Going Off Script (19 page)

“You can’t have Lucy without Desi, honey,” I’d try to appease him.

It would have been easy enough for him to sneak out and buy some piece of furniture he really wanted, or stage something else to “get even” with me on the show, but that wouldn’t be Bill in real life, and he wasn’t going to sacrifice authenticity for Q scores. He stuck to his guns and played it real, and the tables actually turned: men started tuning in because they liked the way Bill thought and had been in situations like his in their own relationships; women started scolding me on social media for spending too much on the stupid couch. Bill still felt aggrieved. Adding insult to injury, I would show up looking glamorous because I was coming home from shooting
E! News
or
Fashion Police,
or hosting some red-carpet event, which meant I had the benefit of professional hair, makeup, and wardrobe people, while Bill was stuck with whatever was clean in his own closet and whatever hair gel was in our bathroom. (Reality stars have to provide their own glam squads and wardrobes.) When we added all the aggravations up, the show was more of an effort than it was worth in the beginning. The only reason we didn’t walk away mid-season was because of my separate relationship with the network, and the fact it would be my boss we were letting down.

“You know what?” I told Bill. “Let’s just do one season, and we’re done. One and done, okay?”

That first season was pretty dreadful, both on air and off. One entire episode was spent picking out lanterns for our brownstone on Chicago’s Gold Coast. Should we go bigger or smaller? This shape, or that one?
Who would want to watch thirty minutes of that?
I wondered later. At one point, I had even tried to convince Bill that lanterns were “like choosing your earrings with a little black dress—they’re what makes the dress pop!” Next thing we knew, people were quoting that line all over the place. It was a good reminder that what our audience wanted to see was everyday life.

Even though being on the show was stressful, watching it was actually having the opposite effect: It was like free therapy. I would see myself incessantly taunting Bill about a cheesy piece of art an ex-girlfriend had given him depicting a sax player with his cheeks puffed out and think,
Am I really that annoying?
Bill, on the other hand, was troubled by his own seriousness. That reluctance he still had to just let go when the cameras were around was detracting from how funny—and fun—he really is. Watching himself, he gradually became more relaxed and patient. (“You’re right, honey. I was too tough on you. It looks great and we use it all the time,” Bill conceded when he saw the infamous sofa episode.) I worked on turning myself down a notch or two: when you have the luxury of seeing yourself played back on TV after the fact, you realize that you never sound or look exactly the way you think you do. Learning to compromise and not be right all the time is a big lesson for any couple, especially when you’ve already been independent for so long before you married.
Giuliana and Bill
showed us what we were doing wrong, and probably saved us thousands of dollars we would have spent having a marriage counselor tell us the same thing. Watching our best and worst behaviors playing out on the screen, we saw how we bonded, and how we drove each other away. We could correct course as we went. The reality show kept us in check.

That first summer after our wedding, Bill and I decided to “pull the goalie from net,” as he likes to put it, and start trying to have a baby. Growing up in close-knit clans had made both of us yearn for a big family of our own, and with me at thirty-five and Bill at thirty-eight, we didn’t have time to waste. When I still hadn’t conceived by Christmastime, I consulted my ob-gyn. He suggested we try artificial insemination to turbo-boost my aging eggs.

“What about him?” I demanded, shooting Bill an accusatory look. “He has old sperm!”

“Excuse me?” Bill objected. “I do not have old sperm. My sperm is amazing! You have old eggs!”

From that point on, our pet nicknames for each other became Old Eggs and Old Sperm, or just OE and OS. People were horrified, especially when Bill called me Old Eggs on air, but hey, I was going on thirty-six and my eggs
were
old. It may have been lame, but that stupid private joke made us laugh, and we were going to need that.

I would have to give myself shots in my belly for the week leading up to insemination. The first two days, I was too nervous and went to the doctor’s office to have them do it. The third day, I did it myself with the nurse coaching me. By the fourth needle, I was okay with doing it myself. We would come to the doctor’s office right when I ovulated, and a market-fresh sample of Bill’s sperm would be washed and concentrated into a team of top candidates, which would then be inserted into my uterus via catheter. It was relatively quick, minimally invasive, and even though it didn’t have as high a success rate as in vitro fertilization, where the sperm and egg are fertilized in a petri dish and then transferred to the mother’s uterus, it was worth trying.

The production crew trundled into the doctor’s office with us and commandeered a nurse’s station to set up their equipment and lay out their catering for the day. “No way in hell,” Bill said
when the cameras tried to follow him down the hallway as he carried his little plastic cup to a private room. We also barred cameras from filming the procedure itself, but we let them come into the room afterward, when I was supposed to just lie on my back with the table slightly inverted, and stay as still as possible for thirty minutes. It was awkward. At home, or running around doing stuff together, Bill and I had gradually learned to ignore the cameras and forget that we were miked. You’re never
not
aware that they’re there; you just stop caring that they are. But this was so intimate. I was supposed to keep quiet, Bill was holding my hand, and everyone hovering in that exam room was basically waiting for my egg to invite some passing sperm to stick around for Cap’n Crunch. Were we expecting some sound effect to confirm it so the news could be relayed to the production command center in the nurse’s station? (“We have contact, copy that…”)

Afterwards, Bill was upset. “That was
so
intrusive,” he remarked. That was another one of our hot buttons about the show: Bill was the “No” guy, more likely to ban the cameras than I was; knowing this, the producers naturally tried to pull end runs around him and ask me first. “I’m the one everyone hates for always saying no, and you’re always saying yes,” he grumbled. Getting on the same page 100 percent of the time was never going to happen, given our different natures, and we never really knew how far we were willing to go until we were in the actual situation. We agreed wholeheartedly about sharing our struggle to have children, but the boundaries shifted as unpredictably as our life did; we had fully expected a quick, happy ending. Infertility hadn’t touched either of our families—both my sister, Monica, and Bill’s sister, Karen, had beautiful children and no problems conceiving. I was otherwise healthy and fit, with no history of endometriosis or other conditions that might impact my ability to get pregnant. Bill was perfectly
healthy, too. We were one of the countless unlucky couples diagnosed with “unexplained infertility.”

Artificial insemination carries a high risk of multiple birth, because you don’t know how many of the eggs will be fertilized.
Oh my God, I’m going to be the next Octomom,
I thought. We would have to convert a tour bus for all the car seats. I would have to get some kind of industrial breast pump, maybe a milking machine from a dairy or something. When I calmed down, I settled into the happy certainty that we were going to have twins. I was certain of it, and Bill eagerly bought into what I believed to be my woman’s intuition, too.

A month later, we learned that I wasn’t even carrying one baby. I felt disappointed, but we decided to try another round of IUI. Still no baby. After a third attempt with no results, my gynecologist told us it was time to consult a fertility specialist. We did some research and made an appointment to start this tougher journey.

The question was: Should we take a few million strangers along with us, or was it time to ditch
Giuliana and Bill
and face reality alone?

As we tried to educate ourselves as much as possible, we were shocked to discover that one in four American couples experiences issues with infertility. That’s a staggering number, and even sadder when you look around your own circle of friends, family, coworkers, and acquaintances and consider statistically how many might be suffering in silence.

“You know how many people we can help?” I urged Bill as we considered whether to cancel the show. “We finally have our purpose.” He agreed. Maybe we could all draw hope from one another. In February of 2009, we began in vitro fertilization with a team of specialists in Chicago. Dr. Brian Kaplan was a handsome South African with a sexy accent. I prefer ugly doctors, especially if they’re going to be exploring the promised
land while I’m in stirrups. IVF has a higher success rate than IUI, and I was optimistic about getting pregnant after the first round. For two weeks, I would have to get two shots daily, one in the stomach and one in the butt. There were a lot more side effects than before. I had to stop working out, and any physical movement became painful as my ovaries enlarged according to plan. I was bloated and a little hormonal, too. I started feeling resentful that I was doing all the work, and Bill didn’t have to do anything. “If I could do this, I would,” he told me, and I knew he would in a heartbeat.

I was put under for surgery so my doctor could retrieve the eggs, and I woke up to good news: fifteen had been harvested. Five days later, I went back to have three fertilized ones transferred. Two others had also become embryos and were frozen in case we needed to use them later. Dr. Kaplan phoned us with the news: I was officially pregnant.
Very
pregnant, it seemed: my follicle-stimulating hormone level was extremely high, which often indicates twins. Bill and I immediately started discussing whether the babies should have separate bedrooms or share one. I went out and bought a baby book.

A week later, we went in for an ultrasound to see how many I was carrying.

“It’s a singleton,” Dr. Kaplan said, pointing to the single little embryonic sac on the monitor. Our son or daughter.

Later, we got to hear the tiny heartbeat. We were overjoyed, hugging each other, eyes glued to the monitor.

Even when we were dating, Bill and I would fantasize about the family we would have together. Now we felt within sight of those rollicking backyard barbecues in the summer and snowy Christmas mornings with our kids laughing and playing with all their little cousins while the house filled with wonderful smells from the kitchen. We decided we would put our urban Gold
Coast townhouse on the market and start looking for a house in the suburbs of Chicago. Bill was keen to find the perfect fixerupper to showcase all the construction and design expertise he had amassed during his years of flipping investment properties. A place he could turn into our unique dream house. He began the search for a mansion in need of TLC in Hinsdale, a community with both a charming downtown and the beautiful, leafy streets we both loved.

When I went in for a checkup at nine weeks, the nurse furrowed her brow and squinted at the monitor as she ran the wand over my belly. The sac came into view, but was silent. “Huh, let me try this,” she would say, and then, when we asked if everything was okay, we knew the answer already when she hedged. “I don’t know if the equipment is working right. Let me get the doctor.” She left the room.

“Bill, hand me the fucking wand, I’ll find the baby!” I snapped. I felt outraged by the nurse’s incompetence. I was pregnant. I was the mother, I would be able to summon that small heartbeat, know where it was hiding. I swiped the wand quickly over my stomach, then pressed it into Bill’s hand. “Here, you do it!”

Dr. Kaplan came in and sat down in front of the monitor.

“I don’t hear a heartbeat,” he said as he guided the wand to the spot where the empty sac hung. “Huh. Okay. I’m sorry, but I don’t know if this one is viable.”

The baby was gone.

On the way home, we stopped to eat pancakes, picking sadly at the comfort food that would never fill such a void.

Bill, in the meantime, had found our house: a twelve-thousand-square-foot Hinsdale mansion that had been abandoned mid-construction and was so dilapidated that he had to help me up a wooden gangplank over the debris just to get to the
front door. He was so excited when he discovered the place and couldn’t stop telling me how he knew instantly when he stepped inside that it was home. When he opened the door with a flourish to lead me inside, I had a very different gut reaction:
Oh, hell no!
It was a mess, and impossible for me to envision as anything but an expensive heap of rubble. Bill was passionate, though, and I never questioned his talent, so we became surburbanites on paper, at least. “It’ll just take a few months,” Bill assured me.

In retrospect, I think that Hinsdale house was the marker we were placing on an emotional bet: a self-fulfilling prophecy with six bedrooms. Our parental field of dreams.

Devastating as the miscarriage was, it did establish that I could become pregnant, and once we’d given ourselves a chance to recover, we decided to brave another grueling cycle of IVF. It was late summer, and the camera crews were with us as I went to have eggs retrieved yet again. All the way home, I kept saying I wanted a big fluffy omelet from the Pancake House, with spinach, mushrooms, onion, and tomatoes. Bill fetched me one, and as I stood there eating it in the kitchen, I suddenly felt something hard in my mouth. I spit it out.

“OH MY GOD, it’s a finger! There’s a fucking fingertip in my omelet!” I started gagging. Bill rushed to my side.

“What is it?” he asked as I dry-heaved.

“Look at it!” I choked. “The chef’s fucking finger is in my omelet!”

Bill examined the hard, white evidence.

“It’s not a finger,” he assured me. I was still gagging. “It’s a fingernail.”