a questionable milestone, cycle 3, day 22

I did it. I made it past day 19. And here we are. The illusive day 22. Just 6 grueling days until the doctor-sanctioned blood work that will confirm that I am once and for all barren whether or not I’m with child.

My long time readers (har, har) may recall that it was on day 19, two cycles ago, that I squatted, dumbstruck, shouting expletives in a rest stop bathroom started a’bleedin’. It was early. Real early. Mathematically bonkers early. But it was all I needed to know: I wasn’t pregnant.

So here we are, nice and smug on day 22, still period-free and pretending like it means something when I know full well that it doesn’t. As anticipated, my eerie calm of last weekend has quickly evaporated, supplanted by a trembling, porous anxiety just beneath the surface: at any moment you could find out you’re not pregnant, which is why if you just avoid going to the bathroom, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.[1]

I guess it goes back to this – I still barely know how my body works and what I do know, I don’t trust. I didn’t ovulate for nine months and now I’m supposed to rely on one medically induced cycle in December to provide clues about this cycle’s possible success?[2] Thanksbutnothanks.

In any case, I met with the reproductive endocrinologist this afternoon and put the plan in place for the next round[3] – Clomid, Ovidrel, intrauterine insemination (IUI). Though I’m sure that my 8 regular readers in Qatar are old pros at IUI by now, for the uninitiated, here’s the deal: prevailing medical wisdom is that after three rounds of Clomid, your cervical mucus begins to become some kind of sperm-hostile-double-agent, making it more difficult to conceive. There isn’t good hard data but because it’s a plausible, if not scientifically demonstrable, theory and because my insurance won’t let me graduate to IVF without first stopping the train at the IUI station, we’re going to give it a go. Which means that in cycle four, instead of several days of post-Ovidrel romance, we’ll have one very early morning threesome (that’s me, C and one lucky infertility clinic tech. *regrettable mental image*.). On that morning, within 90 minutes of, ahem, C producing a sample, we’ll speed recklessly to the infertility clinic, wait an hour for magic science to do its thing[4] after which I get to lay back, relax, and have a mystery nurse shoot a syringe full of sperm (hopefully C’s) into my cervix.

pelvis in print, cycle 3, day 20

Chances are, many of you have probably seen, and read, Anna Jesus’s opinion piece, “Pregnant in Medical School” in that mecca of print journalism, the Sunday New York Times. I may have exclaimed just a little bit over my granola on Sunday morning – she has what I have! <jaw agape>. And then I read it. And then <cog slowly turning> I had some rambling, non-sense, it’s the middle of the two week wait, people! thoughts.

On one hand: thank goodness we’re talking about vaginas. VAGINA, VAGINA, VAGINA.[1] I mean it. When was the last time you saw “transvaginal ultrasound” in a major print publication and it wasn’t connected to one of[2] these dolts? I’d be lying if I said career wasn’t something I’m trying (desperately) to balance amidst all of this uncertainty. And who doesn’t appreciate a professional woman candid enough to concede her worries about showing up to work smelling of her own vomit?

On the other hand: <hoisting myself up on the ole soapbox> While I know she wasn’t aiming for a thorough social commentary on the matter and so any critique is wildly unfair, her analysis of infertility and her ultimately successful conception and pregnancy seem reductionist and incomplete. Her proposed remedy – which seems to boil down to “put your career on hold and rely on your gainfully-employed partner to support you” – is narrowly tailored to a group of (mostly) highly educated, middle class women[3] and profoundly out of reach for so many others. Yes, she acknowledges that she was lucky, fortunate to have the support of her spouse, and she seems to at least fleetingly concede that “[e]very woman is different” but still, I was left a little wanting.

But…<falls off soapbox into crowd of angry, clawing women> also grateful for any intelligent discussion of not-as-easy-as-it-sounds-conception in the mass media and thankful that another hole has been poked in the shroud of isolation that is infertility. (It’s just that, you know, I’m greedy, so I want to, like, have my infertility cake[4] and eat it, too.)

But enough about me. (If you have suffered along with me continued reading this far) what did you guys think? (Besides that I am kind of a smug jerk). What would you have told your younger, more free-wheeling-maybe-not-yet-ready-to-be-a-mama selves?

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[1] You know, to the tune of marsha, marsha, marsha. Because. Obviously.

[2] But seriously, remember when this guy was on the Real World?

[3] Yours truly. Ahem.

[4] Whatever you do, do not drop everything and Google image search “infertility cake.” After not doing that, you will not be flabbergasted – and terribly bemused – to find that oh my god my blood orange upside down cake is one of a shocking number of cakes that appear.

an uneasy calm, cycle 3, day 17

There’s a certain calmness in this time – this in between time, after the doctor-mandated-sex but before the two-week-wait sets in, in earnest. The proverbial calm before the storm. Truthfully, I’ve never felt it before – not in the last two cycles and certainly not when I was trying unassisted, futile though it was.

But just yesterday, a kind of calm has settled over me. I want, with every fiber of my being, for this to be it – to be pregnant, to hold on to the gaggle of cells this time, to give birth to a healthy, gurgling babe. And at the same time, I feel almost liberated in my awareness and my (tacit, halting) acceptance that this very well might not be the one. That I could just as plausibly be again un-pregnant.

The last two rounds, the two-week-wait just felt like I was interminably holding my breath – I don’t think I exhaled until the blood work was in, and even then, only with great hesitation.  By contrast, today at least – and that’s to say nothing of tomorrow or the days ahead, during which I’m sure I will descend into the anxiety-ridden crevasse of usual – feels calm and accepting, a very unfamiliar peace. I’m not inventorying my stockpile of pregnancy tests or browsing through the designer nurseries on Apartment Therapy – or at least not as furiously. I know that I’ll be heartbroken if this cycle doesn’t work – it’s the one year mark of trying, it’s the last cycle of Clomid before we kick it up a notch and move to IUI, it’s one step closer to – on bad days – big conversations about how far we’ll take this, whether adoption is a possibility and all kinds of other overwhelming Big Questions.

But for today, I am – how, I’m not sure – calm.

(So that’s it. An entire post without a footnote, a strikethrough or a hyperlink – just me, getting kind of real, without sarcasm as my cover. But I’m not one for saccharine sentimentality. So let’s not make a habit of it.)

one year, a retrospective, cycle 3, day 14

One year ago this week, C and I were on a romantic my-parents-are-in-a-bungalow-right-next-door-to-us getaway to St. Lucia. Even though we are still routinely mistaken for brother and sister when we travel with them[1] – no, really, one queen bed will be fine we told the slightly-horrified-and-unable-to-hide-it Cambodian concierge – we’re not shy about accepting literally any freebie travel opportunity sent our way.

And because there’s just something about international travel that screams it’s-time-for-a-baby[2], we made a decision: we are going to start trying. I had just finished a pack of birth control and for the first time in more than ten years, I would forego a new pack. We even told my parents – which seems much stranger in retrospect than it did at the time.

Had I known then what I know now, would I have proceeded differently? Would I have ratcheted down my level of late teen/early twenty pregnancy terror by about eleventy billion degrees? Umm, YES. Honestly, I have no idea. On one hand, yes I would change everything. But on the other, bigger hand, what on earth would I have done? Besides never taking birth control and perhaps remaining completely sedentary, I’m not sure what realistically would have helped.

But hindsight is 20/20 so here are a few things I’ve learned in twelve months of seemingly futile trying.

double the fun, cycle 3, day 12

On Saturday I had the pleasure of an early morning wanding and bloodletting at the far-away-weekend-fertility-bunker. Since we were en route to a wedding in New York, it was kind of like a road trip a real pain in the neck. It was only day 9 of my cycle but thankfully – despite an only modestly busy pelvis that had me all kinds of worried – there were four follicles to be found. But they weren’t mature and my estradiol was still only around 300. Ovulation would have to wait until another day.[1]

<Dramatic Pause.> And that day, is today. Yesterday I went in for a second round of early morning wand+blood.[2] And because I need more excitement in my life, I was subjected to perhaps the most painful transvaginal ultrasound ever experienced by anyone in the history of everdom that I have ever had[3]. The wand, suddenly a very blunt and inflexible instrument, was so far in it was basically digging into my neck. Apparently two follicles were “hiding” behind some other “organs “and the tech had to go “digging” for them up behind my eyeballs. At a certain point – when my ultra dramatic wincing became too much to bare – the tech finally stopped, muttering something about how she just can’t stand to cause me pain, etc., and put a note in my file about my hide and seek follicles.

By lunchtime, I heard back from the nurse: three “beautiful!” mature follicles and my estradiol levels were up past 700. I was given my marching orders – Ovidrel shot on Tuesday evening, then sex until Friday – and sent on my smug little way.

So what’s in store for tonight? Well, in one more showing of romance is not dead!, C will have the pleasure of grabbing my muffin top roll of belly fat and jamming it full of Chinese hamster ovary. And then we’ll have sex. Until Friday. Please, look away, I’m blushing.

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[1] Which is totally fine because it’s not like we, oh, I don’t know, packed a cooler full of ice and Chinese hamster ovary and drove all over New York with it in the unlikely event that I would have to use it while away from home. No. We did not do that. Because we are not crazy people.

[2] I thought I had come up with yet another kind of badass name for a terrible metal band. But no. This is already (kind of) a thing. (Also, “Motherboar” basically just sends my free wheeling brain here.)

[3] Here’s the truth: transvaginal ultrasounds – in spite of their alarmingly graphic name – usually aren’t that painful. And while I realize the legitimate-rape-pro-mandatory-transvaginal-ultrasound-right-wing-goon-squad would have a field day with my saying so, I am nothing if not candid with you, dear interwebs. But my point is this, I’ve chosen my fate – cold plastic probe on the regular – and other women should be free to choose theirs.

infertility groove? cycle 3, day 8

You’d think there’d be nothing like a miscarriage to strip me of every last vestige of humor – an event so deeply traumatizing that there’d be nothing to do but mouth cry. But instead, I practically live blogged that shit. Every tormenting up and down of my record-breaking 72-hour pregnancy was sent out into the ether, hyperlinks and strikethroughs aplenty. I couldn’t help myself; basically hyperventilating at the keyboard in eagerly writer blogger anticipation. And by all appearances, wink wink, I’ve emerged relatively unscathed (justbarely).

But now, all of a sudden, weeks after the harrowing turn of events that left me rather, ahem, bloody-oh-my-god-there’s-so-much-blood[1] un-pregnant, I’m feeling stale and humorless.

Third Clomid cycle in – and almost at the one year mark of trying – and this infertility business has become something of a humdrum existence. Truth is, I’m in a bit of an infertility groove[2] – an almost (but not quite) comforting rhythm in the midst of this unpredictable madness that obscures the need for any modicum of thinking. It goes like this (sing along with me now!): birth control, bleed, Clomid, wanding/blood letting/sporadic fainting, Ovidrel, sex, sex, sex, wait, wait, wait, early miscarriage, rinse and repeat. It’s sort of soothing, almost ethereal – you know, like sniffing glue listening to a hair dryer.

So, having just gulped down the last two chalky tablets of Mother's-little-(fertility)-helper, I don’t feel much of anything. You know, except of course a burning desire to have a stranger insert a (sort of flexible but very cold) wand inside me at 7 am on a Saturday. Thankfully, I have less than 24 hours to wait for that...[3]

Ed. Note: the lovely lady at Lamenting the Lentil has said some crazy-nice things about Fallopian Groove – and I’m not even paying her. But she’s got a pretty great little blog going on herself – check her out: Lamenting the Lentil.

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[1] Too much?

[2] Or dare I say, fallopiangroove? (Forgive me – it was so easy.)

[3] For those of you who are really paying attention, you may be counting on your fingers with a furrowed brow. Yes, today is only day 8 of my cycle and tomorrow is day 9. Apparently after being unable to ovulate on my own for so long, my body just can’t ovulate fast enough – I’m an early ovulator (that’s a thing, right?), often around day 10. But on this cycle’s day 10 I will be at a lovely wedding in New York, unable to oblige the wanding gods. So, premature wanding though this may be – and more likely, first of several wandings over the next several days – I am very ready to get moving.

precautionary measures: cycle 3, day 6

Sunday night was my first night back on the bottle Clomid so as I popped those two round gems of hormonal promise, I gamely asked C what he had done to prepare for this, the third round of Clomid.

Very seriously, I deadpanned: What measures have you taken? What safeguards have you imposed?

He thought I was kidding (I was sort of kidding). Of course, I had my own precautions in mind – padding the corners of all tables/chests/dressers/beds, finally confronting the seriously low supply of chocolate in this house, removing sharp objects, etc. C of course, thought this was all very funny – in a laughing at me kind of way. While I panic about just what shape, form and frequency my ensuing Clomid-induced-terror will take; while I lose sleep over just how much of a bitch I’ll be this time, C doesn’t seem all that worried (which is suspicious given that he is typically the target of my unregulated emotion).

But bewildering or not, it was kind of a relief. Sure, he jokes about how there are days when I am prone to, ahem, antics, and he reminds me often of one day during my last cycle when I pointedly – but lovingly? – told him I was having a hard time liking him that very moment[1] (you know what, I am never going to live that down). But it was actually something of a relief to hear that he wasn’t anxious about the imminent BitchCon V preparing to descend on our home. So instead of seeing this as a challenge – I could try to be more bitchy? – I decided to embrace it and <seamless transition here> also to take the opportunity to make some vows for this, thirdtimesthecharm, cycle. Here goes:

(1) Post-coital headstands: I will continue them.

(Because, umm, I can’t prove it didn’t work. Actually, maybe I can. Over share, move right along: if the interwebs are right – don’t even get me started on that – then we conceived after having a quickie, sans headstand, at an out-of-town woodsy cottage before our friends arrived for the weekend. But anyway. Why not incorporate acrobatics?).

(2) Sex: I will have more of it. (please.cover.your.eyes.)

(Timed intercourse can be, umm, transactional. Sex on demand, sex on cue, sex multiple times a day – well, that just sounds like college – it can be tricky to fit in between two busy schedules, erratic working hours and sleep deprivation. But <breaks into song> We shall overcome, we shall overcome, we shall over-c-o-o-m-e, etc. #firstworldproblems).

(3) Balance: I will try to find it?

(Sigh. It’s like I’m all in or I ain’t. Before this whole fertility bizness started in earnest, I was a bit of a slave to my work – even when not working, I agonized over things I could not control, clients whose needs were far beyond those I could fill and all kinds of other stuff, big and small. But the last couple months I have been perennially distracted. I work hard, sure, but not in the I’m-a-martyr-for-the-cause way I once did. Perhaps this is just growth, maturity and healthy balance. Perhaps I’m just so focused on whether or not I have birthing hips that I can’t exert all of my energy on legal theory. Either way, I’m going to try to be a bit more zen this time around. Less chin-deep in the infertility vortex and more dipping-my-toe-in when the weather is nice. Plus, you know, all the other good stuff: cookie binges and marathon reality-tv-watching, regular exercise, a (relatively) balanced diet, adequate sleep, time with C and friends, etc.)

And with that, I’m off to the (protracted, agonizing) races.

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[1] Not long before this, a friend who is fighting her own fertility battle had nearly the same conversation with her husband. I think it’s safe to say we both like our husbands a hell of a lot. Sometimes our true feelings are just, um, cloaked in hormonal overdrive.