Clover In the Wind E-Book

Päivi Nuora

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 363

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

When your desire to be a parent is stronger than the fears of losing one's own life, you are willing to try everything. A busy life of young couple, filled with studies and work shifts to roughs infertility treatment. Adoption process brings more challenges. Surrogacy leads the couple to abroad since Finland does not allow yet the infertility treatments leading to surrogacy. This book is based on true story of couple from Espoo, city of metropolitan area in Finland. Päivi is courageous and wants to make world a better place. Petri is calmed and prepared. Different personalities must be combined into strength in order to advance on dreams of having children. Both would like to live a safe everyday life with children, but fate takes them on an exciting adventure around the world. What is the role of taxi driver Mr.Trust when it comes to saving the life of the family on ever-changing conditions in middle of Africa? And where does the husband disappear from Finland just when the wife is seriously ill and undergoing surgery in the hospital?

Leseprobe

For Mr. Trust

Contents

OPENING OF THE DIARY

EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH BLOOD

US TWO

HOPES AND DREAMS

SUN AND FIRE

BREAKDOWN

I

RACE

13 LINES AND DROPS

TRY THE TRUTH

FROM DITCH TO FLIGHT

EXPECTED MOMENT

AS A MOTHER IN NEW CULTURE

II

A TICKET TO AFRICA

THROUGH THE STORM

ADAPTION

MR. TRUST

AFRICAN FAIRY

TOURISMS AND TRIPS

LIFE ON THE FILM TAPE

AT THE BOARDER

MURDER

III

CLOVER

DIAMOND

CARDIAC AMBULANCE

HOSPITAL CLOWN

ONLY STRAIGHT LINE

LUCK AND ACCIDENT

FORWARD

METALBED

IV

THE SECRET DECISION

GOLDEN RING

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

DISAPPEARED FATHER

TEARS OF HAPPINESS IN DISTANCE

THE END

OVER THE BOARDER

GOOD, THANK YOU

EPILOGUE

THANK YOU

REFERENCE

OPENING OF THE DIARY

If you ask what kind of story I am going to tell, I urge you to imagine your greatest hopes and worst fears in the same package so that your hopes are beyond your reach, and you cannot control the course of events. Also, at the same time, you must hide everything from your loved ones. This is what happened in its entirety.

Every day is lived to the fullest and memories of them are reminiscent at the edge of the calendar, photographs, in the rooms of our home, belongings, pending repairs, watered clothes from all the tears of happiness and grief, and torn incisions in the heart. I will tell you how, me and my husband are ready to do anything to acquire that all-peaceful and normal life, that many aspire to have with everyday hobbies and happy experiences. We risk our health, safety and lives to achieve our goals.

On the first visit, one therapist tried to make a mind map to outline my situation. Tried but failed. I realized at the time that writing my story and going through things with my husband is the best way for me to process on everything that has happened. Questions we get from loved ones and their desire to understand everything that happened also encourage me further to tell and write. We have lived a secret life: everything that happened is too deep in us to be able to share on Facebook and too heavy and painful to be even structured in a diary in the middle of events. As I have written our story, I have noticed that sometimes the most complicated path has been just the right one.

The book tells you about an ordinary couple from Finland and their desire to start a family. Our lives are anything but an ordinary story. People’s reactions have been amazed and shocked when I have told even the smallest piece of our lives and travels. Listeners wonder how so much could have happened to one couple all along. In addition, many in Finland and abroad have said that our lives are already like a finished book or a script for a TV series or film. It is only now that everything is safely behind us that I have had the time and opportunity to write about our experiences.

What can I say about all this? I’ve created some kind of elevator talk about everything when I’ve met acquaintances while taking the dog out or answered the question at work events: “How are you? What you've been up to?". In return, I get reactions from spontaneous laughter to primitive crying. Many are horrified and startled. Most of the time, in the end I finally see a genuine empathetic stagnant gaze and a waiting face “What are you going to tell me next?”. I’ve learned to get out of awkward silence by saying some casual comment that yes, we will get up again. Better quality of situation comics are more of my husband’s hay.

The book describes the true events and situations of our own lives as we have experienced and sensed them - seen, heard and felt them.

EVERYTHING BEGINS WITH BLOOD

People are willing to go far to protect their secrets.

Crime writer Arttu Tuominen

The pool of blood from which I woke up has wrapped my long hair in its red cloak. At first, I can only try to open my eyes, but I only see a fog. It's humming in my head. I want to understand what happened and what will happen next. I can’t understand what has happened and why? I try to ask, but I can't even make a sound. The dizzying feeling competes with the incisive pain for power over me. The stone floor is cold and wet. Where does all this blood come from?

I have time to think about it when my consciousness clears momentarily. I feel a warm trembling hand stroking my cheek quietly. All my clothes are covered in the blood and cling to my skin like glue. I'm trying to turn around. “Don’t get up, you can’t!” A strict command strikes my consciousness. I don’t even seem to be able to move, I find all the strength in my body is gone and a painful, overwhelming feeling fills my whole body. I try to focus on breathing. Someone raises my head and puts something under my head to keep my head from freezing on an ice-cold tile floor.

The blood is coming out with an accelerating force that I can barely stay conscious. Suddenly I hear my husband shout on the phone, “Where is that ambulance? She will bleed to death!”. Blood pulps with force. Sometimes my vision turns black and occasionally I see blurry characters around me in the brightness of the hallway lamps. The open front door brings in cold air, even though the April nights are already getting warmer with caution. Nature is opening its eyes towards spring, but can I still see this spring? No birds are singing. Not now. Or at least I can't hear anything from the outside. I distinguish a character who speaks quietly to themselves, "As if someone had been murdered."

I hear the sound of sirens. Outside, my husband’s waving hands reflect a blue flashing light. The sounds of the sirens are amplifying and approaching. The ambulance stops and paramedics arrive. They kneel and start treating me with pace. "1.3 litres of blood have already been lost." "Life threatening, she must be taken to hospital urgently." I hear individual sentences from a distance when I am lifted on my stretcher. “We don’t know how it will go, she has lost and continues to lose so much blood. We do our best”, the paramedics say to my shocked husband Petri as they leave.

Memories are flimsy. Everything is like a dark cloud in my head. I am quickly transferred to an ambulance. Petri will have to prepare for the worst. The bleeding turns into like water balloons that explode when dropped on a stretcher. The sirens are ringing, and the ambulance is accelerating at full speed. My dad sits completely quiet in the front seat of the ambulance and holds the door handle with all his might.

I feel bounces on the road, but there’s nothing I can do to prevent things from happening. The person behind me is talking to Jorvi Hospital on the phone: “Can’t we get there? The situation is extremely serious, do we really have to go to another hospital?”. He shouts in disbelief to the front seat that we are going to the hospital in Helsinki! The blood pressure is 75/44 and blood is still pushing out from inside. I hear the nurse's intensified conversation on the radio: "The caesarean section that is starting in the operating room must be stopped immediately or the patient arriving on our way dies."

US TWO

Hopes and Dreams

Years before when everything still was well.

– We can get sunscreen from there too, we need to go or we will be late. I am yelling annoyed from the front door.

Petri, as usual, calmly checks his list to make sure everything is in order. I pull heavy bags down the stairs. We live on the first floor, but still need to go down the stairs to the floor leading out. What type of fool designed the elevator like this! Finally, Petri gets in a taxi. I say: - To the airport. It is finally starting to feel like a vacation. No work or study for a week. When we arrive at the airport, my dad’s uncle is already in line with his harmonica. More family and relatives arrive, and the atmosphere is happy. We are going to celebrate my mother's birthday in the Canary Islands. It’s wonderful when both of my grandfathers are involved, they’ve become even closer friends after they both become widows too early. As we sit down on the plane, I look at my cousin with her adorable child. I want kids one day myself. This 8-year-old brisk girl was a flower girl at our wedding. Our wedding was less than a year ago. I lean back, close my eyes, and return to those moments.

Before I was born, my parents had given a name for a girl and a boy for emergency baptism as the old days they used to do, the boy's name would have been Petri. On Saturday, July 2001, they got Petri as a son-in-law in a yellow wooden church on the countryside, in the landscape of my parents' childhood. A couple of summers earlier on the churchyard bench, Petri had traditionally knelt romantically and asked:

– Will you marry me in this church?

I had been sitting in the same church on Christmas worship, my father dragged us there in the frost under the blanket with a sledge. Our wedding church reminds us of many good memories of our grandmothers, who were already buried in the churchyard at the time of our wedding.

I was full of energy when planning the wedding. On the day of the wedding, I noticed that I had lost weight and the dress was now too big. Fortunately, there were strings behind the dress that we could tighten it up. We had a lovely flower girl and a boy for whom we had bought the appropriate outfits. It was all like from a fairy tale when we got on horse-drawn carriages with them at our Country Wedding. The priest was Petri's friend - an aikido teacher who contributed to a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere for the wedding.

I arrived at church with horse-drawn carriages and my father escorted me to the altar where Petri was waiting with a gentle smile. Petri was so handsome in his suit. I looked at Petri and hoped that he would never change, but would always remain as he is now, gentle, faithful, uplifting, curious, a steady builder of life. As I stood at the altar, I thought of the words of the popular Finnish song “I got everything from life”. As we stood side by side, we looked at each other. We said our I Do’s, wows and promised to support each other until death. Standing side by side, hand in hand, we didn’t yet know how much we would have to change, dare, and squeeze each other’s hands harder, and in difficult moments, find the will to continue together to get everything we dreamed of in life. Nothing came easily.

We left with the flower children from the church to the white mansion where the wedding ceremony was held. Petri’s father said at the wedding that he was so happy when I changed my last name to my husband’s name. There aren’t many people named Nuora in Finland. He also wished us to have children to have more Nuoras. That is what we hope too.

Petri trampled his foot at the pace of the first cake cut - straight on my toes. In Finnish tradition it is believed that which of the bride and groom is the first to step on the floor during the cutting of the cake, has the final say on future decisions in the joint household. The wedding waltz succeeded with a sore foot in a modern style. We were dancing in multiple weddings in that summer when our circle of friends under thirty got married.

After the wedding party, we set off by car to spend the wedding night at a cabin in wilderness that we rented, which was hard to find. We drove for hours along the plains. Navigators were not yet standard equipment, and smartphones with map applications were not yet on the market. Eventually, I was ready to give up and sleep my wedding night on the back seat of my dad’s car, after all it was a warm summer. Petri however did not give up and eventually a place was found. The same unyielding and on the other hand relaxation we would both need several times later in our marriage. On the wedding day, it really felt like nothing could ruin our happiness. And it didn’t break, but the future cracks in life were so great that the rising of the water onto the ice could no longer be prevented. I learned that we need to move faster on the points where the ice still carries.

Start of our marriage was a wonderful time. We were curious to try many new things and challenge ourselves. Petri who was constantly assessing risks and trying to avoid high places, would never have thought of voluntarily jumping from a fully operational plane until his stag party took him to parachuting from four kilometres. Based on the training before the jump, he was able to state that sometimes you just have to go and have trust. For the other time, I was able to lure Petri, who is scared horses, to horse riding. The excitement was triggered at the latest when the horse had decided to move out to a bush along the route to feed. When Peter realized he had no way to control the horse, he decided to hold on tight and go where the muzzle shows and enjoy the sun and scenery - even then in the bush.

We were looking for a common hobby. The salsa started moving smoothly, but somewhere at the double helicopter spin, we both ran out of coordination. Golf sounded nice, after all, it includes a lot of outdoors and walks in the manicured park areas. However, the first hour of golf lessons, showed that my “swing” didn’t fly a small ball further than a couple of feet. Eventually, the making of children, would become an activity that will fill all our free time.

We often talk about the future and have a dream in common: we want a big family. In addition to biological children, we would like to adopt children. We hope to have four children as the four clover of happiness. We think two of them would be adopted from abroad. We don’t know much yet of adoption process.

In the early days of marriage, life flowed with its own weight. Studies progressed, we both got caught up in working life, we got a dog, we were young, healthy and happy. We enjoyed our lives and planned to get our careers off to a good start and to travel before children. Children are made “later sometime in our thirties”. We had progressed to this stage in our life together quickly so now it could be slow down a little.

One Friday in October of 2002, we were headed to a nearby mall to buy groceries for the evening, as usual. Along the way, we realised we were exhausted and instead of shopping at the nearby grocery store in shopping centre Myyrmanni, we decided to change the evening menu to Chinese takeaway from the pickup restaurant on the outside wall of the shopping mall Iso-Myyri that is next to Myyrmanni. We walked home with the food and just when we got home, we heard on the TV news about the bomb that exploded in Myyrmanni. Right in the vicinity of the grocery store checkouts. Seven people lost their lives and nearly 200 were injured. The perpetrator was also among those who died. It felt bad to think of the pain of all the families who died and were injured and those close to them. Many lives ended too early.

Sun and fire

I wake up when the flight attendant announces the plane approaching Gran Canaria. I have managed to sleep almost the entire flight. The holiday seems to be coming for a good moment, I need a rest. The travel agency's shuttle bus takes us to a lovely hotel, where our party has rooms around the pool in a terraced house. It’s nice to have fun and play with my cousin’s little girl. After swimming I watch from the sun lounger at the sky. No clouds visible. Feeling relaxed, almost as carefree as being in Spain as a child with our parents. I remember our trips to a parrot park where a parrot stole my sister’s earring from the ear without us noticing. I remember camel rides, lovely moments on the beach and the hotel’s pools connecting the water slides - and lots of ice cream. My childhood is full of happy memories.

I was born in the mid-70s in Vantaa, near Helsinki. Everywhere at the time, new concrete suburbs arose to meet the needs of those moving from the country to the city. A blond-headed boy was born to the Nuora’s family at the beginning of the year, and a girl with thick dark hair in Koivisto’s family just before Christmas. When the children started school in 1983, our family lived in a quiet area, surrounded with parks, on a detached house in Espoo. Under the apple trees, we did plays and dances with my little sister and the kids in the neighbourhood, we were as free as the birds in the sky. We pick berries from the bushes in the hope of pocket money and play trade. Our home was at the back of the yard, a light green detached house built in the 1950s. There was a light green playhouse in the yard. On the edge of the yard grew rhubarbs, which our mom made wonderful pies with vanilla sauce. As a child, we also got to sweep sweat when we mowed the lawn or watered the flowers until late at night. We learn to work and be entrepreneurial when we are little. We had strong supporting community, and sometimes we got pocket money from the hard work at the kiosk.

My parents decided to extend our house. The construction project had a joyful spirit of making, from early in the morning to late nights, in the middle of the ongoing work. As the house was built, the timbers lifted us children during breaks in the long days of construction with a brick elevator to the roof, and it was a favourite activity for the entire neighbourhood kids. Life was relaxed, it didn't always have to be "just right", and we slept happily in the middle of dozens of sawdust sacks coming from the walls of an old house, in sleeping bags on camping pads covering a cement floor. The atmosphere on the street was like from the desperate housewives - series with children's games and a village parties. Later, as we grew older, shrubs and apple trees gave way to the houses to be built for me and my sister.

I get up to sit in a sun lounger when my skin starts to burn. I watch kids playing with a beach ball. I have always liked to hang out with the little ones. As a teenager, I was a team leader for a scout group for the smaller ones. Together with other kids of my age, we organized trips to outdoor camping area for the little ones, where our flagship cabin was located near the lake. There were no adults involved in the trip, so us, the older kids, had a responsibility for the smaller ones. I was only 12 years old. It seemed natural and I was not afraid of responsibility, because my childhood in Finland did not have seat belts in cars, and no one had heard of a cycling helmet. It was all dangerously carefree. At most, the major challenge was getting a rain inside of the tent while camping and waking up in a large pool of water. However, once during our stay in a familiar scout cabin, some disturbing young people appeared outside the cottage. We had almost ten small children with us and there were only a few of us older children. The teenagers set fire to the tree next to the cottage to scare us. That’s when I was really scared because we were so far from the town on our own without adults. For the first time, I was responsible for young children in a threatening situation.

I wake up to the point where my skin burns soon, I need to put in more sunscreen. It’s already afternoon, but the sun is hot. The day will soon turn into evening. Fortunately, I can swim this trip since it’s not “that time of the month”. I usually suffer from heavy menstruation, and my endometriosis gets worse at an accelerating rate. I know it's a risk to infertility. Endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes, causing a chronic inflammatory reaction in the tissue. Among other things, it causes infertility. It is one of the most common gynecological diseases in the world, with up to one in ten women suffering from endometriosis. Due to the difficulty in diagnosing the disease, the diagnosis may take several years, which may be critical years in infertility care for couples dreaming of a child. Fortunately, I have been diagnosed at a young age, so I know there is no time to waste.

The desire for children has been strengthened throughout our time together, and we have begun to mentally begin to start a family before it is too late. Before the trip to Spain, we bought our own apartment in Martinlaakso, close enough of Helsinki. Our apartment has two bedrooms. The office room would turn into a children’s room when the time came. The only annoyance is smoking a neighbour on his balcony. In the cool of the evening, he somehow gets a bitter smell on our balcony too, and we get to start each morning by ventilating the smoke from our own balcony. I would never smoke tobacco.

Whether it’s the dark nights and warm air of Spain, or an uninterrupted spending time together with Petri, but after just a couple of nights, we decide to start trying to get pregnant. The studies are still in progress, but we will have time to finish them on maternity leave while the child is sleeping. My endometriosis has already become painful at this point, so it’s a good idea to start trying to have a baby fast. Because only one of our friends has a child and we are on the move quite early in relation to our circle of friends, we are spared from the curiosity of starting family. Now we are still safe from the interviewers.

Breakdown

Spring turns into summer and summer into August. The cycles wear out, but the pregnancy does not begin. We should go for investigations now. Everything is definitely fine, it doesn’t always instantly work out. However, Petri starts looking for infertility clinic numbers. In a few days later, we are already sitting in the white corridor of the clinic. I look at the adorable picture of the baby on the wall in her parents ’arms at the same time Petri might be looking at something completely different while giving the sample. I wish we had a baby. Not everything happens fast, but I still have a strong belief that things will get better, as Grandma always said. We would still succeed. Now we will just get a little assurance that everything is going well. I press a leaking wound in my forearm from laboratory tests. Petri comes out of the sampling room a little embarrassed with a grin. “It is indeed easier that there is a stand for that magazine provided by the clinic, you would run out of hands”. We both laugh. - Your results will come in a week, the nurse shouts after us as, we leave towards the door with a smile.

Friday. Evening at home alone. “I travel to my feelings, to my innermost being” The theme song of the popular Finnish TV series takes me to the imaginary everyday life of others and its exciting situations. All things that can happen to others. After the program, I browse through the channels, but comedies or crime scene investigators don’t bring comfort to a lonely evening. Petri is gone all night. He has a training day, after which the work crew heads to the evening together. It would have made sense for me, too, to plan something for the evening, but the work and studies took me a whole week. My gaze shifts to our framed wedding picture standing on a shelf on TV. Everything was like a fairy tale with horse-drawn carriages. Suddenly I get shivers. It’s kind of cold, even though the August night has been warm. I close the balcony door, the neighbour has smoked again. I look at the yard and I see a strange dark dressed figure, an older woman staring intently in the yard towards me. This place doesn’t feel like home for our future family. I find strange people living here. I lock the balcony door.

I jumped over the pile of mail when I got home. Petri usually scrolls through the mail when he comes home, but while he’s at work, the pile still hangs in front of the door. I reach down to pick up a bunch of ads and notice a letter from an infertility clinic under them. I have promised Petri that whatever they found, we would not share the results with others until we had gone through it together. Can I open the letter alone, is it worth it? Fear tries to take over, but I decide to ignore it. Why would I be afraid for nothing? There is nothing to lose here. Even if there would be some minor issues, it will definitely be fine. I open the letter and its contents are shocking. In disbelief, I read the lines over and over again: I couldn’t get pregnant normally in any way, possibly not at all. The letter is so surprising that to my shock I don’t know what to do. It feels like a rope is strangling my neck. The mental pressure feels like that what I saw outside earlier that elderly woman with black cloths, hair in tight bun would be right in front of me, that cruel-looking woman. Her evil grin wants misfortune for us, for us to fail. It wasn’t the hippopotamus that came to our home, to our living room, but this dark figure stepped into the bedroom and every place in our home. I try to shake the embodiment of my fears out of my mind.

The loop tightens. I need to talk to someone right away. I can't reach Petri today. I can't talk to my friends or family yet. In distress I call to number inquiry services.

- Can you connect to a crisis phone, or whatever they are called? I manage to ask from surprised woman.

- I could connect you to local crisis line. She kindly suggests. There then. A gentle male voice answers my call and asks how he can help me. I burst into tears, and I can't say anything.

- Take your own time, I be here, has something happened? He asks.

- I don’t know if I ever will be a mother. That’s the only thing I manage to say and I keep crying: -I want so much a child, children and to be mother for them.

The man answers calmy: -You know, let me tell you about my neighbours. They too, hoped for a child for a longest time and now they have a small little girl from China. They are truly happy to finally be parents. I keep crying, but the shock has turned into hope from hysteria. I thank the man for telling me about the adopted child. Yes, I will still be a mother. Some day. One way or another.

From that letter begins the second phase of my life. Nothing is as it used to be, but I will not give up. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, and I refuse to let go of my dream and role. The role of a kind girl and motherhood is part of me, but now it’s time to fight. I have had the courage to act since I was a little scout, but in this situation I am helpless. In the scouts, I would have just safely made a knot on the string and attached a shed or raft with it, but now the whole string has slipped out of hand.

Everything in my life was clear but now nothing is clear anymore, I can’t function without a clear goal. I ascend to the boxing ring and face a dark-looking figure. The joy in my eyes has turned into bitter anger. I will win this match no matter what it takes. The briskness and freedom of the little girl I once was, has now changed to purposeful advancement in heavy chains. My smile on my face is no longer genuine, it’s a secret shell, mandatory accessory to be able to go to work. I decide that one day I will still tear the shell off my face and rejoice with my children, feeling the smell of grass and apple tree flowers without this heavy feeling in my chest. That day is not today, but it will come. The day is not yet visible on the calendar. However, that day is marked on the calendar of my life with a star and a heart.

We are a family without children. Our way of life is built on homecentred activities suitable for children. Only the children are missing. We have to come up with something. I will find out everything there is to know about adoption from relative organisations. I would find out about adopting every possible child from adoption organizations. I want to gain hope by exploring this path while allowing future infertility treatments to go their own way. I try to be relaxed even when I can’t. I can't stop now. Suddenly the focus of our lives has changed. Starting a family would now be expensive. The idea of two of us traveling together and postpone a having a child has changed to researching our options with doctors and adoption organisations. It also drives to forced performance at work to advance a career to cover the cost of having a child.

The next morning, I call the Infertility Clinic to find out how to proceed based on these results.

- Just make an appointment with our doctor and he will advise you ahead. That's what I do. In the evening we will tell the situation to both of our families. Everyone listens seriously and it is clear to everyone that we have not come to lose this match. We give faith to others, even though when the door closes, we are like two swans stuck in the mud, tapping together desperately but faithfully next to each other.

We tell about our situation in work and to our circle of friends. I more openly, Petri cautiously only to a few, afraid of people's reactions. A friend of mine had bought a large station wagon soon after their wedding. At the time I bluntly commented if they are expecting to have children in near future. I heard from them later that they are having infertility treatments. It is this same friend who is now advising us to an infertility clinic where they themselves are getting their treatments. The results there are good, and even difficult cases can be handled according to individual needs. I am grateful to my friend. One should never inquire or assume anything about the lives of others but listen with an open heart to what the other wants to say and offer help.

I

Two lines

Radiating that night

In a freshly painted house

There was no need to worry about debts or anything

With a newly assembled bed

With sheets fresh from package

You whispered to me in your smile

Now we make a child

And we did

Six angels later1

Race

In the hallway of the infertility clinic, I see a lot of women of different ages. Some of them are happy, others are hopeful, some are excited, someone is wiping their crying eyes at the end of the hallway. I also see men in the clinic, someone is supporting their wife, another is going to the reception.

Everyone has a common desire for a child. I wonder what the story of everyone is. I notice the stroller and hear the baby’s voice. It affects everyone in the hallway. At first, I startle, shocked at how someone dares to bring the child here. I soon realize she has an equal concern for her own situation. She probably hopes for a sibling for her child and suffers from secondary infertility when, for one reason or another, they do not succeed in having a other child.

A friend of mine said that there are queues on the public side and the number of infertility treatments and forms of treatment is limited. After doing some research I understand that with the public offering we would not win the race against endometriosis. I can’t wait, I definitely need the full range of treatments in all their forms before the child is safely napping on the balcony. (Finland it is common practise to put your baby outside to sleep during the day, were it summer or winter)

The doctor is gently explaining how the process is going. First an attempt is made to get the menstrual cycle in order, followed by insemination and then, if necessary, punctures and in vitro fertilization. After each, there would always be something to try. Yes, one of them will succeed, I think hopefully. However, I know couples for whom no treatment has helped. I brush the thought off my mind, only this next stage is what is important. When I’m not in the clinic, I try to reset my head with light TV series. I feel like I am running a nonstop marathon with my body, which isn’t really at the level of a top athlete. Or as if I were in a formula race where everything happens quickly with the help of a professional team and all I must do is drive and manage to stay on the road to my destination. As long as I survive to the next service point or depot, there will again be the next energy boost or better tuning that will try to help me to advance to the next stage. During and after treatment, it feels like I’m being beaten in a boxing ring. Hormones are confusing me. They cause irritation, exhaustion, and a roller coaster of emotions.

I am so pain sensitive and I am afraid of puncturing at first so much that I have to be put to sleep. The nurses and doctors are friendly and live with our pain. When I wake up, Petri sits in a chair next to the bed and the nurse brings the crackers with melted cheese. - There were a lot of eggs found, surely some will be fertilized and we will be able to move them inside you, the doctor will tell you in more detail. The nurse encourages. Fortunately, there are a lot of eggs. We are excited about their development and look forward to the day when they could be moved.

You must drink a lot on the day of embryo transfer. I came with a bubble on the forehead and with a bladder full for the best visibility for the procedure. I rumble in like an elephant-sized water balloon on a lumpy road. The stairs are painful to climb. I want to do everything perfectly so that under no circumstances I could blame myself if things go wrong. The chances of success are so low anyway. This trait always lives in me strongly: let's get things done and do everything we can, so we don’t have to think about what else we could have done afterwards. I lean against the wall in pain and wait for the procedure to begin. I come into the room and the doctor puts the tube inside and transfer begins.

- Is it ready there? The nurse looks at cell biologist. - Yes, here they come. The answer comes from behind the glass.

My children. Two embryos are transferred inside me under ultrasound control. There are risks in both, single and dual embryo transfer. I wish even the other one survived. I look at the screen and see small flashes. Maybe there would be twins. Twin pregnancy increases and at the same time decreases the chances of success. After discussing with the doctors, it becomes clear that two embryos are better for me to succeed.

13 lines and drops

Monday. It has been now two weeks since the embryos were transferred, and we are able to take a pregnancy test. We sit excited in the bathroom.

- Well, now we can look. Petri checks time solemnly. Two lines! From the bottom of our hearts, we cry in each other’s embrace when the test is positive. The lines aren’t strong, but for us, that’s enough right now. We leave happily and in disbelief to the mall. We try to look smart and that we have a plan on the outside, but now even Petri’s systematicity has for a momentarily evaporated into nonexistent with the autumn leaves: - Let's buy that pregnancy seat belt, to protect the baby and you.

I focus on the cute little socks I would slip the baby’s feet into. When uphill has been steep enough, the subsequent hill will take us again at such a rapid pace that the brakes cannot be applied. The only thing we have hoped for from the beginning would be just normal ordinary everyday life, which is now perhaps finally within our reach. Nothing could break our happiness anymore.

Blood. After a couple of weeks, I sit in the bathroom again. Petri talks to the infertility clinic on the phone. The nurse instructs:

- Bleeding may be normal in a well-progressing pregnancy as well. Come here and lets take a pregnancy hormone value and check the situation. When I come out of the lab, I feel disbelieving. How does this end? I drive to my work’s parking lot and wait in the car. The phone rings and the nurse's words cross my consciousness: - The value is too low for the pregnancy to continue, I'm sorry. The matter itself is crushing. It feels hard to know that we can’t normally try to get pregnant again, but there are infertility treatments and a hormone storm ahead again. I look with empty eyes at the last leaves falling to the ground. They disappear with the water into the sewer. Winter is coming.

After the first miscarriage, I stop looking at the screen of the ultrasound device. My own infertility doctor already knows this, but sometimes when other doctors examine me at a women's clinic, for example, the doctor may tell me: - Look how great it is now, your child is there, why don't you look?

In the end, I am too tired to explain anymore. I just don't look. I want to keep my distance mentally to protect myself. After the first miscarriage, the joy of anticipation has disappeared and turned into a terrified fear, which I am fighting with a rational cover of a contingency plan, a plan for the next step ready in my other hand. Failed attempts. Miscarriages. Always a new plan and attempt. Positive lines in pregnancy test. Excited days and weeks. Cautious wish. Disappointments. Horror. Drops of blood. Despair. I decide to stop counting miscarriages. I just can't take it anymore. There are already too many of them. If anyone asks, I’ll just say some number that’s roughly correct. Thirteen is a good number, the number of misfortunes. I will continue the treatments.

It's evening. I'm trying to fall asleep. The old nasty woman from the horror movie is in the corner of the bedroom disturbing my sleep and wishing everything would go wrong again. Miscarriages are sometimes lightly written about in the newspapers. Having experienced the brutality of a miscarriage myself physically and mentally, I find that its scope and depth often do not fit into a single article. There is so much pain and horror associated with miscarriages. We have not been allowed to be parents and have no memories of our child or our time as a family. Sure, there is always that short or sometimes a little longer moment when I’m pregnant, but the fear of losing has taken away the joy from that too. I stare at the roof. Miscarriage is death. The child has been loaded with expectations and wishes. Everything is going to fall apart. Bottomless emptiness. We start from scratch to try again. Willpower must be found somewhere, somehow, we have to move forward. It feels bad to hear encouraging comments: - Its going to be fine, just attempt again.

The intension is good of course, everyone means well and wish to encourage us to move forward. However, we are still in a period of mourning from the previous loss, but we have no time to mourn. We are like robots in the starting racks, forced to advance in the race. Endometriosis is running in front of us, we can’t stop crying now. It’s really tough not to be able to be a parent for your child even a minute, even though you haven’t wished for anything else in your life.

We have moved farther out of town, to a place where there is room to breathe and a small yard where we can put baby to sleep when the time comes. I sit outside on the terrace of our home and try to recover from one miscarriage again. The losses are overwhelming, but there have been them in my life, even before infertility. Looking back at an empty yard, I return to my memories of the painful situations of the past. I see them in front of me as I did then. My safe worldview was shaken properly in our home for the first time when I was 11, when my dad came home from work and didn’t even come in through the door but went straight out into the basement to cry. My mother ran to help, and my little sister and I sneaked into the basement stairs to secretly listen. I saw my father in my mother’s arms, in despair, while my mother comforted him. The parents noticed us and asked us to come closer. Our dear grandmother, my father’s mother, had had a seizure and the situation was serious. That’s when I first realized that nothing in life is certain or permanent - nothing.