This is an AI transcription, apologies for any typos.

[00:00:00] Matt Davies-Adams: And all of a sudden I'm thinking they know what's in this room and that it's quite limited. So if I produce my sample within 10 seconds, what are they gonna think of me then?

[00:00:11] Alex Melia: Welcome to Stories of Men Beneath the Surface. I'm Alex Melia. Join me as we discover what it means to be a man in the modern era.

Fertility issues are rarely something that you hear men discussing for a variety of reasons. I don't think any men have ever spoken to me about this issue. Men might feel as though it's not masculine to be struggling to produce a baby, or they might feel like because it's a journey they go on with their partner, that it's not their place to discuss a private matter.

Hiss wife had suffered a miscarriage and hyper ovarian stimulation syndrome in the past whilst trying for a baby. In their seventh attempt at I V F in a private hospital, Matt was asked to do his part.

[00:00:59] Matt Davies-Adams: The issues that we had in terms of conceiving a child, um, were because of a health issue that my wife has.

So really the only part that I had to play in all this was to produce this sperm sample. So a nurse came into the room that we were sharing, um, double check. Uh, I was Matt Davis Adams, uh, and, uh, I was gonna be providing a sample today and where it was, and she led me into the lift. We went down a couple of floors and back into the main reception of the fertility clinic where I've been to lots of times before.

Um, I'd always been amused. By the very fancy coffee machine that they had there, which would give you any kind of drink that you want for free, and how they kind of plugged it as free coffees. Whereas in reality, every time we went there, we left having spent hundreds of pounds on some kind of fertility treatment.

So I was never gonna make my money back on the coffee. But the site of the machine on that day did, um, raise a bit of a chuckle from me, and, and then I was shown to the room. Where I was going, I was told that, uh, there were things in there that could help me produce the sample and a very comfortable leather chair wipe clean, which again, made me laugh a little bit and also grossed me out somewhat.

But I had to kind of get my game face on at that point and, and do what I needed to do. I already had a plan in my mind as to how I was going to. Produced the sample. Um, but out of curiosity, I, I reached into the cupboard to look at the magazines that the nurse had had been provided to help me with that.

So I'm thinking when I go in there, there's gonna be an abundance of, uh, the highest quality pornography known to man, given the charges that this hospital is levying upon us for pretty much everything and everything, they must be able to invest pretty well in their stock of pornography. But unfortunately, it was.

Dodgy wifi and a copy of Backdoor Boys magazine, um, which is a gay pornographic magazine, which wasn't particularly useful for me for this purpose. Um, so I'm in this room. I put Backdoor Boys away and decided that's not for me. And I suddenly become very aware. I. That the room out of necessity is next to the laboratory where the sample is to be, because it's an extremely time sensitive thing.

I need to produce my sample and, um, then put it by the serving hatch, which is closed, knock on it, and then the lab assistant will know that I'm done and they'll be able to take the sample and, and put it where it needs to be straight away. Unfortunately, this meant that the walls in the room were very thin, so I can hear the general chatter between the LABA systems.

So the clinking of test tubes and, and the gentle hum of conversation between people at work is not the most erotic thing, and I'm aware that they know what time I've come in. And all of a sudden I'm thinking they know what's in this room and that it's quite limited. So if I produce my sample within 10 seconds, what are they gonna think of me then?

Are they gonna think that I'm super severe and masculine, or are they gonna think that I'm a pervert because I can hear them talking similarly? What's my time limit here? Have I got an hour? Have I got five minutes? Have I got 10 minutes? All thoughts that I don't really want to be thinking to get me to the state that I need to be to produce the sample, which, uh, made it quite a pressurized environment.

[00:04:03] Alex Melia: When you are waiting in the waiting room afterwards, and you've had this sort of, you've had this, this thing that you've had to do, which is so critically important in order to have a, a child with your, with your wife, Amy, what happened next?

[00:04:18] Matt Davies-Adams: What happened next was she came back from, from her procedure, as I remember, we both had the, the rest of the day off work.

Um, we'd got a dog by this point, which is the classic thing that people do when they're struggling to have children. I think as a kind of substitute baby, we used to call him. So we took him for a walk in, pack him where we lived. Um, And just waited for news. Basically, the, the, the next thing we were waiting for was, um, whether the eggs had been successfully fertilized, whether any embryos had been produced, and, and whether any of those embryos were of good enough quality to be then put into Amy to hopefully develop into a, a full term pregnancy.

But by this point, as I say this, this was our seventh. Attempt to I V F, we'd had one which had got to around about 10 weeks of pregnancy, and, and they always say 12 weeks is kind of the magic mark, where if you get to that, the, the chance of miscarriage is greatly reduced. Unfortunately, um, that didn't happen with us.

We, we had a miscarriage there, so that was weighing kind of heavily on our minds. There was certainly no excitement at the fact that we got the procedure done. Again, there was lots of trepidation because as I say, Amy had had O H S S before. Um, and, and that actually that had obviously had a big impact on, on both of our lives.

So yeah, we weren't, we weren't optimistic. We weren't holding out much hope. We were kind of desperate. I can't imagine

[00:05:40] Alex Melia: how difficult it must have been for both yourself and Amy to, to go through this experience because there's so much pressure on, on the both of you, and then to kind of just leave the hospital and then say to yourselves or say to each other, okay, we're gonna forget about this.

How do you actually go through the process of. Getting that out of your mind, so it's not constantly on your mind. We weren't

[00:06:02] Matt Davies-Adams: able to, to let go of it, and we, we did speak to each other about it a lot. I, um, I, I think of infertility as almost like a permanent state of grief, but a grief that doesn't have definite resolution.

I think if you suffer, you know, a loss of somebody close to you, that's obviously incredibly painful, but it is quantifiable and tangible and you. Empirically that as time goes on, the pain will lessen. But if you are waiting to, or trying to have a child and you have no idea whether it will ever happen for you, you don't have the resolution.

So you, you're effectively mourning something that, that's never happened. Or be it, we had a, a 10 week old fetus, uh, which. Which didn't survive. So there was something that, that, you know, physically that we could mourn or that, that we could remember, but the fact that there was no resolution toward this meant that anything that you would normally do to cope with grief kind of didn't work.

I felt, uh, I, you know, I'm, I'm a big one on, on talking therapy and, and discussing things with friends and, and that that was all useful to an extent. But I can also be quite black and white and I would always come back to. At the end of the day, we still don't have a baby. And, and as time was going on, all our friends were having children and friends of friends and people who are far younger than us were having children.

And it became very difficult, almost impossible, certainly for me to be happy for other people rather than just be jealous of them. Hmm.

[00:07:34] Alex Melia: Seems like clearly you've been through a very. Difficult rollercoaster journey. And you talk about grief as well. Uh, I wanted to stay on that topic because you mentioned about having a 10 week old fetus that unfortunately didn't survive.

How was that experience for you and your wife and when did that happen?

[00:07:50] Matt Davies-Adams: So we actually had two miscarriages. We had, um, this first one, uh, at 10 weeks. And that was, that was really heartbreaking because we. We'd had the scan and, and everything. And, and that was, this was at our previous hospital. And, and the doctor had kind of said, look, don't tell anybody till it gets to 12 weeks, but everything's looking good.

There's no reason why this should go wrong. Uh, and lo and behold it, it did go wrong. So that was a really, really difficult one to deal with. I remember phoning my parents to tell them that was, that was particularly hard. 'cause you knew that. You were giving them such devastating news and kind of wrecking their day, wrecking their week kind of thing.

Um, but it really sent my wife into a, a pretty depressed state for, for quite a long time, I think. So that was, that was difficult to deal with.

[00:08:35] Alex Melia: A topic that I always find fascinating, and you, you touched on it earlier, is comparison amongst men. I mean, I've done that throughout my life, comparing myself to friends about the things they've done or the things they have.

And in this context with having a child and, and your friends having children before you, you said it was quite a difficult process to genuinely be pleased for your friends. I. Tell us about that and about how that experience was for

[00:09:01] Matt Davies-Adams: you. Yeah, it really made me feel bad. I mean, to start with, when, when we were just starting to conceive it, it wasn't a problem.

But you, you quickly get into the mindset of why everybody but us kind of thing. You know? I have a friend who, uh, a couple of friends who've got three kids and I haven't had any problems at all with him. I've got another friend of mine who he and his wife went through I V F and they had two attempts and they both worked, so they got two children from.

Say it's roughly about a 25% chance of, of I V F working? I think so for that to happen to them is incredible and, and I was, wanted to be really pleased for them and I, I found it difficult. To be so, and that made me feel like I was a really terrible person. Um, and I would sort of look at people and couples that we knew, whether they were friends or family.

And if they were significantly younger than us, then I would think if they get pregnant before we do, that's gonna be really difficult for me to deal with. 'cause, you know, I can remember this, whatever it is, niece or nephew or sister as a, as a child. And then they have a, before we do. In my mind, that would mean that we were less likely to, even though obviously has absolutely no bearing on it whatsoever.

So you'd go through

[00:10:06] Alex Melia: the whole process of waiting and, and trying to, to see if you're gonna have a child or not. What happened next? So we

[00:10:13] Matt Davies-Adams: were really lucky on this occasion that it worked. We got the. The message from the hospital that there were a couple, um, of eggs that had been fertilized and, and turned into embryos.

And they, they ranked those embryos by order of the quality of them and therefore how likely they are to survive. And there was one that was what they call a one, which, as you can imagine, is as good as you can get. So that was transferred. Back into my wife. And then we did a pregnancy test a few weeks later, which turned out to be positive.

Um, we got to again about 10 or 12 weeks, uh, just before we were about to tell everybody. Uh, and my wife had some bleeding, so we had to go back to the hospital and this was what had happened with the, the miscarriage. So we kind of assumed that this had happened again. So this point once more and the. But it wasn't a problem.

It was, it was nothing significant. And from there on we, she went the full term and we managed to have a child who is now, uh, four. He is, he's nearly five. Um, and it's absolutely amazing and it's, it's just a life changing event that everybody tells you about. And, and even when he's, he's been in pain, I take myself back to that time and all the, the mourning and the, the grief and the, the sense of loss that we felt and, and I'm amazed.

We've managed to get him and, and fortunately we've since had another three attempts at I V F, one of which again resulted in a miscarriage around 10 weeks, which was, um, particularly horrible. 'cause it was during covid. So my, my wife was in hospital alone, um, for that which was, um, not a very nice experience, but we have to be more than grateful for what we've got because we were told that.

This probably wasn't gonna happen for us. And, and it ended up happening and it took a long time. It took five years. It took a lot of money and a lot of heartache. But it did happen. And we do have a child, which is something which was far from a given when we started the process in 2013.

[00:12:09] Alex Melia: I mean, I've got friends who've got kids and you know, they can be great, but they can also be naughty as all, all kids are.

And I was out with my friend a couple of weeks ago in Manchester. We went to SeaWorld and took his two little boys, I think they are s. Five and two, I think. And I was actually, it's weird that you said about the gratitude side of things, even though they're naughty. I was thinking, God, I'm only with, I'm only with these boys for a, a few hours.

I was like, these boys are hard work. They're well behaved, but just constantly you have to be watching them the whole time. And I was thinking then, I mean, it's just a, it's just a piece of gratitude. I'm sure that he, well he said he, he feels all the time that he's able to, To have children because not everyone is able to.

So you do, you know, even in their worst moments, you still have to be, have to be grateful for them.

[00:12:56] Matt Davies-Adams: Yeah, you do. It can be tricky when it's like six in the morning. Um, but, but now I, one thing that I really love is, um, my son Hayden has a, a trampoline in the garden and, and that's basically mine and his.

Domain, and that's where we do a lot of our bonding at the moment. Just jumping on the trampoline and, you know, we hold hands and look at each other and just mess about and be silly and have fun. And, and I, that's when I think that all the years of I V F and the miscarriages and the pain and the hurt and the, the serious illness that, that my wife had, Were worth it because it's just amazing when when you've got that and, and you're looking in somebody's eyes, you just love unconditionally and always will.

It's, it took a long time to get there and I wish it had been easier for us and there's definitely still some P ts D around it from, because it was such a traumatic event and I think there always will be for both of us, but we've got the proof that, that it

[00:13:53] Alex Melia: was worth it. Just remind me of something that.

One of my best friends, he, he went, he's going through the process, uh, you know, the, the dog and then, and then at some point the, the child. But he started with a hamster. So he, he had one process before the dog. I'm just curious if you had a little budgie or something beforehand. I.

[00:14:11] Matt Davies-Adams: Um, I did have some fish actually, but that was kind of a result of me, uh, absent mindedly saying to my wife that I might like to have fish one day and they're buying some and it proves to be a right pain to maintain them.

So I wouldn't recommend that. But now we got, we got the dog as the classic, uh, last resort. We need something to focus our attention on here. That's not. Fertility and having I V F treatment. So we got, we got the dog and yeah, he's still going strong and he is absolutely massive, massive for my mental health.

And I would always recommend to anybody if they've got the, the mental capacity and the physical capacity in their home to have a dog and. You know, you're struggling with any kind of depression or anxiety, it is the best prescription that you can get because not only because of the unconditional love they give you, but because they give you focus and purpose in your life.

You know, he needs to be walked twice a day. You have to get out the house and do that, and that makes you feel a million times better when you do it. And yeah, he's. He is so important to our family. It's ridiculous really how important he's, but he's been knocked down a peg of two since my son I arrived.

I'm sure

[00:15:16] Alex Melia: he has. Yeah, it's, it's massive. When I'm back home in, in my parents' house in Greater Manchester, we've got two dogs, and as soon as I wake up, immediately take. Both dogs onto the field and I just feel 10 times better. And just that look that they give you, no matter what side of the bed you've got out of this, just sort of, yeah, like you said, this unconditional love.

It's just, it really gives you a kickstart to the day, doesn't it? I'm just curious about the persistence that you and your wife went through to go through so many attempts. What stopped you from stopping at the third or the fourth attempt and just saying, this is never gonna happen for us. What was, what was really behind that for you?

Why was it so important to have a child?

[00:15:56] Matt Davies-Adams: I think my wife was a big driver in that she, she was the one who's experiencing far more of the physical discomfort, certainly, but also the mental discomfort that I was. But she was resolute that she wanted to try everything that we possibly could, and as I. My, my role in it was obviously important, but it was limited essentially, to providing two sperm samples and then providing some support for my wife.

I'm not sure whether we could have kept going much beyond the successful treatment that we had, to be perfectly honest. Because we were only able to fund that because of some inheritance that my wife had. And you know, you're talking tens of thousands of pounds still that we spent and we wouldn't have been able to do that without this inheritance, um, that my wife got from, from her grand when she passed away.

So that was what that went on. So purely from a financial point of view, we were running out of time. That's why this particular occasion that we're talking about was so pressurized. Um, But also from the health perspective of my wife and what she'd been through. She, aside from the O H S S, she was having to have hormone injections every day, which is, you know, a difficult thing to do.

Um, I was the one who was, you know, putting the six inch needle in there twice a day, which was not fun for either of us, particularly for her and seeing her kind of skin hardened and blackened from, from having it happen so much and not being able to sit down and the pain that she was in. So, But we desperately wanted a child and we knew that it would be more difficult for us to make peace with not having one if we kind of left some money on the table, if you like.

Um, so we just had to exhaust every avenue that we possibly had, and I guess we were just kind of stumbling along, hoping that it would work at least once. And yeah, one, one in 10 attempts is not a particularly good ratio, but it's better than, than zero in 10, and it's

[00:17:50] Alex Melia: such a dangerous. Process as well because I mean, that's in light of the fact that I saw on B B C Sport website was yesterday, the day before the American Sprinter Bowie who died during, uh, during pregnancy or during labor.

I think it was, it's something that people take for granted. I perhaps that this is actually a life life-threatening process to have a child.

[00:18:14] Matt Davies-Adams: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, it's very rare that the actual fertility treatment would be that, but she was just unfortunate and she, that she got this o h s s in such an extreme, um, circumstance.

So it's, it's not something that should come into people's thinking that this might be life threatening or, or something, but just that there are, there are side effects and yeah, the childbirth itself is absolutely brutal, but you know, you, you do quickly forget about it. Um, once that particular aspect of it has come, but again, that's, that's an, an area where the man is essentially powerless.

You, your only job is to, to not pass out. And, and, and if you do that, you've managed it basically.

[00:18:51] Alex Melia: It's interesting when you said about being powerless and I wanted to touch on that actually as a man, because that process, you're just watching your wife go through the hard struggles, but there's nothing really that you can do.

And I've always found this topic of power and control. Uh, amongst men and in, in this topic of masculinity, a fascinating one. There's literally nothing that you can do in that scenario. So how are you navigating this, this situation with the fact that you can't really do anything? It's not under your control.

Um,

[00:19:21] Matt Davies-Adams: all you can do is allow yourself to be sworn at, allow your hand to get squeezed. Brutally hard, um, pass some fruit pastels if required. Um, we had a, a playlist that Amy had made of like favorite songs, songs that meant a lot to her. And as we got to kind of the business end of it, and she was in excruciating pain, if a song, it was, what was it?

It was The River by Bruce Springsteen. Which is like her family's family song that they'd listened to on school holidays and that came on and she begged me to skip it because she didn't want to replace the memory of all those lovely family holidays with the blinding agony that she was experiencing at that that point.

So it kind of DJ as well. And yeah, things like that, they give you a little bit of responsibility, but essentially my method of control there was to not. Not look at anything that was likely to make me pass out. Let's put it that way. In the most polite terms, I wanted

[00:20:16] Alex Melia: to ask you, how do you think you have changed as a man going through all this process?

How do you see yourself now and how have you grown in that time? Um,

[00:20:24] Matt Davies-Adams: I'd like to think that I'm much more empathetic towards people's situations now than I was before. I'd like to think that I take a pause to think before I say things to people who I don't know that well. Um, I'll particularly never ask somebody why they don't have children, um, or if they plan to have children.

I'm, I'm very much aware now that that's not anybody's concern other than the people involved unless they want to tell you about it. Uh, and I don't think I. I think that's a good tip to pass on to people. Um, 'cause it's still something that happens fairly regularly and just generally, I think, yeah, I'm a bit more empathetic than I was before and maybe a bit more realistic about what to expect from life and, and to not think that you are owed things purely because they are, you know, societal conventions or things that happen to most people.

Um, but I still feel. A sense of anger that we've had to go through, what we've been through, and that we both believed that once we'd had Hayden, that we could just do I V F again and it would work again. And it hasn't. And we've had to abandon that now, and it's, it's not something that we're ever gonna do again.

So again, that's been another period of trying to process that and adjust to that and that that has. Taking some, getting over from being angry about it to being accepting of it. And I'd like to think I've been able to apply that to other areas of my life as well, whether that's work or personal relationships to kind of be more accepting rather than being frustrated by things that, that don't go your way.

[00:22:01] Alex Melia: Matt didn't mention in the episode that as soon as he came home from the hospital after producing his sample, he immediately went into his WhatsApp group and joked with all of his friends how in the. Room that he had to produce a sample. The only magazine in there was a gay porn magazine. We joke about what was a very challenging and very distressing, rollercoaster journey.

Was humor a defense mechanism for Matt in this situation? Did it allow him to release the pressure that he was feeling? There's evidently a lot of social pressure on people having kids by a certain age. Why are these forces at play? Women are having children later. Men are having kids even later. Look at.

But De Niro having a child at 79, Mick Jagger, Al Pacino 83. We compare our situations to others, and that's the thing, everyone's circumstances are different. So why do we compare and analyze in this way? I see it in my own life with friends and family, starting to have children. This episode was also a reminder to me that when I meet couples, don't ask that question, that they get asked probably constantly.

When are you going to have kids? And it's really interesting because you hear people say, Say that word when instead of are you, are you going to have kids? Why do we make that assumption that that's the next natural step for couples? These kinds of questions and these situations can be very upsetting for people as it might be something that's out.

Side of their control to have kids, there can be a variety of reasons why they don't have kids. Having kids is not guaranteed at all, and that's an assumption we can make sometimes.