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I know Saxon pretty well, as I’ve seen him many times since I first met Damon at university. I don’t know Catie quite as well, but Damon told us about her story—that after her parents died, she was abused by her stepmother and stepsisters, and she came to Wellington virtually penniless, hoping to start a new life. She’d met Saxon back in Auckland, though, and fell pregnant after a one-night stand, only to discover he was the boss of the company she was temping for in Wellington.
Damon explained that when she first met Saxon she was completely clueless about pregnancy, so I’m somewhat surprised to discover that she has a huge pile of books for me.
“Saxon bought them for me,” she explains when I go with her into what she calls her library in their house. It’s a large room with two walls filled with books, and there’s also an office desk on one side that’s filled with papers, more books, and a laptop. “He knew a lot about fertility and conception,” she continues, “but not so much about what happens during pregnancy, so we learned together.”
I know that Saxon is a computer engineer who’s been developing an IVF program using Artificial Intelligence to try to predict which embryos will lead to live births.
“I guess he knows a lot about the technical side,” I say.
“Yeah, but not so much about the practical.” She smiles as she stacks half a dozen books into a pile. “These are the best ones. Take whatever you want.”
“Thank you.” I glance at the papers and notes on the desk, which are covered with neat handwriting that’s obviously computer code and diagrams. “I’m guessing this is Saxon’s?”
“Actually, no. It’s mine.”
“Oh, of course, I forgot you were a computer programmer.”
“Yeah, I’m taking a degree now. But in my spare time I’ve been working on a pregnancy app.”
My eyebrows rise. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. Saxon knows so much about conception and fertility, and he was happy to explain a lot of the terminology, and once I started reading about it, I found it fascinating. He’s always trying to gather more information, and I had this idea of an app that pregnant women could use. They input things like the date of their last period and the length of their cycle, and it predicts when they’re going to ovulate, which, along with monitoring basal body temperature, can help them when trying to get pregnant. And then it predicts the due date. The idea is that, if they agree, this data would be shared with Saxon’s company to help him improve his work with IVF.”
“That’s amazing,” I say, genuinely impressed. “How on earth do you get time to do all this with twins?!” Her twin boys, who are about ten months old, are currently in the living room, being entertained by Saxon and Henry.
“It’s a struggle,” she says, laughing. Then she says, a twinkle in her eye, “and it’s not going to get any easier now I’m pregnant again.”
“Oh!” I laugh too and we exchange a big hug. “I’m so pleased for you,” I tell her. “How far along are you?”
“Actually only nine weeks. We haven’t announced it yet, they tell you not to before you’re three months, but I figured that we can compare notes and it’ll make it more fun.”
I get the feeling that’s a polite way of her saying she wants to help, because I’m sure that Henry has told Saxon how I’m anxious because I know so little.
“That’ll be great,” I tell her, genuinely thrilled. “Have you had a scan yet? Is it twins again?”
“God, I hope not!” But she laughs. “No, you get your first scan between eleven and fourteen weeks.”
“Oh. See, I didn’t even know that!”
“Well, we’re not born knowing. If you’re anything like me, and you didn’t know anybody who was pregnant, there’s no need to read about it until it happens.” She tips her head at me. “How far gone are you, exactly?”
“Exactly? Um… about eight weeks, I think, although I’m not a hundred percent sure.”
She brightens. “Maybe we should try out the app on you!”
I smile. “Sure.”
“All right.” She pulls up a couple of chairs, and we take out our phones. “First of all, download the app,” she says, and she shows me where to get it. I wait for it to download, then bring it up. There’s a picture of a stork on the opening page, and it’s all in bright colors.
“Okay.” She opens the app on her phone. “We’ll go through it together, and that way we can compare notes. So put in your name and age there, and your hometown. Click that button if you don’t mind sharing your data with Kingpinz.” That’s Saxon’s company. I click the button, then press Go.
“Right,” she says. “The first thing is to select the first day of your last period. Do you know it?”
“Yes—I keep a note of my cycle on my phone.”
“Excellent, that makes things much easier.” She watches me input the fourth of December. “Okay, now press the green Go button.” We watch a flying stork come up while the program runs through the calculations, and then the results pop up. It shows a calendar, the actual days of the month in blue, and then the days of my cycle in green.
“There you go,” she says. “So your next period—highlighted in red—would have been due on December 31st. Which means you would have ovulated on day fourteen of your cycle—highlighted in yellow—which in this case was December 17th. The days before it are also highlighted because you can get pregnant up to five days before you ovulate, because sperm can live for five days inside you.”
