A plunge of a ovulation drug -filled needle .... into my thigh (hopefully the thigh and not my rear) that is. Yay?
After much waiting, praying and hesitation (and frustration I'm sure on my doctor's end of things) my husband and I are taking the plunge to try out fertility treatments.
The hesitation wasn't just due to the heebie jeebies of self-administering a very scary needle into my flesh (although that was a BIG hesitation). My doctor's clinic, a very dedicated one with an above average success rate, was asking for a tall order of me should I choose the assisted fertility route; involving coming into the office every few days to scan and see if I was laying any eggs yet, as well as checking hormone levels and such. Being employed at a school in which I was heavily relied upon for one-on-one supervision with a severely behavior-disordered student, I didn't have the luxury of missing work for that. Though I was itching like a toddler with chicken pox to have a baby and be a mom, I settled with the fact that I would have to simply wait till summer vacation for all that.
Then the student I worked with pulled a pair of scissors and attempted to stab me. This, on a day that was already heavily dark and depressing, December 14th, the day 26 precious lives in Newtown, Connecticut were sent to heaven too soon. In a constant state of sobbing, runny-nosed misery over the combination of the magnitude of school violence on others, and, to a much lesser degree, myself, I resigned from my job on the spot, and went home to mourn alongside my country.
It wasn't long before the guilty feeling of staying home while others were working began eating away at me, and I applied for several jobs. I wasn't very optimistic, feeling like I had burned a few bridges already with the two districts closest to me. I was rejected a few times, and even had a last minute interview with the district I had resigned from the month before. Applying blush to my flushed from excitement face for the interview that day, I thought aloud about whether it would be such a bad thing if I didn't get the job. Perhaps this was the moment that God was saving for me to really delve into this fertility matter. I decided the results of the interview process would be a win-win; either I got a job I would love finally working in an elementary school setting, or I would receive the chance and blessing to be aggressive with this pregnancy business.
Well, as you have gathered from what I wrote to this point, the interview, while pleasant and successful to a point, did not earn me a position at the school. While the disappointment weighed on me heavily, I took it as a sign to dial up my doctor's office.
Yes, February 5th at 2:00. Injections class. I'll be there. Sounds great, see you then.
Yes, hubby will come in the next day for another semen analysis. 12:30 p.m. is perfect, thanks.
Maybe I'm delusional about how painful and awkward it will be driving my own hand to stab myself with a needle (the pictures I've seen online, a delicately manicured hand grabbing a roll of skin to plunge a needle into, for some strange reason doesn't seem so terrifying) but I am not so fearful about giving myself shots. Of course, I'm sure the class will scare me to no end with it's probable listing of side-effects and risks associated with such a practice, especially if I don't do it exactly right. Being a hypochondriac and having a husband who works overnight (I have a fear of becoming sick while alone at night) I have briefly considered staying with my folks an hour away so they will be people around if I fuck up one of my pointy applications, or need to be sent to the hospital for life-threatening symptoms I have been good not to research in a panic on WebMD, so I'm not yet aware of them, but there's no guarantees that I won't break down and do it eventually.
The fact is this; actually having a baby, as I can only imagine having never been pregnant, is no walk in the park. It is messy, excruciatingly painful, profoundly personal, and often terrifying. For too many people, like me, those wonderful descriptions start from the very beginning of the making of baby; injections and tests and scans and creepy instruments driven up one's hoo-hah, surgery-like procedures, pain, discomfort, and you might not even get a baby out of it all. At least with labor, you have a sweet chubby newborn to look forward to. Some women hop on this ride hoping it takes them where they need to go, and it drops them off, not in the beautifully oasis-like land of babies, diapers and late night feedings, but in the Barren desert; lonely, depressing, fruitless, and you have to navigate your way back to civilization and try again, hoping not to get lost this time. You're not the one driving though, but on a Grey Hound bus driven by fate or God Himself, pick your belief, and you have no control beyond stepping onboard and hoping for the best.
The reality of my situation: in two weeks time, I could be boarding that bus. My shaky hands anxiously shoving ovulation drugs into my body are the bumps on the road, with periods of smooth driving under the confident, reassuring hand of my cold-but-brilliant doctor gliding an ultrasound probe around in search of eggs. I fall asleep, dwelled into a state of twilight as she preforms the surgical tasks of either IUI or IVF, and what seems like weeks later (and is). the bus stops, and that pregnancy test states what my next destination will be; motherhood, or another round of this game. Thanks for playing, try again.
Much like a rookie, I am, despite being a very pessimistic person, overly confident that this process will be successful. It makes me feel ridiculous, the ladies I have bumped into on fertility support sites who claim they've been "ttc" (trying to conceive) for 3, 5, 7 years all experiencing what I'm about to, snickering "Boy is this kid naive! Don't hold your breath, girlfriend". Maybe it's because my doctor is so insanely self-confident in her ability to get me pregnant that she only says "When we get you pregnant", with no "if" in sight. Maybe I just have renewed faith in my own body's ability to preform womanly duties, as I write this, I just finished my 2nd unassisted menstrual cycle.
Maybe I am determined as ever to get to my desired destination of pregnancy. A force almost of a supernatural and unnatural to a cowardly me has risen up, and I am brave all of a sudden, prepared to fight this war against infertility with guns blazing, shrieking a battle cry, not fully knowing what I'm getting myself into, but willing to capture the flag of the enemy, or in this case, my child withheld from me for too long. He or she is waiting.
I'm ready.
