But seriously. Who do you call when you get your period[1]?
Who is genuinely excited to hear that you
are shedding your uterine lining? Absolutely no one because that would be weird. The
fertility clinic nurse, that’s who. For the unwanded
uninitiated, here’s the deal: as soon as I get my period, no matter where I am,
I am instructed to call the nurse, immediately (cut to me in an office stairwell at 9 am, hand over muffled mouth and phone). And there’s no other way to describe it – when she calls me
back, she is legit cheerful. Her emotion is so unmoored from reality – hello I am still so not pregnant – that
I can’t help but audibly giggle on the other end of the phone.
It’s not that she’s thrilled to hear that I’m still barren[2],
it’s that she knows that I now get to embark on another glorious round of
Clomid. That, undeterred, I get to try again. That I now have another chance at that FX for a BFP on your HPT! baby. That
once more, my hopes can be raised unreasonably high for approximately two weeks
only to hit a crippling low shortly thereafter. It’s a rollercoaster, people.
Even my own mother was not this excited when, at the ripe
old age of 14, I joined the lady club. You’ve
reached a real milestone! is what she could have said, before taking me
out for a martini and buying me condoms treating me to a PG rated movie.
Instead? We spent 90 minutes - I,
in a fit of excruciating teen angst, her, probably wondering how much therapy
would set us back financially - on a family vacation in Peru, screaming at one another through a hotel
bathroom door as I cried my eyes out over having
to (wait for it) put in a tampon. Oh
dear. If only I had known then the transvaginal ultrasounds of my future...
But I digress. At least there's this. Thanks for the irrational cheerleading, fertility-clinic-nurse-lady!
[1] The
transition from an entry exclusively showcasing decadent baked goods to my pelvis is SEAMLESS. Just seamless. I try my best to please you, anonymous
interweb people.
[2] At least
that’s what my rational brain tells
me. My rational brain also tells me that she doesn’t work on commission. Wait, does she? She doesn't, right?
