Fertile Soils
Article and Photography by Madison Phillips
I first met Renée out the front of a local coffee shop, in our small country town along the Sapphire Coast of NSW. Her daughter Augie was trying to pick a flower that did not want to be picked, and it took me using my car key to pry this particular stalk and bud apart. Usually I wouldn’t encourage ripping flowers from their stems but if you knew Augie you’d understand.
I could liken Renée to a gentle dream. Initially a dream I felt unobtainable. She is, upon first look, aesthetically exquisite: her frame is delicate and the way her eyes crease in the corners when she smiles casts a kind of spell over people, trumped only by the smile itself. But you’d be wrong to think they’re the most interesting things about her.
Across the almost three hours of talking for this piece, Renée juggled making coffee, crossing her legs on the polished concrete bench, getting down to stop Augie impaling herself with whatever she had grabbed from the drawer, getting back up on the bench, laughing, tearing up, changing the channel all while sharing some incredibly personal stories of love and sorrow.
It was a Sunday, rainy and cosy, when I was welcomed into the family home by three year old Auguste Florence instructing me where to put my shoes. She promptly marched me up the stairs and introduced me to her ‘husband’ Pinky. A giant brown bear that she described as a ‘lazy guy’ whilst scoffing down honey toast with a side of water shaken, not stirred. She’s a wild child, with zest for life absolutely bursting at the very seams of her petite body. Renée’s partner Riley was standing by the couch with a big smile watching Augie tell me stories of adventures she’s been on in her imagination, about to tempt her outside with the promise of a movie later. I went to kindergarten and primary school with Riley. Our connection never quite made it to a friendship because even in our youth he had achieved a level of untouchable cool I am still not acquainted with. That’s life.
I think at first Renée felt nervous to speak to her experience, perhaps fuelled by not having reflected on it in immense detail before. Sometimes getting too close to a memory flame can burn in new ways it hasn’t before. Her story is a common one, but maybe not a familiar one. Infertility and pregnancy loss is a complex collage it seems, composed of heartache and disbelief, held together with the powerful glue that is hope. Having not lived through these losses myself, I sense there is an unknowable quality to it all, a texture and tone that is so distinctly related to losing something you have created of yourself, from within your own body. From the outside, there is of course a pain we witness, but I picture from the inside, a void created by an imagined future that will never come to pass.
AUGUSTE
In their early twenties, full of enthusi- asm for their life together, Renée and Riley started trying to conceive. The path to holding Augie in their arms was un- expectedly testing, and in those initial stages, isolating. Renée shared, “You get told your entire life, ‘don’t accidentally get pregnant!’, and then when you actually want to, you realise it’s not that easy.”
The couple were simultaneously navigating wedding planning, full-time jobs and building a home whilst holding on tight to the vision of their family in bloom. When they first turned to fertility treatment, after trying to conceive for some time, I could tell they felt on the outer. “Some days you want to talk to your mates about it all, and other days it all feels very personal and sacred in a way”, says Riley. Month after month they held their breath, and it took what must have felt like an eternity of Sunday’s to receive a positive test waiting for that faint blue line to appear. It wasn’t easy, but their only choice was to surrender to the timing of this babe, who knew exactly when she wanted to arrive. And boy did she arrive.
In September 2019 Auguste made a big entrance. It was a sublime homecoming - although they tell me, without the big sigh of relief we get promised by our peers. The birth had left significant strain on Renée’s body and mind, in ways no one can prepare themselves for. Renée spoke eloquently here, mindful of the impact of her words, explaining the feeling of pouring all your love into a dream, anticipating a particular kind of outcome, and the arrival of that dream taking a very different form. “That profound bond takes time to grow, and for me that was about six months - it wasn’t immediate. I loved her immensely, but it wasn’t the instantaneous euphoria others have described.”
After Augie was born, Renée and Riley say they knew they wanted a second baby. She remarked that it was an incomplete feeling for the both of them, and they longed to meet the specific baby that they knew was supposed to be theirs. Having endured a physically and emotionally traumatic birth with Augie, it seemed to me like the fear surrounding that experience set them on course to prepare for another child with a depleted bag of metaphorical rations.
Over the next two years, Renée and Riley bravely endured the loss of many beautiful babies. It was a time they described as a stark contradiction; a life in motion with an energetic, bubbly toddler and a life standing still, with the cruel paralysis of longing. Renee shares, “It was a lonely and isolating time. Although your partner is experiencing the same losses and doing their very best to support you, there is this visceral feeling that you’re alone because you’re the one who can’t get pregnant, or carry to term. That really broke me.”
They tried all the things there are to try, alongside extensive, devoted support from a fertility doctor. The doctor once called them in the middle of the three hour drive home from Canberra and told them they needed to have sex immediately as Renée had entered the fertile window. If you’ve ever watched Taylor Tomlinson’s comedy skit on car-sex, or have had the immense displeasure of doing it yourself, you’ll know it’s not the most romantic of scenes. Their losses were felt enormously, climbing mountains and wading through rivers of hurt only to be referred to another specialist in Sydney, at their breaking point. In their initial appointment, the specialist declared she was going to do nothing for them just yet, and to ‘call back in four weeks when you’re pregnant.’ Flabbergasted, they left the meeting with no plan, except to lay their exhaus- tion down on their bedside tables next to the books and empty cups and rest.
This astoundingly resilient two, somehow allowed themselves to unravel and repose and when they called the specialist back they were pregnant, once again. This moment was not as simple as I’ve worded it here; while indeed being one that drips with heartbreak and sadness alongside the elation. Renée explained how it took them being at the point of giving up to permit themselves true rest. “The doctor told us we were young, healthy, and knew we already had a baby, it was just never meant to be this hard! The time had come to give up on the whole chase. And then there he was.”
LENNY
Affectionately the namesake of a pet Renée had as a child, Lenny is a lover. An eternal, squishy love heart of a boy. “I honestly don’t think you would have properly healed from Augie’s birth if we didn’t have Lenny,” Riley remarked. A sentiment shared by Renee, “looking back now and reflecting on our infertility, I was always on a quest to get to him. I think that he has healed our whole family, not just me. I could rewrite stories that didn’t unfold the way I wanted with Augie, and we could write new ones together.”
I wanted to dig deeper here, into the feeling of getting past the safe point of a new pregnancy after loss, so I asked about the final few months themselves. What the connection was like with the growing bub and how excited they let themselves get. “I expect that a lot of people probably think that when you’ve already got one kid, you should be content with that. But it’s a feeling that doesn’t go away until you fulfil it. Riley approached me after our second miscarriage and said he just didn’t think he could keep going. It was a lot on him, on me and on us. Riley is so supportive, and he was never implying that we stop trying, but out of love he said it might be time to look at other options like fostering. Then, once you’re pregnant again and you get past twenty or so weeks, you want to get excited. But during my pregnancy with Lenny I felt so afraid. I don’t think I let myself breathe the entire time.”
Renée and Riley are now the keepers of a story so intimate and personal; only they will ever understand its nuances. A story that twists and unfolds on bathroom floors and in hospital beds; with the depths of their grief only eclipsed by the heights of their love. Our conversation came to a close as Lenny woke up from his nap. The instant we heard his little stirrings in the monitor Renée folded her arms across her chest ‘’annnnnnd I’m leaking!’ she laughed.
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