A little over twelve years ago, well that many plus a few hours or so, my life changed forever. It’s hard to ever imagine a time when you weren’t in it, my little nugget (I know you hate me calling you that but it’s better than the name ‘Peanut’ we called you when you were in my belly wouldn’t you say?). And that sound you hear is the sniffle of your mother not dealing with the fact her ‘Bubs’ (another name you’ve told me not to use and I promise I’ll stop, soon) is almost up to her shoulders and just a cat’s bum whisker away from being a teenager. Too soon. Way too soon. I need more time.

I swear you were only just starting out as a preppy, a big navy blue bag strapped to your back like a rocket launcher that probably weighed more than you did and a slight breeze would have swept you clean over, like yesterday…I can see your little blonde candy floss hair blowing in the wind the first time the training wheels came off and you were racing like hell to the end of the street, me chasing after you ready to catch the fall you never made…

When, with your proud beaming smile, you became the little man in my life to give me away and almost broke the sound barrier, skipping me that fast down the aisle I had to check my heels for smoke. You didn’t care that it meant you had to share your mum with someone else, you were more excited that we got to share you.

I know you’re like super dupa excited about growing up, reaching your goal height of 6ft 2, doing the things grown up boys do and all…but your mum over here? Well she ain’t quite so excited. Slow down, I want to yell. Stop growing. Stop getting big. Stop turning into a fine young lad before my eyes and my heart can’t take it.

I love that even though it’s not cool to hug your mum when we’re out, you still sneak your hand in mine and squeeze it tight. How you apologise about hurting my feelings because you don’t want your face to be painted for halloween. And I even love that when you got a detention at school for not wearing the right uniform (yes, I’ll let it go that it was for the third time) and told the head of the junior school you were worried about upsetting me because ‘my mum’s very hormonal right now’.

Unbreakable bond…

I love that you still kiss us goodnight and talk to your dog like he’s your best mate in the whole world.

I know you’re in a hurry to get big…it’s just that your mum isn’t.

Happy birthday to the greatest thing I ever did…Lov’n’ big ol’ hugs, your MamaG xxox

The cost of a small house on the outskirts of Bundaberg. Approximately nine general anesthetics. Thirteen kilograms. Severe hair loss. Tiny puncture wounds throughout my body. Two small incision scars. Track marks on my inner arms. Ovarian over-stimulation. Steroids. Litres of introlipid (fat) via IV. Inability to travel. Emotional destruction. Self doubt. Painful bloating. Jealousy.

The cost to one day hold our own little wriggler in our arms = priceless.

This is the real true shit they don’t tell you about infertility in the pretty pastel-coloured flyers they hand out at the doctor’s office.

They won’t tell you how much it’ll make you want to scream every time you read about yet another celebrity pregnancy (that will doubtless end in separation). How you will feel like an utter failure as a woman. That it will baffle you your body which once worked like clockwork has begun shutting up shop for stocktake without your wanting it to. You’ll cry more. At practically everything. Your hormones will rise and fall like Miley’s undies. Dart sharp pangs of jealousy will pierce your heart every time someone else gets up the knock. You will know every single month exactly where you are in your cycle and feel every single inner movement in your ovaries/uterus/gut/tits.

And I promise not to name it North, Rocket or Pear

You will become a hopeless wanting, desperate baby-crazy nutter who will try anything and everything from Chinese herbs to ‘fertility yoga’, scoffing pineapple by the kilo at ovulation and pulling naked headstands at will.

But let’s get one thing straight…no person would ever willingly expose themselves to IVF unless they had to. It isn’t a choice, it’s a compulsory action as a result of shit going on in your body that you have absolutely no mother-fucking-control over. And now, apparently the government is looking at cutting the safety net for infertile couples? Bloody great.

I really hate endings. Let me tell you how much I hate endings. I went into complete meltdown with the last episode of Melrose Place (the original ’90s version not that recent joke of a remake) that I almost required an intravenous of red bull just to get me through the day. You know that feeling when you’re really getting into an awesome book/movie/porno and it goes and ends on you. Ever feel like you just want to stalk the author weekly with your insightful, ’10 reasons why you should write a sequel’? Nope? Just me…okay but you get my drift.

Endings of anything are shitful (except maybe eyebrow threading, I stop taking in air until that shit is done yeeeeoooucch) which is why 2016, January to be precise, is a month that will either spell the end or the beginning…and I have no idea which one. It will be our very last round and by last I mean no-more-reunion-tours final finito finish. We’ll be trying a different protocol and to spare you the intimate details of which I’m usually more than happy to spill but for the sake of others involved who shall remain nameless, let’s just say the both of us will be feeling a bit sore after this one.

A couple of weeks ago we visited the wonderful and ever inventive pioneer of reproductive medicine who is Dr Babies and sitting in his office we finally came to the conclusion I probably didn’t want to hear. That despite the fact we could go on trying for ever and ever after that, eventually everything has to come to an end. The one Willy Wonka golden ticket was that my AMH levels have remained at 7.5, which is what they were three-and-a-half-years-ago. Someone hand me a fucking gold star, quick sticks! If you have no idea what these figures mean (I barely know myself) but it’s basically how many eggs you have left in the carton and let’s just say even though I am now entering my golden years in terms of fertility, all is not completely and utterly lost and shrivelled into tiny black currants.

And that’s where it ends. Or maybe begins. Only the Fertility Gods, or a bloody Leprechaun can make that decision. Three and a bit years, one little tiny embryo that almost made it, a whole lot of emotional, financial and physical suffering – all hinges on one last go. As it stands, in Australia, there is absolutely no government-funded support or counselling offered to couples going through IVF…yet one in six people in this great southern land of ours suffers from infertility? Go figure. Shit needs to change. And by change I don’t mean stripping couples of the chance to make their little baby dreams come true. Love n’hugs LadyMamaG xox

Drew Barrymore, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Milla Jovovich…and me. What do we have in common I hear you ask (other than our supermodel good looks and heaving swiss bank accounts of course) we all share the same birthday. Well not the actual day but we are all Year of the Rabbit which I’m pretty sure is why Ange and I get along so well or at least I imagine we would anyway.

Like my fellow bunnies, I’ve never been one to simply let a birthday pass quietly, which is why I have been celebrating the entire week…and will continue to do so well into next week (when my actual real bonafide day of birth falls…(the 10th for deliveries) and maybe even the one after that.

I love me a celebration which is why tonight instead of letting it slip on by into the universe like another Justin Beiber hit, I’m tackling the turn of my decade so hard it would make Ansastasia Steele blush.

Sure I’m not as fit as I once was the last time I turned over a new decade. Sure a weekly intake of KFC skin takes about ten times as long to work off  as it did then. Sure there might be a few more ‘life creases’ making their way across the corner of my eyes but battle scars they are. Each one has been a reminder of the decade that has been the most challenging of my bloody life.

my gorgeous lil love nugget

But by shit I’ve made it. I haven’t just slid in by the skin of my teeth I am galloping like Penzance towards the finish line of my former decade, taking a good swig of the Bolly on my way.

I’d like to say I care that my rig might not be as toned as it once was and maybe my hopes of a VS runway career have been hopelessly dashed but honestly…who gives a damn shit? Would they write on my headstone ‘Had great abs’…or ‘totally great thigh gap’. Nup. They’ll say ‘loved that shit’ and maybe ‘great fondness for KFC skin and chocolate’. These days my dreams are miles different from what they once were, in my old age I’ve discovered happiness is what feeds the soul and lucky for me I’ve got it stock-piled in fifty-gallon drums outside my garage.

I’ve learnt these past 10 years how life can change in the blink of an eye and no money or material things can bring back a lifetime of love and happiness. I’ve learnt how I need to take care of myself, how to be a fighter. How to come back stronger than ever. How to keep on top even though the tide keeps dragging you under again and again. I’ve learnt that the greatest thing I could ever hope for, could ever hope of achieving is the tiny miracle I gave birth to a decade-and-a-bit-ago. I’ve learnt how a heart can break like shattered glass, how your feet can be kicked out from under you. How your body can work perfectly fine to create another life in one decade then continually let you down the next. How to ignore my own fears, grief and pain to get the one thing that matters the most in this world…family.

I’ve learnt it’s possible to open your heart and learn to love again too. I’ve learnt the love of someone so incredible your face hurts is all you need to get through today and tomorrow. I’ve learnt there are actual true and real saints in this world. And I’m lucky enough to share my life with one. He’s helped me heal and be a much better me. He never winces at the memories of a past life so often constant but yet so integral to us. With a heart so big, so open and so generous that it heals not just ours but other folks’ lives too, constantly giving and helping and caring. Who makes you so proud you want to high-five and side ankle-kick all at the same time.

Always by my side…

It’s love, friendship and sometimes just an ear of the friends who have been there an entire lifetime who make your heart full.

I’m lucky even though don’t share Ange’s portfolio of chateaus in the South of France or Drew’s ET memorabilia to have the world’s best friends and family who are all sharing in the turn of my decade tonight. People who’ve left their families, work commitments and homes and travelled across Tasman seas, across states and across bridges to help me celebrate a decade that I’ve fought harder than Mike Tyson to make it through. I love you all more than words. More than KFC skin even.

This is Forty Shades of Me…and I’m proud as shit….love n’hugs Lady MamaGxox

This weekend thousands upon thousands of people made their yearly pilgrimage to a mountain held in such high regards it might as well be heaven. To get close to their gods, worshippers flock like seagulls on an oily chip wrapper.

I’ve been there myself quite a few times. The 11 y o has even been before too but he wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t told him. He was six-months in utero at the time…and I seem to remember some pretty serious wriggling going on inside my belly every time I got close to the pit garage.

It is the holy-shitting-grail of Aussie motorsport. The temple of high-octane fumes, high decibel engines and fierce competition. For those who love racing, this weekend is the grand final AND the world cup all rolled into one.

But for others, Bathurst, Mt Panorama, The Mighty Mountain is a haunting reminder of a weekend where lives where literally shattered into oblivion. I’ve thought about going back one day, of touching the gravel in the spot where under the blink of an eye, a split second, everything went black but I’m far too chicken shit. You wouldn’t even be able to get me out of the car. I’ve seen it. I know the spot so well it’s etched into my brain but being there…on the stretch of racetrack that I’ve watched over and over inside my head…actually standing in the place that was once his heaven too, and now holds his spirit hovering high above…? Just too much.

I will leave my demons behind me.

Next year it’s going to be an entire decade since our happy milkybar blonde two-and-half-year-old was sleeping peacefully as the terror unfolded around him. By the time he’d woken up a couple of hours later, I was ten-thousand feet up in the air on my way the RPA hospital in Sydney to sit vigil beside his dad.

Sometimes he asks me what happened. When he was very little he wanted to know why his daddy was never coming back and a tiny mind will only go as far as yesterday or maybe last week…it can’t make it to a whole lifetime without one of the people who put you in this world in the first place and as he gets older, he’s going to need more answers. The same pinching why’s and what-if’s that have plagued my sodden terror-ridden consciousness for almost a decade now, will soon begin haunting his young adult mind too.

soar high above the heavens…

There will never again be the hardest moment in my life as when I had to tell him the news that his daddy was never coming back from his racing. That he had gone to his heaven above the mountain. Maybe one day he will go searching for his own answers, maybe the mountain will give him the closure I could never have the courage to seek. Hold your peeps a little closer tonight…Love n’ hugs, Lady MamaGxox

     
  Four little words. That’s all it took. What happened next inside a primary school playground, would start one of the most important relationships in my life. 

 ‘Wanna be my friend?’ I asked. She was the new kid who had just moved to our school from Darwin. We were only eight and still listening to Michael Jackson and watching Family Ties on a Friday night. I rode a wonky green Raleigh twenty bike to school that had a piss stupid squeaky seat and embarrassed the shit out if me. She said things like dinky and doona, had a sprint on her that could rival a greyhound and could flick flack and backward walkover like a Russian gymnast. I had found my new best friend. 

We grew up on the same street – our houses only about 200m apart and from that day on spent every afternoon, every weekend and almost every single holiday together. 

I made her come to youth group with me on Friday nights, mostly because I had a crush on a guy who went there. She reluctantly tagged along, not because she wanted to learn about ‘all that stupid God shit’ but because she was my best friend. She probably hated every bloody minute of it, protesting that she’d never set foot inside a church before then. 

  
We became blood sisters and I christened her in my back garden under the apple tree with the middle name she never had but always wanted. We never once had a single blue. Not ever. She had my back and just because she was tiny didn’t mean she couldn’t sink a decent left hook. 

That little girl and me, we who went through everything together, from our first love to the birth of our babies, to saving me from the brink of destruction after grief, and she’s entire worlds more than just a friend. 

In all our thirty-two years she’s been my one true constant always mending my heart or laughing in unison at life’s trivial shit. Never once letting me down, she’s my family made from love, instead of blood. God mummy to my son, twice my maid of honour and bearer of all my innermost secrets. 

These days we don’t live on the same street or even in the same country but we talk every other day as if we still did. 

Life has punched us both in the guts with some pretty horrific tragedy over the years but her love and compassion and loyalty and strength has got me over mountains. I could never ever have made it this far without her. 

This week I flew back home to see the little version of Mini Driver who I asked to be my best friend a gazillion years ago. She turned forty and I was damned if I was gonna miss it. It’s been forever since I last saw her and we laughed about the shit we used to get up to when we were a coupl’a kids sun baking at the local community pool. So long in fact that three years has passed since I’ve been home. Thanks IVF and your wonderfully debilitating powers, you really know how to interfere with a girl’s life. 

I’d been sneaky and found out she’d be having lunch at her local food court. When I sidled up beside her and wrapped my arm round her shoulders I think her brain didn’t register if it was real. Soon enough, her smile, covered with tears from the both of us was enough. 

It had been the best 48-hour trip eeeever. 

Thank you for being the jam in my doughnut…the best bestie a girl could ever have…lov n hugs Lady MamaG xox

There are two things people really don’t like to talk about. One is chlamydia. The other is death. While the latter isn’t contagious (unless you’re living in a leper colony) no one likes to talk about for fear if they do, it might happen to them. Fact is, it will. One day. We are all mortal.

Nobody likes to talk about someone who’s dead. And they certainly don’t like to talk about death. They’re scared they won’t say the right thing. And equally as petrified of saying the wrong thing. It’s unimaginable to think it could happen to you. That someone you know and love could just be gone…disappear off the face of the earth forever in the time it takes you to swipe the screen on your phone.

Mortality – even though it’s a part of every single one of our lives just as much as eating eggs for breakfast – it seems is much better not to be spoken of. Ick. Too creepy. Don’t go there. As for chlamydia…? Well not really dinner party conversation material – unless of course you want your guests to suddenly develop ‘a headache’ and clear out faster than a bunch of disgruntled rose-less Bachelorettes fleeing the mansion.

There was a time, approximately three-thousand-two-hundred-and-eighty-five days ago to be exact, when I didn’t like talking about it all that much either. Before death, grief, loss and mortality became a second nature I’d prefer not to know quite so intimately. Before I was the one people were avoiding in the supermarket because they didn’t know what to say to me, frightened to be around me in case my grief somehow got passed on to them. Before I didn’t have to be the one making decisions that would change my life, my son’s life and the lives of countless others.

Before Mark’s accident, we’d lost a very dear friend suddenly. It had woken us with a jolt to the harsh reality that it could happen to us. The loss of our friend prompted two things – one for my husband to take out a life insurance policy and two for us to talk about organ donation. A simple chat. Probably less than two minutes. And quite likely over a Hawaiian pizza. I couldn’t even tell you exactly where we were it seemed that insignificant but it would prove to be one of the most important things we ever said to each other.

Four, maybe five years later…those few words would turn out to save the lives of five people.

An immortal hero in our eyes…

He was so quiet when he asked the words, as if saying them out loud made them real. ‘Would you consider…let me ask you…had you and Mark ever talked about organ donation…do you know what his wishes were?’ The softly spoken neurosurgeon of the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney had put God his very self into my hands that dark October day in 2006. He was asking me to make a decision that would ultimately mean the end of my husband’s life as he lay still on the hospital bed, machines taking over the normal functioning of his organs. My decision would also mean a future of others. ‘I’ll leave it with you to think about for a little while…’ he said and left the hospital waiting room.

There were so many times over those seventy-two hours, nine years ago, where I wished I wasn’t me, I wasn’t the one making decisions to end or continue people’s lives. I would like to have pretended I didn’t have ears. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, what he was asking of me. Shit if the ground could have opened up and swallowed me right then I would have jumped in head first with my eyes closed.

I didn’t need half an hour. I didn’t even need 10 minutes. ‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘We spoke about it, it was what he wanted to do…what we both wanted to do…’ He looked relieved. But the relief was all his. I was the one choosing to turn off the machines, and despite the fact I knew all hope was lost, there was nothing else they could do… it still hurt like shit. It isn’t like asking someone if they want a side salad with their meal or even what school you want to send your kids to. It is the hardest words your brain will ever have to process.

Ten days after that conversation with the RPA neurosurgeon, a package arrived in the mail. It was from the Red Cross. Inside was a tiny gold rose pin and a letter. The pin, it said was a symbol of his generosity. A reflection of how much he cared. In the letter, the lady from the Red Cross who I met at the hospital during that weekend spoke of the five people whose lives would change forever because of my, our decision. It doesn’t say their names or even if they were male or female. I won’t ever know the people whose lives Mark helped save. But I know their stories. They tell of a life-saving heart transplant, a liver and a double lung transplant. It speaks of his kidneys, his pancreas that saved more lives and of his spleen that would be used for medical research and ultimately help thousands of people in the future.

I didn’t need a letter or a gold pin to remind me, I already knew inside my heart that one decision, that one talk made him a Hero. An immortal Hero in the eyes of all of us left behind to live and breathe without him, who loved and cherished him.

This month is Organ Donation Awareness. It isn’t enough to simply put it on your licence. You need to have that talk with your partner, tell them what you want, tell your parents, your children, the neighbour…anyone. Whoever it is who could one day be given the task of the Hardest Decision They’ll Ever Make.

Go on, do your part, go to the Australian Organ Donation Register it’s the most selfless thing you could ever do. What if it was someone you loved who needed a life-saving donation…whose life was hanging in the balance? No one wants to play God. None of us ever want to make a decision that switches off machines, that then stops lungs artificially inflating, hearts artificially pumping blood through veins and feeding tubes delivering a thick substance into someone you love’s empty body. But…if it was you on the other side of the medical curtains holding the arm of someone you love hoping and praying someone would come along who might be able to save them…wouldn’t you want to have that chance?

Lov n’hugs, LadyMamaG xox

I don’t do early. It’s really not my thing. I’m part nocturnal you see, like to make the most out of my slumber which is why when my alarm went off at 6.18 this morning you’ll forgive me for not bouncing out of bed with a Taylor Swift-like spring in my step. It was Saturday. ‘Nuff said. 

The purpose for this ridiculously rude interruption to my body’s time clock was 11 y o’s soccer match which also happened to be over the boarder and might well have been Calcutta it was that damn far away.

I don’t function that well when I’m forced to interrupt my snooze so you’d be well advised to resist communication until such time as my body clock can awaken (usually around 8-9am) and this is for your own safety. 

You’ll never see flitty shots of me in my runners and a side of green juice accompanied by the words ‘fresh start’ come up in my Insta feed, unless of course it’s at the other end world and day is actually night…what? You know, you get my drift, time zones that’s the only thing they’re good for. Tricking you into sleeping at different times of the day. 

Once we arrived at said destination, like so far out of my post code I almost needed a passport to get there, and possibly because I had a zillion hours to kill before the game my grumps got the better of me. I take a moment to reflect on what Gigi Hadid would do at a time like this, apart from take a selfie, she would love that shit. And so I did. 

After his game ended (no they didn’t win; biased ref apparently) We climbed the crest of the hill to see the beach. Let’s say the Med has nothing on this view. Kill’a. 

When’s the last time we did this? Too long. We made handprints in the sand and let the salt from the waves fill our lungs. We sat and talked about all kinds of things we’d do if we could be invisible. We made sand cookies and watched surfers. Dogs came up and shook their sand all over us. We giggled.  My boy’s blonde locks flopping over his eyes. A little bit of peace. A little bit of serenity. A little bit of ‘us time’. 

Busy lives and shit to do mean we don’t always stop and look at how lucky we are. We walked back towards the car and 11 y o entwined his arms around me. I love that he loves me. He stopped to read about the women who went to war and have a memorial attributed to them along the path to the water. I love his empathy. He kicked a stone out of the way for me. I love his kindness. 

There’s something about the open ocean, the sunshine tickling at its waves that gives you a sense of inner peace. Of happy. 

Maybe I have done good. He’s a picture of kindness, of humour, of sensitive heart and loving nature. 

Maybe getting up at an atrocious hour isn’t so bad after all and we can be thankful for all the good in our world. 

I love our little talks…

Lov n’hugs, Lady MamaG xox

It sure ain’t easy to get yourself up the knock. Specially when you’re numerically-challenged – both in the age sense and that of your medical egg count. This won’t come as any huge surprise to my fellow infertilee’s out there who are rolling their eyes right now and thinking ‘hmff, she calls herself a writer’.

I’ll say it again. It sure ain’t easy trying to get yourself a lil embryo to grow its tiny being inside your belly. But some might have us think a little different. And I’ll buy into any damn thing that tells me there’s a teeny eeny incy fragment of a chance…if I try this. Which is why a fluro yellow headline caught my beady little eye on the supermarket shelf the other day. ‘Star pregnant at 44’. Now there’s someone who blanked the odds, I thought. Took them square in the guts and tackled them to the ground harder than a 1990s Jonah Lomu three-step.

Michelle Bridges is one of those people – who’s battled the odds, not physically tackled anyone (that I’m aware of) but she’s leapt over any hurdles and landed herself naturally pregnant…yes at 44. Shit I’m happy for her, I’ve stopped short of posting a pair of hand-knitted booties to her home but yep, it’s swell.

Buuuuut Michelle, oh dear love, let me give you the heads up before the rest of the entire infertile community start to bring down your Twitter account with their bile-filled hatred…the absolute LAST thing you must do when you beat the odds and get yourself all naturally up the duff is to publicly 1. Act Smug and 2. Tell everyone it’s because of your ‘super healthy fit lifestyle’.

Sure we’re sensitive. Hells yes, we react like the atom bomb when pushed. And perhaps we could be a little edgy but listen up, lovie: How’s about instead of preaching that you so easily fell pregnant because of your supersonic diet and your ability to run 10km a day before squatting your way through a morning cup of tea, that you stick to what you know – which is helping people get fit and lose a body size.

I’ve no doubt your success is wholly attributed to your ability to push people beyond their limits to make them realise their weight dream goal but in the words of fine Yoda, fertility specialist you be not, dear girl.

It isn’t just a case of super diets and navy-seal type training regimes. Ask any specialist and they’ll tell you – some women can be majorly obese and still fall pregnant. Others might have a BMI of 2 (if there is such a thing), run every day and still not have the ability to hold onto their embryo.

Some of us have very real fertility issues that simply cannot be fixed with a brain-frying run followed by a quinoa salad, or by cutting out our weekly KFC-binge fest. I’m sure you didn’t intend to tie those of us fertility-challenged’ undies all up in a tizzy but by shit, you have.

Congrats on your baby news. You were one of the lucky ones. How about not making the rest of us feel like a bucket of shit…love n’ hugs Lady MamaG xox