Okay, I'm married. We're reasonably settled and successful. We're happy. Let's expand our love and happiness into little people. Let's get pregnant!
Lot's of thinking goes into that conversation, planning, thinking about college funds, preschool, nursery furniture and cool carseats. It's exhilarating. We are planning life. How awfully grown up of us! So, like responsible, scientific people we start the process of "trying to conceive". We had charts, and checked mucous, waiting for uncomfortable "middleschmirtz" so that we could "create new life". And we waited. And charted. And waited. It should take up to 1 year to conceive, according to ACOG. I'm a medical student, I know what to do and when to do it. This should be cake, and fun cake at that. 1 year became 2, which then became 4, which became 6...then 7, now 8 years...
Now, I'm angry. My friends all have 3 kids and they can plan to conceive the next one over spring break. And they will.
Somewhere along that year, I realized that I was desperate to help others achieve something that I wanted; which only started as a spark of curiosity, and now was an all consuming fire. It was burning up my relationship with my husband, my friends and what I believed myself to be. The whole point of being a "woman" was that you could create life, grow it in you and push it out, feed it and raise it. I'm failing as a wife, and as a woman.
Being adopted, we very cautiously danced around the subject of adopting a baby. But for me, It wasn't about having A baby. It was about having MY baby. Unlike my husband, his brother, and his father and uncle that all look like identical twins... I look like no one. I wanted a baby that was mine. I wanted to be related to someone. Now, the discussion became a plan, and, the plan became an obsession.
Sex became a science-fair-project of dates, blood draws and drugs that turned me into some estrogen crazed, migrainy monster. And every month, like clock work... day 28... failure. Clomid, Femara, progesterone suppositories, sperm counts, special vitamins, hopeful ultrasounds of my "follicles", and trigger shots, with frantic plane rides to get to him in the next 36 hrs to "make a baby". Taking progesterone to keep "it going" when I knew in my soul that my uterus was vacant - again. Not wanting to stop the progesterone, to prove my brain right... anything, to pretend that maybe, just this month, it would work.
Nothing. Except bills. Slammed doors, sopping wet pillows from crying myself to sleep. Chris in another state during most infertility cycles for work, which was God's grace in protecting him from the anger that I just found harder and harder to stuff.
I knew in-vitro-fertilization was an option. But, I didn't want to go there; it was the end of the road. If I went through that and failed, then I felt like a failure not only as a doctor, but as a woman, as a wife, as a way to provide continuation of "the family name", and mostly to myself. As a woman, I can make my own little relatives; important when you have none. Except that I couldn't. Now, I found myself sitting across from an REI (Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility) getting ready to decide if I could go down the last road available to us. At the end of this road was going to be more money gone, all hope gone, and a vacuous uterus in the next 28 days.
Most infertility patients know what cycle day they are before they know what day of the week it is. After the usual greetings, most of my patients happily blurt out what cycle day they are like the rest of us discuss the weather. I was able to get so many people pregnant. Everyone but me.
We discussed, prayed, and saved all the money we could. I knew that this was the last paper thin layer between my dream, and unspeakable grief. There would be no more "cycles" after this. The monthly emotional devastation was taking it's toll. I'm an OB/Gyn for God's sake. I had to "get it together" to care for my patient's needs. There would be no adoption, no plan B. We said, "OK". We signed on the 10,000th dotted line and went home.
Next day, I got a package in dry ice of vials, saline to mix it in, more injections, lots of needles, and my very own sharps container. I slumped to the floor cradling this tiny box, hopeful that it would produce life, then sobbed so hard I almost threw up.
We were given a calendar. I was obsessed with it. Checked it every day to ensure there was nothing I was missing. I had ultrasounds every day to watch the "crop" grow, getting more hopeful by the day. Retrieval day, I go off to a surgical suite for follicular retrieval while my husband is ushered into the "little room". This is after he's watched on a big TV the doctor going at my ovaries with a 18 inch long needle... it's time! He's gotta perform. And, it's gotta be the best sperm of his life. No pressure...
And now, we wait. Check to see how many survived the night. How many fertilized the next day? And now how many are alive? And, we wait. And wait.
Easter morning was scheduled to be my embryo transfer (the embryos sucked out 5 days ago, placed in tiny tubes of "growth media" had grown big enough) and as I waited prepped, with my legs apart and shaking I hear, "well we've got 2 pretty good ones" to put in today. What I found out later was that of the 18 embryos, all of them had died the night before except 2. Fortunately they were very positive, and I was such a bundle of nerves, that it hadn't dawned on me to ask what happened to the other ones. I went home - pregnant. Finally. At least for the next 10 days...
Let the 10 day roller coaster of your life commense. "Im not pregnant (*sobs*)! You know, hon, I really feel different this time. No, there's no way I'm pregnant. Oh, I just KNOW it worked. Do I look pregnant? (it's not even the size of a grain of rice at this point) When should I tell work that I'm gonna need... I JUST KNOW IT DIDN'T WORK. Why is God doing this to me? I think I just felt sick?"
It hit a Zenith in the middle of a C/S with one of my OB attendings, while closing the fascia and listening to a newborn crying across the room, the tears fell down my face, collecting under my mask making a tiny pool under my chin. I tried to keep very quiet, but as we walked out (he's not usually the feely type of guy) he looked at me and said, what (cycle) day are you? Before I could collect myself to squeak out a number he said: "Look at you. You are so pregnant." With that he burst through the double doors to the stair case leading to the operating room. I was supposed to follow him, but couldn't. He was usually not wrong. What if he was right? What if he was wrong?
I drove across the street to pick up a pregnancy test and couldn't wait long enough to get home and use it. So, Panera bread's bathroom looked as good as any. I had a procedure in place, as I had done hundreds of these useless tests over the years. Pee, then place it on the back of the toilet, so not to see it until all done, with hands washed. I turned around and saw 2 lines. I fell backwards into the wall and held it right up to my face. Angleing it into the light just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating a fake line. As it got stronger and stronger, my face got paler and paler...
I burst out of the bathroom, ran to the bagel counter and shouted to the whole restaurant that I WAS PREGNANT. I ran out into the rain to call Chris, and yell it to any stranger on 15th street that cared to hear it. Finally, we made a person. A miracle placed in me on Easter, that decided to share his glorious birthday with none other than Jesus Christ.
I was fortunate enough to do another cycle that worked as well as the first, and have frozen embryos that we implanted some 3 years later. So, Jonsey and Jordan were conceived at the exact same time, yet born 3 years apart. You see, some people plan pregnancy, and get pregnant. Some people plan not to get pregnant, and get pregnant. Then, there's the rest of us.
