It has occurred to me that I have dodged the bullet a number of times in my life. There have been times in my life when things could have been a whole lot worse – things could have been really, really fucking bad. There were times I thought things were bad, but later I realized that it was ok – it could have been worse… much worse.

Eric and I struggled to fall pregnant. We tried for two years before our wedding. My dad was extremely ill with esophageal cancer and I desperately wanted him to know a grandchild. Unfortunately he died two years before our daughter was born.

Anyway, after a series of trips to general practitioners, gynecologists and urologists, we ended up taking some milky gunk in a sample jar to pathologists to see if they could identify the problem. Slow and deformed swimmers were diagnosed. Eric was devastated (*sorry to be revealing all of this baby, but context is vital). I was a bit more pragmatic –at least we knew what the situation was. I tend to be able to handle things once I know the prognosis and can identify how to deal with it.

After some research and some more medical advice we discovered the lovely doctor who could cook us a baby. Dr Sulaiman Heylen. Dr H was at Cape Fertility. A lovely, kind, soft-spoken man whose job was to help childless people to have a baby. We discussed our options and set a date to have Eric’s swimmers suitably placed within my bits. But before that we just had to shoot some dye into my uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries to check I was good to go.

Needless to say I was not good to go. Who knew that I had lesions on my fallopian tubes and ovaries that reduced my chances of falling pregnant to practically zilch? We never could identify the reason for the lesions, but it suddenly meant that our options and chances to fall pregnant took on a whole new vibe, called in vitro fertilisation.

Poor Eric. He was so relieved. He did not tell me until my diagnosis about the guilt and sadness he was carrying, assuming that the reasons for our failure to fall pregnant were solely due to him. After telling me how he felt he did a little happy dance – twit!

After the confirmation that we were both no-gos as far as falling pregnant, we amended our plan and within days I embarked upon the joy ride of hormone treatments, and transformed into a bitch from deepest hell. For a month I had to shoot hormones into my stomach, culminating in a midnight dash to the hospital 36 hours prior to the egg collection. It’s all very detailed and precise, this baby-cooking stuff.

The egg harvesting was a trip – a conscious sedation trip – and at the end the lovely lab technician who assisted Dr H informed me that they had got 17 beautiful eggs. I was very proud of myself. Then I felt a little bad and gloaty when the woman in the bed opposite me told me she had 5 eggs. Wasn’t I the little Mother Goose, with all my eggs?

We decide to wait five days before the impregnation. This would ensure that the blastocysts were more viable. On the day there were three embryos ready to be placed directly into the uterine cavity. Dr H gave us the option to freeze one or two of them, but we decided to go for it and implant all three. Lordy – can you imagine if they had all taken. Triplets! In the end only one was a successful pregnancy and we were thrilled (more about the details of IVF here).

Eric and our daughter, five and a half weeks.

So: it could have been so much worse: We both had fertility issues and would never fall pregnant naturally, but we found Dr H and on our first round of fertility treatment we hit the jackpot! We were pregnant and Shrimpy was cooking. There are so many who truly desire to be, and should be, parents but a due to a fluke of nature or something else it is not possible. Some, like us, are very lucky. Others go through the anticipation, pain and heartbreak time after time. Sometimes there is a pregnancy – only to be lost after weeks or months. Sometimes a child is born – only to live a fleeting time. It is heartbreaking, devastating, and it could have been so different for us.

But no matter how happy I was to be pregnant, I was still the bitch. How my husband hung in there and put up with me I will never know. The man was a saint. I was just awful! I moaned, cried, ranted, was perpetually in a foul mood. I was a horrible wife. Of course I was great to everyone else. I just stored up my horribleness for Eric. He got the full might of the hormone-enraged bitch.

Fortunately it only lasted for the first trimester.

Then on my birthday in December (lovely b-day pressie to me!) I woke up and was spotting. Everything had been wonderful up until then. A problem-free pregnancy and I was just getting into the swing of it. Eric was away for work so I called a friend and we raced to Dr H, me lying on the backseat of the car in tears, convinced I was going to lose my baby. I was booked into the maternity ward – the perverseness of it! – and a series of tests undertaken. No reason could be found and the spotting stopped after a few hours. It seemed to be just one of those things. After an over-night I was discharged and booked off work for two weeks. But before I could go back to work the spotting started again and I was back in hospital. Another overnight and I left with strict instructions: no work, no driving, flat on my back for 20 hours a day until the baby was born in April.

I got through Christmas and New Year and took things very slowly and all seemed fine. Until I tripped over a shoe and fell in mid-January. I thought nothing of it and went to bed, only to awake with the weirdest tummy cramps. I tried to ignore it for a while until I suddenly realized it wasn’t tummy cramps but something a lot more serious. I was in labour.

I woke Eric and we raced to the hospital at 4:30am. They called Dr H and I was given steroids to boost Shrimpy’s lungs. The plan is to give two rounds of steroids within 48 hours, whilst they work to keep baby where it belongs. I had never been so scared. Time dragged and eventually I got through 24 hours. Everyone was very pleased as it boded well for baby.

And then things got really bad. Without going into the gory details, baby suddenly went into distress. There was much arguing amongst the nursing staff as to how bad it was and whether they should call Dr H or not –when in doubt call the doctor, bitches!

In the meantime I frantically tried to phone Eric and tell him to haul his arse over to the hospital. But being the most excellent sleeper that he was, the phone just rang. Eventually I had to call my younger brother to ask him to high-tail it over to our place in peak hour traffic (about an hour away) and bang on the door to get his brother-in-law to wake-the-fuck-up.

Which the lovely brother duly did.

Which I think he may have had second thoughts about when he skidded into the ward just ahead of Eric and managed to catch the pre-op styling of my bits – ie being shaved. Poor brother, suddenly all my tormenting of him during our childhood faded into oblivion after seeing his sister in the worst possible way. Nothing was as bad as seeing me au naturale.

Anyway… moving on…

I was taken to theatre, given good hard drugs and one emergency caesarian later we had baby girl who entered the world at 25 and a half weeks mewling like a teeny-tiny kitten. After a quick check, a hug and a kiss, our brand new baby daughter was whisked away to the neo-natal ward to be hooked up to various machines and tucked under bubble-wrap to keep her warm.

Our daughter at three days old in the open incubator, with Eric’s wedding ring. His ring slid up to her thigh.

For the first week she was kept in an open incubator and then moved into a closed incubator for four weeks. After the first 24 hours she was on a CPAP machine (continuous positive airway pressure) which is a ventilator used when the patient can breathe on their own. The fact that our baby was breathing on her own, was making lots of noise (good lungs!) and was a girl all boded well. We had no idea what having a baby meant, let alone having an extremely prem baby. To quote my mom: she looked like a little chicken ready for basting and to be popped into the oven.

Aged five days. She still sleeps in the same pose 14 years later. Just like her dad.

After four days I had to leave the hospital and we had to leave our baby behind. It was unnatural and frightening. Neither Eric nor I slept that first night, phoning the ward every hour to see if all was well.

But our daughter was a survivor, determined and stubborn. Her birth weight dropped from 1060 grams to 860 grams. But our fragile little girl was a formidable fighter. I often joke with her that she tossed her embryonic siblings out the nest as she was just too strong and determined for them to compete. These innate characteristics would carry her in good stead for the curve balls her life would throw her.

Kangaroo’ing our baby, aged three weeks.

At five weeks our baby was moved into the antenatal ward where she had her first bath, and on 11 March 2004, weighing just on 2kg, she came home. She was meant to leave hospital on 10 March, but Woollies was having a sale and you know how it goes…

Our daughter is now 14 years old.

Things could have been so much worse:

Firstly, I could have lost our baby. Our daughter could have died. She is our only child and based on the profile of my pregnancy it was not advised that we try for a second baby. If our daughter had died we would have been childless, as the odds were against us that I would be able to carry another child. I cannot imagine my life without our daughter-especially after the death of Eric. She is what remains of him. She is the epitome of him – a real mini-me.

And then I cannot imagine the indescribable hell it must be for a parent to bury their child – no matter the age. It is unnatural for a parent to bury their child. It is against the norm and what humanity expects. Parents are meant to pre-decease their off-spring. Anything else is just too, too awful.

Secondly, she could have been disabled or unable to meet her developmental needs. She could have had brain damage, poor lung development, hearing loss or been blind – amongst a myriad of other possibilities. Miraculously Nina was able to meet all her milestones by 17 months. By a year and a half she had caught up. Except for her teeth! She only cut her first one when she was 18 months. Much to her dismay she still had baby teeth until 12 years old.

I could have had excessive and heavy bleeding, hemorrhaging, or even amniotic fluid embolism (where fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream), among many other complications. But I didn’t.

So things could have really been worse. And thankfully, because this was our first pregnancy, we never realized how dangerous and precarious the situation was. If it had not been our first pregnancy and first child we would have been absolutely petrified. But in our oblivion we failed to understand the enormity of what was happening: that we got it right to have a pregnancy from our first IVF treatment, when there is less than a 40% chance of success. Our very prem baby, who weighed in at 1060 grams, survived. The survival rate can be as low as 50%, depending on the circumstances and health care; and the chance of a permanent disability is 15-25%.

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.