How Would You Like Your Eggs?: A Journal about Life with Unexplained Infertility
260
How Would You Like Your Eggs?: A Journal about Life with Unexplained Infertility
260eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781452510217 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press AU |
| Publication date: | 06/06/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 260 |
| File size: | 236 KB |
Read an Excerpt
How Would You Like Your Eggs?
A Journal about Life with Unexplained Infertility
By Debora Krizak
Balboa Press
Copyright © 2013 Debora KrizakAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-1020-0
CHAPTER 1
Where did the time go?
"Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can't buy more hours. Scientists can't invent new minutes. And you can't save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving. No matter how much time you've wasted in the past, you still have an entire tomorrow."
—DENIS WAITELY
Year 1, august— Time flies when you're having fun
I was emptying out my bedside drawers the other day when I stumbled across a half empty box of oral contraceptives. It seems like a lifetime ago since I took them. I flipped the packet around to have a look at the issue date—five years ago. That's how long I had been off the pill. I'd never really thought of it before that moment.
My husband Fez and I have enjoyed a normal sex life and, like most couples, have taken a few risks from time to time which eventually resorted to us doing away with contraception altogether. We have been in the mindset that we would let nature take its course and not think about things too much. 'Let it be a surprise if we get pregnant,' we said, relishing all the romantic notions that go along with the idea. Five years later and nothing. Where has the time gone?
I've always been ambitious and career-oriented, and so opted for a Performing Arts Degree straight out of high school before beginning to dabble in the entertainment industry. I had my heart set on becoming a dancer. Unfortunately no-one was honest enough to gently guide me away from that profession when physicality and natural talent were clearly not on my side.
So I blindly went ahead and studied dance as a major at Adelaide University, continuing to be unfulfilled. That is, until I answered an ad in the Uni paper. The ad was for a young singer to front a local covers band to work with a professional group of musicians. I went along to the audition and got the job. It wasn't long before I was gigging around town and making a small name for myself. I was never trained professionally, but singing was always something that came easily to me. I guess I took it for granted a little. I had a natural love of it and so began to revel in my new found talent. In no time, dance became a distant interest as I was able to make myself a nice income singing while all of my fellow Uni students slogged it out waiting tables on weekends. After graduating I decided to make singing my profession and hung up my dancing shoes once and for all.
Living in Adelaide was a great place to hone my skills as a performer. Whilst making a name for myself (a big fish in a small pond), I spent the first few years of my twenties desperately trying to carve my own little niche and strive for goals that had previously been just a figment of my imagination. At 23, I was hosting The Music Shop, a national TV children's show and was fortunate enough to buy my first property—a two bedroom unit in Hectorville, about 8 minutes from the city. I'd set myself up and was itching to venture further into the bright lights of the entertainment industry. I had my sights set on musical theatre but for that I needed to be based in either Melbourne or Sydney—so I began to psyche myself up for a move.
My moving plans came unravelled pretty quickly when I answered another newspaper ad to audition for a well-known covers band in Adelaide called 'Chunky Custard'. I got the job and dedicated the next seven years of my life to touring exclusively with this act and living it up as a 'rock and roll artist'. It was everything I could have dreamed of: good money, travel, great exposure and, above all else, I met the man I would marry.
Fez was a co-director of the business, which went on to become one of the biggest cover bands to come out of Australia. Five years after our first meeting, on a cold, rainy day in March, we took our vows in a quaint little church at Eagle on the Hill in the Adelaide Hills. Then, a year later, with success in our wake, we decided to leave our comfortable home town and spread our wings. My 'move' was finally a reality, Fez and I were to start an entertainment business of our own in the bright lights of the harbour city—Sydney.
We arrived in Sydney brimming with expectations of what was around the corner for us. I was a 29-year-old aspiring singer/actress and my husband Fez was a musician/entertainment agent. We made a great team and were going to thrive bringing new projects to fruition together. We had saved enough money prior to leaving Adelaide to afford six months' worth of Sydney rent. We knew the savings wouldn't get us much further than that, but it helped us to establish ourselves in a tough musical market and to gain a reputation from prominent Sydney entertainment agents. To get the ball rolling we auditioned a number of Sydney musos and, before long, had our own four-piece covers band working the nightly slog of nightclubs and bars. The pay was minimal, but we were there. The band was called 'Tall Pop Syndrome'. Fez played keyboards and I was up front on vocals. It quickly became one of the top five corporate covers acts in Sydney and franchised into three different line ups of the same band to be able to cope with the demand. Nothing was impossible. Not for us.
In moving states and starting afresh, Fez and I had taken a leap of faith in our relationships and our careers. Leaving Adelaide had its drawbacks, most of them emotional. I'd left behind my small, close-knit family of two older brothers and a mum and dad who were still very much in love after 40 years of marriage. Fez also left his family behind—his mum and dad, with whom he had only just reconnected after a messy divorce, and his brother, eight years his junior, who often looked to Fez as a fatherly figure. Family was important to us, and there was nowhere to fall if things didn't work out for us in Sydney.
But as hard as moving to Sydney was for us, we felt that if we didn't do it when we did, then we'd live and die in suburban Adelaide—something neither of us wanted. We wanted our families to be proud of what we were doing, embrace our new found courage, and see that we could do it alone. At the airport on the day we left Adelaide, I recall the awkward silence as we waited to board our plane for the new life that awaited us in Sydney. My mum managed to keep a brave face but it wasn't until much later that I realised the impact it must have had on her, when her only daughter moved so many kilometres away.
Flying over the Adelaide plains that day, we said 'goodbye' to life as we had known it and 'hello' to a whole new world of possibility. I had dreams of treading the boards with the best in the industry, performing on the big stage with the bright lights of the theatre and an ensemble of like-minded, creative people around me. I longed for recognition for all the years I'd slogged it out working in a covers band, where nobody really cared what or how I sang as long as they could sing along with it and have a beer at the same time.
I wasn't disillusioned. I knew it would be tough to land a professional contract with a big show. But at 29, I had guts and determination on my side. I'd never been someone to sit back and 'wait' for opportunity. I was a hunter, thirsty for my big chance, and willing to fight for it. However, a decade of experience working in cabaret and covers bands seemed not to be enough to land me even a mid-range theatrical agent to represent me for the kinds of auditions and work I wanted. At the time, it felt like all the experience I had gained up until then had been void and trivial. My eyes had finally opened up to just how hard this new venture was going to be.
The journey continued as I spent months knocking on doors, only to be asked every time what 'professional' experience I'd had—since it seemed that none of the work I'd done in Adelaide was considered even moderately 'professional'. I felt, at 29, that I might have left my run a little too late. Perhaps I should have moved to Sydney earlier. I needed to land myself a musical theatre contract and that would give me the bargaining power to get myself an agent. Trouble was, without an agent you couldn't get an audition, and without an audition you couldn't get the job!
I started to feel desperate, but the hunter in me emerged. I took control of the situation and decided to bombard producers and production houses direct with my resume, hoping to score myself an audition as a freelance artist. From time to time, as the doubt crept back in, I started to think it would just be easier to go back home.
In our first year of moving to Sydney, I spread myself thinly across as many different areas as possible to get a foot in the door. I'd go from singing in our covers band on the weekends, to hiring musicians for corporate events, rehearsing new repertoires for the new acts we had put together, doing the invoicing and bookkeeping so that we all got paid. I took a daytime gig as MC at Sydney's Star City Casino to host their promotions and to give away money to the loyal gamblers. With all of this going on we were busy, but survived our first year in Sydney.
Shortly after turning 31, I finally got my first major break into the industry. It was in the chorus of the musical The Producers. My perseverance had paid off. I landed the audition myself by sending my resume and photo directly to the executive producer at the Gordon Frost Organisation. They were looking for five foot ten, blonde singing and dancing showgirls and I fitted the criteria perfectly. It was as simple as that. It didn't seem to matter what my experience had been beforehand. I fitted the mould physically, so the job was mine.
With that job offer in hand I became more saleable. I 'bought' myself an agent with the contract and took my first steps into the world of professional musical theatre. Finally achieving what I had always set out to do. In the back of my mind, the two years I dedicated to performing in this show was like bringing my life's dreams and goals to fruition, finally having something to show for the arduous years of the past. I had now earned my place in the industry working alongside theatre veterans such as Reg Livermore, Tom Burlinson and Bert Newton.
Getting into a musical was a major personal accomplishment, but coming up with the goods to sustain a professional performance eight times a week was another story altogether. Every moment on stage is tightly choreographed into what appears to the unsuspecting audience as an effortless combination of dialogue, singing, dance, moving scenery and impossibly quick costume changes. It was utterly exhausting, but I had to maintain my professional demeanour at all times. It must have worked as I was cast by the American producers as the understudy to one of the leading roles in the show—the Swedish secretary, Ulla.
The actress playing this role was a seasoned professional. She had long, flexible limbs, was impossibly tall and thin and had worked for years to earn her place in this show. It was her first major break and she deserved it and her shoes were big ones to fill. If she was ever to get sick and miss a show, I would be the 'unknown' stepping in to the limelight, trying to make sure the show ran as close to perfect as possible with as few as a couple of hours rehearsal time a week. It was a great opportunity for a first time showgirl like me. No longer a trained dancer, I was humbled at being selected. After all, I'd never been in a show before and had never even had an agent before now.
The producers must have thought I looked far more adept than I felt, because there was the point in the show when 'Ulla' had to back flip off a table and end up in a left leg split. All without using her hands to cushion her fall. It was a big ask of someone who could only just do the splits on the right leg. I couldn't even hold my own weight in a handstand, let alone flip backwards. But I wasn't letting on. I spent months upside down, doing handstands against a wall preparing myself for the moment I was called upon to step into the role and perform miracles. When the day finally came, I remember hearing my mum and Fez gasp from the audience as I flipped off that desk and landed in the splits with the loudest 'yeeha' I could muster. I'd done it! The show was a success. But everything comes at a price. In my enthusiasm to do the manoeuvre just right, I had fractured my left hip and was off the show for three months.
As they say in theatre: 'break a leg'. Just not literally I guess.
The Producers closed just after my 33rd birthday—and until this time I had never really thought about having a family. I guess I was too busy enjoying my career and proving something to myself. I never thought any of this could impact me later on down the track. But with the show over I had time to think. I started to wonder if I had been selfish. Had I put my own needs, hopes and desires before my fertility expiration date? I had always believed that one of the most selfish things a human being can do is take responsibility for another's life when they haven't yet conquered their own sense of self and purpose in this world. It made sense to me at the time. I would eventually become a mother when the time was right, when I was ready. It was a given.
Suddenly, in my new free time, my mind wandered far and wide and I was faced with the realisation I'd been off the pill for five years and hadn't fallen pregnant. Then the baby shower invites started to arrive. Of my 15 closest friends, nine were pregnant and expecting within six months of each other. I sighed as I said goodbye to the long ladies' lunches and the designer clothing which would soon make way for 10am brunches in the park, glasses of maison (alcohol-free wine, God forbid) and baby Dior.
I engrossed myself in sourcing impractical, original baby shower gifts and discovering the world of baby products that await expecting mothers. Watching others around me go through motherhood certainly made me curious to get started. I didn't want to be left behind. But five years? We weren't 'trying' to get pregnant, but it was puzzling why we hadn't accidentally got pregnant. The self doubt reared its ugly head again, and I started to worry.
CHAPTER 2
Why me?
"M/cus ... At the very moment I wrote that abbreviation, sex became science and charting was the new foreplay."
Year 1, November— How would you like your eggs?
It's been a while since I first discussed the prospect of starting a family with Fez. He, like me, believes that it will happen when the time is right and that we shouldn't put too much emphasis on it. I've had a feeling, though, that things aren't going to be so easy. It's been niggling at me for some time. Surely our odds aren't good if I have been off the pill for five years. We're bound to have hit those magic fertile days 12, 14 or 16 within that time! I have started to do a bit of research on the internet and am discovering a wealth of information for aspiring parents: ovulation kits, thermometers, natural remedies, acupuncture, fertility pillows, folic acid, zinc. Just about anything and everything—including the most opportune days to have sex. As my desire for it to happen naturally and without aid is intensifying, I just feel so overwhelmed, and I don't know whose advice to take. Suddenly, having a baby is becoming a fully fledged production number. I just wanted something to come easy for a change.
I was never really any good at maths, but in my quest to increase our odds, I am now a master at graphs and charting. Last month I planned a weekend away with Fez which also 'happened' to fall on those magic fertile days of my cycle. I had it all mapped out. Spontaneity in my world is now a thing of the past—but I didn't want him to know that. We were to go away to the mountains for a few days of stress-free bliss. I planned it like a military operation. I chose a place called Lake Lyall in the Blue Mountains near Sydney as I had a romantic notion that we would fall pregnant and call our first son Lyall. On the way there we discussed prospective names for our children but there didn't seem to be many we could both agree on. I'm guessing this could prove to be a bone of contention in the future.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Would You Like Your Eggs? by Debora Krizak. Copyright © 2013 Debora Krizak. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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