Message #5708

[Eugene66]

Rashmi & Ketan Dave

When Ketan and Rashmi Dave met in 1992, it was not an arranged marriage, just the “good old Indian introduction”. Their parents had known each other back in Kenya. They spent five months getting acquainted before marrying in 1993. Ketan worked, and still does, as a race equality officer in Haringey, north London, and Rashmi was training to be an accountant. Both wanted to focus on careers and also on those more enjoyable elements of young married life: the sands of Cozumel, the waters of the Caribbean. It was also important that Ketan found 10 days a year to snowboard the slopes of North America. (At their home in Wembley, he still occasionally stares longingly at his unused board).

They knew of the restrictions that came with children, but by the time they reached their late 30s, they made the decision to try. There wasn’t pressure; they were just getting on with their lives. After a couple of years nothing was happening. “There was a point,” says Rashmi, now 39, “when we realised it’s about time we did something about it medically.” In 2001, she had a laparoscopy to check her fallopian tubes; they proved healthy. Instead of the NHS queue, they decided to go private and embarked on a six-month treatment with a fertility drug that stimulates the ovaries. Still no luck. It was irksome: nothing was wrong. They were healthy. It was an unexplained infertility. “You start thinking, what could it be?” says Ketan. “You lie awake at night, going through all sorts of things.”

Because their tests went well, IVF seemed to be the solution. They went to the London Fertility Centre on Harley Street for their first treatment, which started in September 2002. Half the eggs were left to mix with sperm to see if they fertilised themselves in a process called ICSI; half the eggs were injected with sperm for IVF. “You could rule out that I was not producing eggs,” says Rashmi. “On the first IVF treatment I had 25 eggs.” It was a staggering amount.

“I was very optimistic,” says Ketan. “On the day of the embryo transfer, the doctor phoned and said, How many embryos do you want to transfer: two or three? I was so convinced that it was going to work I said two, because I didn’t think we could cope with triplets. Looking back, I was so confident.”

The cycle didn’t work. The couple went on holiday, came back in March 2003, and embarked on another IVF. Again, Rashmi produced a good number of eggs, but there was no pregnancy. “The same story,” she says. “It wasn’t meant to be and it didn’t happen.” Two more treatments followed, neither of them successful.

“It’s like being a member of a two-man bobsleigh team,” Ketan says. “You haven’t got brakes. You desperately want it to stop and get off, but you can’t. You’re stuck in this. It’s like you’re in an IVF trance. It’s difficult to draw the line and say, ‘This is the last treatment. We’re not going to go any further.’ If they had said to me, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Dave, your sperm count is zero, there’s no medication in the world that will help you. Sorry, Mrs Dave, your fallopian tubes just don’t exist,’ then I might have thought, maybe I should stop and accept my lot in life. But when they’re saying there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, it’s very difficult to stop.”

Most couples are successful on the second, third, sometimes fourth attempt. For the Daves, there was a stress that came with not succeeding. On one occasion, the fertility drugs had enlarged Rashmi’s ovaries “to the size of grapefruits”, say Ketan. She could hardly walk for the pain.

In June 2004, Rashmi and Ketan began their final attempt. They’d held their faith in the medical professionals, particularly Professor Ian Craft at the LFC. The burden was emotional, physical and financial. Ketan estimates that they spent over £20,000 on a total six treatments. “We were determined that this was not going to ruin us,” says Rashmi. “If it wasn’t going to happen, we could say we had done all we could. The whole point of having fertility treatment is to have happiness, not to have your marriage fall apart.”

They began the fertility drugs once more. This time, however, they tried a process known as Gift (gamete intra-fallopian transfer), which mimics the natural process, mixing sperm and eggs, and placing them at the end of the fallopian tubes. Rashmi produced 19 eggs and the decision was made to use all 19, thanks to the advice of Professor Craft.

“You want to be positive,” says Rashmi. “It’s going to work, going to work. But at the back of your head you’ve got something saying, ‘I’ve got to be prepared for the worst.’”

“Doubts creep in,” says Ketan. “Of course they do. Sometimes you think, ‘How am I going to react if this doesn’t work?’ You counteract that by saying, ‘Stop thinking in the negative.’ We had a really good feeling.”

At their home, Ketan and Rashmi are perched on the edge of their couch. Like synchronous oil wells, their arms move up and down, rocking the small baby chairs that sit on the floor. After eight months, both parents can simultaneously carry on a conversation and rock their twin daughters, Kiya and Nysa, to sleep.

Ketan starts to tell me how they confirmed Rashmi’s pregnancy in August 2004. “If this was 50 years ago, it wouldn’t have happened, full stop. If we were living in the 1940s, say, in 1940s rural India, we’d still be without children. Even 20 years ago, I don’t think we would have had the same sort of opportunities.”

His voice is still excited, still strangely surprised, but Rashmi urges him in her calm voice to bring the volume down. The kids, after all, are sleeping.