BUBBLY TV presenter Sam Lukis really wants a baby. And at 41, her biological clock is ticking very loudly. After years of being unable to find Mr Right, she’s willing to do it alone. As she scours for potential sperm donors online and seeks medical advice, the desperation in her eyes is disconcertingly apparent.
Like many other Australians, I only know this because she’s starring in her own fertility reality show Australians Exposed: Sami’s Baby, which debuted on Foxtel’s Lifestyle You channel last night. The show follows her race to get pregnant before Mother Nature calls time on her reproductive years.
We’re told that while Sami enjoys an enviable media career, interviewing celebrities and travelling the world, has wonderful friends and gorgeous looks, she realised shortly before her 40th birthday that there is something missing in her life: a family of her own. More specifically, a child.
So now she’s pursuing her goal with everything she’s got, her poodle (surrogate baby) Lolli in tow.
It’s a compelling idea for a TV show. A very 21st Century dilemma, usually played out behind closed doors of homes and IVF clinics, but now broadcast into our living rooms. Viewers get unprecedented vicarious insights into all the emotion, frustration, hormonal swings and personal relationships that Sami experiences in her bid for conception.
Part of me admires Sami for being so willing to use her own intimate story for a show that she hopes “sheds light on the issue of fertility, gets women talking and hopefully prompts more education and awareness about the issue for the next generation.” But the program also makes me deeply uncomfortable: should a 41-year-old woman’s biologically urgent quest to find sperm and have a baby be entertainment?
Because even if it is supposed to be an informative documentary, it’s undeniably also being used to entertain audiences. A trailer for the show was almost slapstick in its portrayal of Sami as a glamorous career woman hit with a sudden urge to have a baby. Not that Sami is being taken advantage of: she works in media, knows the statistics on women’s fertility and has said she’s happy with her production company. But what if she can’t have a baby? Or what if something goes wrong (she points out at her age, her chances of miscarriage are 1 in 2)? What if the psychics who have assured her - “absolutely” in one case - she’ll have a child or children didn’t predict her future correctly? Is even the title Sami’s Baby potentially setting her up for enormous disappointment and heartache?
Furthermore, could having video cameras document every development add unnecessary pressure? For example, she meets a “lovely guy” during filming. Great news but she can’t afford to put her motherhood plans on ice as love blooms. What should he do? Should her housemate have agreed to donate his sperm? And what effect could the general public’s knowledge of the intricacies of Sami’s fertility battle have on her now and for years to come? Turning the spotlight onto such a personal issue seems in some ways as naive as neglecting to seriously consider family planning until your 40th birthday is looming.
While all these uneasy issues bubble away, I genuinely hope Sami’s dream comes true.
But I admit I won’t be watching the TV show to find out.
* Clair Weaver is madison's senior feature writer