Shari Low - The Motherhood Walk of Fame

Within months we were married and it would have been impossible for me to be happier. Life was bliss. On weekends we’d climb into bed on Friday nights and stay there until Sunday, getting up only to shower, answer the door to the pizza delivery guy and change the batteries on the TV remote control. I couldn’t believe my luck–Mark Barwick, the gorgeous, smart, funny, laidback sweetheart of a guy, who had been bailing me out of trouble since before puberty, had actually taken me on. I should probably add ‘brave’ to that list. And not only that but he shagged me silly from dawn till dusk and seemed to enjoy it. Who needed yoga?

My wedding present to Mark had been to throw out every method of contraceptive I possessed. Foolishly, I flushed ten packets of pills, fourteen condoms and a diaphragm down the toilet. It kept a plumber in business for weeks.

But we were soon to hit a blockage of a different kind.

Six months of lost weekends later we were surprised that I wasn’t pregnant. A year passed and we were verging on astonished. Another eighteen months on and we were seriously worried. And two years after that we discovered that I had polycystic ovaries. And that was before they were trendy. Now everyone’s got them. They’ve become one of the barometers of modern-day chic. Everyone who’s anyone has had a boob job, Botox, goes to Barbados in the winter, South of France in the summer, is on the waiting list for the new Chloe bag, shops in Harvey Nicks and has polycystic ovaries. Even Victoria bloody Beckham has them. Oh, the irony. I had to have one thing in common with that incredibly thin, jet-setting, millionaire, diamond-laden, David-Beckham-shagging woman, and it’s the fact that our ovaries don’t work properly. And to add insult to injury, despite the dodgy ovaries she’s still managed to shoot out three kids. Although calling them after a bridge, a missile and a bloke with a fondness for balconies was a bit harsh.

However, in my case, the whole reproductive thing seemed to be on strike.

For Mark and I that meant sex became a battle to conceive rather than an enjoyable pastime to while away the hours between a Friday and a Monday. All of a sudden it was ovulation tests, fertility drugs, thermometers, laparoscopies and endless gynaecologists sending their Marigolds up to places that no one except your partner should ever visit.

It was horrible. Bollocks. Unfair. And really, really crap.

It was all those clichés that you read about in the Daily Mail when Felicity from Chelsea decides to share her infertility experiences with the world. Yes, I called my husband to come home from work because I was ovulating and wanted the eggs fertilised. Yes, I did the legs up against a wall after sex. Yes, every month on the day before my period was due I would get all desperately optimistic and do a pregnancy test. And then another sixteen just in case it was a faulty batch.

And somewhere in the middle of all that the romance kind of slid away. Actually, that sounds too gradual and gentle. In reality it went downhill like an Olympic skier on a Lurpak lid. It broke my heart.

Then one day, something really strange happened. It was the launch party for my second novel and I’d spent the whole day in a flurry of excitement, dread and panic. What if no one came? What if the book didn’t sell? What if that cow from that glossy celebrity magazine gave it a bad review? (Incidentally, she did, and one day I swear I’ll track her down.) Anyway, flurry, flurry, flurry…and then I realised that I felt ill. Nauseatingly, gut-twistingly ill. And much as everyone tried to tell me that it was excitement, nerves, stress, etc., etc., I knew differently. I knew. I just knew. A trolley dash round Superdrug, a quick detour into Marks & Spencer’s toilets and seventeen more pregnancy tests confirmed that I was not, in fact, a stressed-out, overexcited basket case. I was pregnant. Cheggers. Up the duff. Banged up. Or as Carol would say–I had a cake in the cupboard.

Some women were born to be pregnant. Demi Moore. Kate Hudson. Catherine Zeta-Jones. They glow, they bloom, they blossom. Unfortunately I wasn’t one of them. I peed. I sweated. I swore. I went from slim to sumo in about three weeks and spent the rest of my pregnancy humping around the collective weight often adult seals. By the time I actually gave birth I was the size of an aircraft hangar.

So it’s fair to say that in those months, our sex life was rather infrequent. Definitely less often than a new moon and only slightly more frequent than an eclipse of the sun.

After what seemed like the gestation period of an African elephant, babe was born, ooohs, aaaaah, gurgle, gurgle, and we called him Mac. In actuality we could have called him Contraceptive because that was the effect. He was either sleeping between us, or on top of one of us, or we were taking it in turns to walk the floor with him while the other grabbed a quick hour of shut-eye on the couch.

But here’s the weird thing. I’ve heard of this same situation happening with other couples and normally there is one of two fairly predictable outcomes. After a few months, the sex life reverts to situation normal. Or alternatively, the bloke gives up waiting and takes to shagging his secretary.

In our case, it was neither.

On the bright side, Mark didn’t go off with his secretary–and I’d like to hope that has more to do with the fact that he adores me than the reality that his secretary weighs sixteen stone, has nostril hair and answers to the name of Harry. Instead he just kind of shut down on the sexual side. Gone. Fun over.

I suppose I should have paid more attention to it at the time, but to be honest I was grateful. After all, it’s not as if I was throwing my knickers at him and demanding he ravish me once a night and twice on weekends and bank holidays.

Aaaw, I thought, he’s just so considerate. So undemanding.

I thought it was all perfectly normal, to be honest.

And at least I did get the mandatory birthday and Christmas shag.

Nine months later, Benny came into the world. Two babies in sixteen months. And despite the probability that my privates could now be a prototype for a new Channel Tunnel, we were ecstatic–years of infertility and now we’d somehow managed to buy one, get one free.

It was great for our hearts and souls, bad for our sleep patterns and nuptials.

Another zombie-like year later, this time with two babies in tow, I realised that my idea of an orgasm was now a thin and crispy pepperoni and anything with Liam Neeson in it. I’ve always had a thing for him.

However, it wasn’t the end of the world. I loved Mark. He loved me. He was amazing with the boys. He kissed me like he meant it. He told me he loved me a dozen times a day. We’d cuddle up on the couch every night and enjoy those blissful six and a half seconds before one of us fell asleep. We both revelled in every little new thing that our kids did.

‘Guess what, honey, Mac said “mummy” today.’

‘Mac ate a whole banana.’

‘Benny managed to projectile vomit all the way to the other side of the coffee table.’

We were happy, contented and together. We still laughed at the same things, understood each other and led a pretty peaceful existence–apart from one time when I suffered a particularly nasty reaction to the dangerous combination of sleep deprivation, a hormonal blip and a few glasses of vino and tried to pummel him with a packet of Pampers for forgetting our anniversary.

But I was happy. Ecstatic. We had so much going for us: my husband was my favourite person over two feet tall, we had two gorgeous boys, a nice house (apart from the mucky corners) and great friends.

The positives definitely outweighed the negatives. I could live with the fact that my writing career wasn’t exactly setting the world alight, Mark was working horrendously long hours, and despite his flash salary the exorbitant cost of London living meant we only had £3.63 in our savings account.