And I did. I met Gemma in 1992, and when we got married in 1997 I got this strange feeling of... the only word I can use is “completeness”. Kids were the natural extension of that marriage. To be a parent, to come full circle.
When I was at school I thought all you had to do was look at a girl and you’d get her pregnant. So when me and Gemma decided to try for kids, I fully expected to have a couple of shags and bingo, job done. But after a few months we realised getting pregnant can be difficult.
Being the sort of bloke that likes to make sure we’re doing things properly, I started doing all these temperature charts and ovulation graphs. But still nothing. We went to see somebody and found out Gemma had what they call an “unexplained infertility problem”. As time went on, it became clear that she was not really ovulating.
So we decided that we’d try IVF and, remarkably, Gemma got pregnant straight away. The excitement didn’t last long, though. Pretty early on we found out that there was something drastically wrong with the baby. We were in complete turmoil. What do we do? But before we even got a chance to answer that question, the baby died. It was only then that we found out that Gemma had actually been pregnant with twins, and the other one had already died. So, not only is it difficult to get pregnant, but even if you do get pregnant, it’s actually quite difficult to hang on to the baby.
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We had five goes at IVF, but there was always a problem until attempt number five. We got a positive result — brilliant! Except there was another problem. We’d gone in for a scan, and by then I was a complete expert on IVF. I knew what to look for on the screen and I could see that something was wrong. The nurse just reached down, turned the machine off, and said she needed to go and speak to someone. After that the baby just started to fade away. It was horrible: it hung on for weeks and weeks, so Gemma was sort of pregnant, but not quite. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
After that trauma we decided to have a year off. Gemma had been pumped full of drugs all this time, so she needed time for her body to get back to normal. Right from the start I told her that she was under no pressure, but she was all for pushing on, and we had a couple more tries. And then, three years ago, she got pregnant with Raven.
Obviously, after all that we’d gone through, we didn’t relax for a second, especially after we heard about a couple of friends who’d lost a baby at nine months. Can you imagine that? I was totally on edge all the time. I’ve even got a picture of me on the day Raven was born and I still look like a zombie.
The story isn’t finished yet. A couple of years later, Gemma became pregnant again… completely naturally and completely out of the blue. We weren’t even trying for kids because we thought there was no chance. I still can’t explain how it happened, but we’re lucky enough to have a second daughter, Persia.
Despite all the heartache, there were some very funny moments during those years. Sperm specimens were always a laugh. When I had to do the business, I thought: “Well, if we’re supposed to be conceiving here, I’d rather Gemma was with me. Then she can help out.” There were no videos in the special room, just magazines and this sink where you had to dangle your bits. The stupid thing was, they give you two pots for the sperm. Halfway through your orgasm you’re supposed to swap pots. I’m sorry, but you try doing that!
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It was all immaterial, anyway — I completely overshot and it went all over the carpet. We were in tears laughing so much. Gemma ended up scraping it off the carpet into the jar. God knows what they would have found in the lab: “Carpet fibres? What’s this bloke been doing?”
There are a couple of songs on Jagged, my latest album, about what we went through. There’s one called Scanner, about what’s going to happen to my children when I die. It wasn’t meant to be depressing. It was just me thinking, because I became a father quite late in life, I might not get to see my children get married or have their own kids.
It was me saying: “Even though I’m dead, I want to still be there for you.” It was meant to be a lovely song, but now I think about it, the idea does sound a bit strange. I can already see the headlines: “Gary Numan plans to haunt his own children.”
Numan plays the Electric Picnic Festival, Ireland, on September 2, and Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, on September 3