A couple's quest to have a child has led them to Donegal and the early stages of adoption, writes Deirdre Veldon
Isla and Paul McGuckin were on a beach in Australia when, in the course of a languid holiday conversation, they decided the time was right to have children. The decision was to have a profound effect on their lives. And not in the way they expected.
After marrying in their early 20s, the pair had spent several years building successful careers in marketing and IT when they decided their life together could accommodate children. Isla assumed she would start "popping babies out by the dozen" once she had decided the time was right.
Instead, once back home in England, they began the protracted, painful process of discovering they couldn't have a baby of their own. After a year of trying to conceive naturally, with Isla juggling travel for work with trying to be in the right place at the right time, they started to run out of excuses.
Isla says she couldn't believe it didn't happen immediately. She was, after all, only 29. She wondered if she was the only woman in the world not to get pregnant the first month of trying. "There is a sort of competitiveness about conception that I had never realised existed before, a sort of 'look how fertile I am' one-upmanship. And all that one-upmanship does is to perpetuate the myth that it's easy getting pregnant, that there really is nothing to it."
But it wasn't easy.
Not being easy degenerated into five years of tests, fertility specialists, hormone drugs, homeopathy, exploratory surgery, intrauterine insemination (IUI), herbal remedies, healthy eating and obsessive internet research.
While they realised early on they numbered among the one in six couples who struggle to conceive, Isla found it more frustrating to not find out why she couldn't get pregnant.
Although "unexplained infertility" was the official clinical diagnosis, it didn't allow for closure or acceptance of the inability to have a child, she says. "Unexplained infertility makes it, in some ways, worse. I'd be lying if I said I didn't believe there was always hope."
The scintilla of hope dangling out of their unsatisfactory diagnosis propelled them to try the next magic bullet each time the previous one failed.
Unpleasant as these experiences were, Isla says: "I really didn't feel as though getting off that fertility treatment rollercoaster - taking the opportunity to catch my breath, collect my thoughts and consider the alternatives - was an option for me."
Her reluctance to get off the roller- coaster saw her subject herself to invasive and disruptive treatments, often against her better judgment. For example, although she appeared to be ovulating normally, she took several courses of a fertility drug, and fell victim to mood swings and weight gain.
Similarly, she underwent highly stressful IUI when she felt it only offered real hope for couples where low sperm count was an issue. Eventually, the intrusiveness of the various treatments began to get to her.
"I remember seeing one specialist and having to diarise everytime we had sex and thought, 'what are we doing here?"'
Three cycles of IUI later, Paul and Isla didn't feel equipped to follow the progression through to in vitro fertilisation (IVF), so they decided to take a break from treatment and see what happened when they delved into their inner resources.
Isla believes this was part of accepting there might not be a solution: their infertility was, after all, still unexplained, despite all the medical might that had been fruitlessly exercised on it. But the lack of a "cure" didn't tally with the belief system of a generation who think you can have whatever you want in life, Isla says.
"There's a sense now that everything can be cured, it's just a matter of finding the answer. But that answer can't always be found. Sometimes the medical people can't sort it out for you."
Both of them were happier taking ownership of their future: "When I started all of this, I was happy to let others do things for me but, as time went on, I wanted to get more control over it myself."
That meant eating a healthy diet, avoiding alcohol and caffeine, and investigating homeopathy, hypnotherapy and a herbal remedy called Angus Castus, reputed to return female hormone levels to the optimum state.
In retrospect, Isla says she got more out of alternative therapies than conventional medicine.
"When I started to look at alternative treatments, I was very goal-focused, so didn't mind what it involved as long as I got pregnant. But I suppose that's not complementary to the holistic nature of these therapies. I'm still very much open to them."
She still uses yoga, hypnotherapy, reflexology and shiatsu to improve her wellbeing.
In tandem with pursuing their new, healthier lifestyle, Paul and Isla wanted to reduce stress and felt a move to Ireland was warranted. As they scoured the country looking for the best place to live, she discovered she was, finally, pregnant.
However, their euphoria was short-lived and she miscarried at 10 weeks. That launched a new wave of "unbearable sadness" before they decided to pick up the plan to relocate.
She says the move, first to Kerry, then to Donegal, felt like a homecoming and was instrumental in coming to terms with their childlessness: "We have a wonderful life here; things felt different in England. But as soon as we moved to Kerry, I felt we had always lived here."
Despite the tremendous pressure of the fertility experience, their marriage has remained solid throughout. Isla attributes this to getting married young and for the right reasons, when children weren't an issue.
"We got married simply because we loved each other, so the relationship had always been just about us really."
Since the move, Paul has set up an independent property sales business, while Isla works freelance and has been able to focus on her writing. Initially, she started writing a novel, but found that so many of the characters were besieged by fertility issues that she needed instead to tell her own story in Pink for a Girl, before continuing with her fiction.
Although they initially dismissed adoption, they have since revived the idea. "I really wanted us to come to terms with not having children of our own first. But this year we've started the adoption process."
They have no plans to move from Donegal anytime soon. Isla says: "We've just planted 12 fruit trees in our garden, so I'm waiting to see what they produce."
Pink for a Girl: Wanting a baby and not conceiving - my personal story by Isla McGuckin. Hay House. €15.00.
- More information from: Infertility Ireland: www.infertilityireland.ie
- Infertility Network UK and More To Life at: www.infertilitynetworkuk.com