Scrreeeeech, put on the brakes...apparently getting pregnant wasn't going to be as easy as it seemed. No wham bam thank you ma'am would be happening in our household. Nope, we'd be the couple that would be keeping a calendar of body temps, scheduling the "right" time to knock boots, and going to the doctor to check the quality of my bodily fluids. How could something, pregnancy, be so scientific, so difficult, when teenagers across the nation were getting knocked up without "trying," much less wanting.
Long story short, it became my obsession, to get pregnant and have a baby that was part of me, part of D. Nothing else would be acceptable. We had the test where they shot dye through my Fallopian tubes - this is where I learned that I had a very mild case of endometriosis (which was later cauterized and the tubes were healthy and clear) and according to the German radiologist that was reading my x-ray...'when you feel mittleschmerz (German for ovulation pain/cramping) on the right, that is when you DO IT.' Wow, how's that for a bedside manner? Needless to say, it was not going to be so simple...
Pregnancy was like the unicorn in the forest for me or the infamous Elvis sightings...possible (although the odds were 50/50) but never to be a reality. Honestly, the more hoops we jumped through to obtain the (in our case) obtainable, the more I became like a disgruntled postal worker rather than a maternal maven. Why me? Why us? We were a great couple with the emotional and financial means to raise a child - so why was this not meant to be? Prayer, vitamins, exercise, diet, bum propped up with a pillow, etc. But I couldn't give up, I could not admit to failure.
Intrauterine insemination - this was our method of choice. This means that the swimmers get washed in a protein solution and are then injected into one's uterus - pretty much a no brainer for those wayward swimmers. But your swimmers do need to be plentiful and strong to break through my stubborn egg(s)...yeah, go figure, eggs as tough as their creator, not cool my friends, not cool at all. This process included hormone shots, multiple trips to the doctor for blood tests (yeah, not fun in normal circumstances, but add to this that I have crap veins - deep & they like to roll, of course) and the vaginal ultrasounds to check out your eggs...hmm, I wish I could have seen the look on my own face when they pulled out the "wand" and rolled a condom on it, complete with K-Y jelly. I'm sure I was thinking "yikes, what the hell are they going to do with that?!" Yes, this had become quite the educational experience, lol. But it all seemed like it would be worth it...
That is, until I had to miss my grandmother's funeral due to hyper-stimulated ovaries - travel was out of the question because I was walking around with the proverbial basket full of eggs (nine to be exact) and if any of them were to burst they could fill my lungs with fluid, giving me instant pneumonia. This was the emotional straw that broke this camel's back...not having the opportunity to say good bye to my Grammy AND no pregnancy (which would be confirmed three weeks later) and I'd decided to jump off of the emotional roller coaster called fertility treatments. Hormonal beyond compare, I could not take the repeated failures anymore. So, we just stopped. Just like that - cold turkey, no more rushing to the doctor in Virginia, no more shots in my hips and arms, no more nasty prenatal vitamins, and no more counting days on the calendar, filled with false hope that "this time it has to work."
The decision to stop was liberating but heartbreaking - I'd had us investing so much time, money and emotions towards becoming parents and now we'd be giving up the dream. Or would we? We still wanted to become parents, we would just need to move on to plan B, adoption. And that my friends, is another story for another evening.
