Greg Wise has written about the grief he and Emma Thompson experienced after their hopes of having a second child were dashed. Two decades on, the actor recalls the pain of that period, which he describes as a silent and isolating kind of loss.
In a personal account, Wise said the couple received the news that an IVF cycle had not been successful in a doctor's office, where they sat in silence. He described the experience as anticipatory grief, a mourning for a child who had never arrived. He said there are no set rituals for this kind of loss.
Repeated attempts
The couple had already been through several attempts after the birth of their daughter, Gaia. Wise said each cycle required them to set their grief aside and focus on the next try. They did not seek help during this time, and they did not attend counselling together.
Wise said that further cycles brought more drugs, hormone treatments, injections, scans and blood tests, and none of them worked. He said he supported Thompson throughout, but that she was devastated by her inability to conceive again and blamed herself for the failure.
A shared crisis
Wise described how the couple had first bonded in grief after meeting on the set of Sense and Sensibility, where Thompson adapted Jane Austen's novel. He said that when they decided to start a family after settling down together, they found they could not conceive.
"We hit an existential crisis," Wise wrote, describing how he and Thompson felt they had failed to fulfil what they saw as their natural roles. He said he struggled with a sense of having been emasculated, and that he linked his fertility to his manhood.
Tests showed that the problem lay with Thompson, and IVF became their only route to having a child of their own. Wise said the process was physically exhausting for her and emotionally draining for both of them, and that his own role was limited to providing sperm.
Gaia and the decision to stop
The couple's first IVF attempt produced a positive pregnancy test just days before Thompson's 40th birthday. Gaia was born shortly before the new millennium. A later IVF cycle, started in Gaia's second year, failed repeatedly, and the couple eventually decided to stop.
Wise said the decision was the hardest they had faced. He said he and Thompson were slipping into complicated grief, and that he later fell into a deep depression. He said he sought professional help, and described beginning therapy as the best decision he had made.