tumour markers) have almost halved again and my liver function is now normal. I was unaware that it had become high, as I was with the tumour markers: it was becoming too stressful to see my blood results each week and decided instead that l would be told what I needed to know when I needed to know it. I was right. It was better that I didn’t know how high the numbers had gone. Kristine revealed that this was the main reason SuperProf had brought the scan forward rather than my abdominal pain. He wanted to find out if the cancer was going crazy or if Irene was going crazy obliterating it. Happily, it was the latter, the circulating dead cancer cells sending the numbers through the roof.

We could not be more thankful for this further encouragement. It gives me the hope and determination that I need to keep going and stay as strong as possible for this treatment, described by Kristine today as ‘gruelling’. Irene and I can do gruelling. Come on, Irene! Get the party started! 🎶

‘Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art,
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!’ (Stuart Hine)