A Party Full of Castaways is the working title for our new novel that we would love to write with our IVF babble community!
The goal of our group project is to come together to write a short novel that raises awareness about the reality of infertility, while also emphasising the importance of connection, open conversations, education, and sharing personal experiences. We really have no skills when it comes to writing stories or novels, but we thought we could give it a try with your help and involvement.
Through this book, we hope to give people a glimpse into what it’s like to deeply long for a child, while facing countless obstacles, all while managing the demands of everyday life, work, friendships, and family. We want to capture the sense of isolation that often comes with infertility, even though it’s something so many go through—affecting about 1 in 6 people globally.
Our idea for the novel is to create characters and their stories based on our real-life experiences, and we would love to do this with you. Who knows, we might write something so amazing that we can get it published! If not, it will have been a lovely thing to do together!
We have started the novel already, with this first draft chapter 1, but would love it if we could work together as a community.
The story starts with Suzie, who’s at her friend’s birthday party. Even though she’s surrounded by love, laughter, and life, Suzie feels completely disconnected, like she’s all alone on her own little island. This first chapter really highlights how isolated and sad she feels because of her struggles with infertility. While everyone else seems happy and carefree, Suzie is weighed down by the loss of the future she dreamed of, and it’s starting to pull her away from the friendships that once ran side by side with her own life.
After we meet Suzie, we want to introduce the reader to the other characters at the party and explore their personal journeys of trying to conceive. By the end, we envision them all gathering around the kitchen island, and finding connection in their shared experiences.
But who are these people, and how do they end up coming together? Do you have any thoughts or ideas on how their paths might intertwine and lead to this moment? And how can we conclude? We’d love to hear your ideas.
Would you like to join us in this creative project? Take a look at chapter one (it’s just a starting point so we can completely change and edit as we get going) and then drop us a line at sara@ivfbabble.com.
Chapter 1…
The vast piece of marble that sits on top of the kitchen island feels wonderfully cold and refreshing underneath my bare legs. As I climbed on top and sat crossed legged like I was back in primary school at story time, I suddenly felt better.
I felt like i had removed myself from the mayhem despite making myself far more obvious i’m sure. But I didn’t care who was looking or what people would think.
I sat at the north end of the huge island and looked out at the garden with a very large glass of pinot in my hand. If this was a movie scene, me and this island would be the only things in focus, whilst everyone and everything around us twists and spins in a dreamlike state, with inaudible sounds coming from peoples mouths, the stereo and the TV that other people’s kids are watching..
“Come and join everyone in the garden Suzie”, said Jemima. “You can’t sit there”.
“I will soon”, I reply, not meaning it.
You find me at my friends 40th birthday party. Jemima is her name. We have been friends since school. We grew up with the same dreams, hopes, inspirations and crushes! We were so close in fact that we used to sometimes pretend we were sisters. As the years passed, we both hit our milestones – boyfriends, university degrees, our own homes. Our lives were running in parallel. Until 2020. That was when we started to peel away from each other – not because we stopped loving each other, but because my boyfriend of 10 years left me and I stopped knowing how to be friends with someone on a different trajectory.
Although not married, me and my boyfriend had plans to be together forever, along with 2 kids and a dog. We were en route to achieving this dream (he had a dog so we already had a head start), until the conception bit went all wrong. By that I mean it just did not happen at all. We were defiant though and started an IVF journey – a journey that took an epic toll on everything – our bank balance, our lifestyle, our emotional state, and finally, our relationship.
With each round, we reached extreme highs and feelings of hope and then took epic downward spirals towards sadness and fear. We created perfect, beautiful blastocyts, and envisaged the future as each embryo was transferred. Yet every single time, my body and our future baby refused to connect. My future baby “failed to implant”.
The heartache was and still is intolerable. My heart feels so heavy and broken, that I sometimes wonder whether or not it will manage to do its job. I wanted to carry on. I wanted to fix my heart by making things work, by finding out why our embryos wouldn’t settle down and grow. I wanted to take out another loan and pay for every single test that might just help us get answers and solutions, but after 3 arduous rounds my boyfriend said he couldn’t carry on.
It gets worse – not only could he not carry on with me on an IVF journey – he could not carry on with me. He said we couldn’t go back to how we were, and swiftly left me, taking his dog with him. Just like that.
So here I am, alone. No partner, no dog, no children, yet surrounded by noisy friends and their partners and their dogs and their children.
The garden party seems to be getting louder. More of Jemima’s friends arrive, along with partners and kids. Sips of my pinot turn into large gulps. I have my eye on the bottle that is within arms reach so I don’t have to leave my island to get a top up when the time comes. I also have a large bag of wotsits next to me should I start to feel a bit heady and need some sustenance.
This is so sad. I feel so sad. I am so sad.
I am surrounded by the loveliest of people, all of whom are kind, caring, decent humans. They are funny and intelligent, and all want the best for me, yet I can’t connect. Yes, I can discuss politics or interior decorations, or places in the world to see, but what I can’t do is connect with them, because deep down I am so sad that I don’t have what they have – children. I want to talk to them about teething and tantrums, I want to tell them that I’m thinking of changing the colour of Archie’s bedroom (Yes, I have already picked out a name for my son) and to ask for their advice on the best place to get a toddler’s hair cut.
I want to be a mother. No, I need to be a mother. But I am scared this is it. Just me, childless, on my own child-free island. A castaway.
So I drink my wine and continue staring at the happy people in the garden, trying to figure out what my purpose in life is if motherhood is not part of the plan.
My job as a TV Producer doesn’t save lives (unless of course you side on the argument that TV is the only outlet some people have to the outside world), so I don’t leave a legacy. I haven’t taught anyone anything nor will anyone ever remember who I am.
I know this sounds like I am feeling sorry for myself….but you know what? I think I deserve to feel sorry for myself. The future I dreamt about has been stripped from me and there is nothing I can do about it. Science says you need a sperm to fertilise an egg. Well, I am am infertile and I have no boyfriend. I don’t have the ingredients to make a baby, so this is it, and to be honest, even if I did have the ingredients, it didn’t work last time so what is the point?
I reach for the pinot whilst simultaneously grabbing an unhealthy amount of wotsits and shoving them into my mouth, as I watch Jemima’s mum head towards me from the garden with that look of pity on her face.
“Hello dear”, she says, in that tone that you know is going to lead to the one sided conversation about me moving on and finding love so that I can then start a family. (If only it was that simple…..).
“Hello Valerie”, I reply, whilst taking another gulp of wine.
“You doing OK?” she asks as she rubs my back, like I am sick, or sad, or lonely. (And she would be right…)
“Err, sure”, I lie.
“Good good”, she says. I wait for the next line, the one where she usually asks about any dates I’ve been on, but she doesn’t. It’s like she’s realised that there is no point. The answer is always the same and there is nothing she can say that is going to change anything, so she doesn’t. She just gives my back a pat, heads to the fridge, grabs a bottle of chardonnay and returns back to the happy people in the garden – the happy people with fulfilled lives.
Valerie has given up on me. Everyone has given up on me. I have given up on me.
As my intake of pinot increases, so does the intensity of my fixed stare at the garden. I’m not really looking at anything or anyone in particular -I just gaze, and try to disconnect from reality, and those annoying, happy and fulfilled partygoers and their children.
The gaze doesn’t last long though, as the need to pee is intense. As I head upstairs to empty my bladder, I hear what sounds like a hushed and intense argument coming from the bathroom. I can’t help myself. The need for a break from the joyful people downstairs is too much, so I get a little closer to the locked door – just enough to hear what they are saying….
What happens next? Who do we meet next at the party? What sadness lies hidden underneath the smiles of the partygoers? Let’s write this book together!! Drop us a line at sara@ivfbabble.com with your ideas!
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