Enough Already!

The Gift of Infertility

Tick, tick, tick… Time is running out.  I had my first OB visit on February 7, and my doctor, I’ll call her Dr. Delight b/c she was such a surprising delight, told me that if we planned to move to Cincinnati, we’d have to do it by the time I was 20 weeks.  That surprise was not so delightful. 

According to Dr. Delight, everything with a twin pregnancy goes pretty smoothly up until 28 weeks, and then things get dicey for about 50% of women.  At that time, I will need to be in the same State as my husband. 

My husband took this news with all of the grace and poise of a 3 yr. old who had just lost his “binky”.   Who can blame him?  Having twins is enough to send a person into orbit.  Add the requirement that we relocate in record time, and it’s a situation. 

To my surprise, my husband located a house right away.  It had a great location, close to his work, beautiful fenced yard, deck, and Jacuzzi.  The only drawback was the horribly decorated inside: gold carpet in the great room and hall, dark blue carpet in the master bedroom w/dark blue wall paper, gray carpet in one room w/lime green paint, lime green paint on the ceiling and walls of the kitchen, 20 year old kitchen and appliances, wood toilet seats from the 80’s? etc…Obviously, the owners have never watched Sell this House or Designed to Sell. 

Yet, my husband loved the house.  Well not the house, but the neighborhood, the location, the deck and the yard.    Then the inspection report came back and it turned out that in addition to the unabated ugliness inside, the house needed a whole new roof.  And with that, I had to veto my husband’s dream of sitting out on the deck in the Jacuzzi with a cold beer after a long hard day at work. 

So then he located another house, a beautiful home, 5 bedrooms, finished lower level, big fenced yard, freshly painted walls, wood floors in the kitchen and great room, tastefully decorated.  The reason this beautiful mansion of a house was within in our budget we found out was because its located right next to high voltage power lines.  And even if we were to assume the risk associated with said power lines, we’d end up taking a hit on the resale.   

In the back of my mind, however, I know things will work out, and that is the gift of infertility.  What you ask (incredulously)?  Yes, that’s the gift. 

See with infertility, most things are out of your control.  Sure, you can pick the best doctor, a great egg donor, and even if you have zillions of dollars to spend, there is no guarantee of success.  Certainly with technological advances, overall statistics are getting a lot better, but no one person is a statistic.  It either works for you or it doesn’t – 100% or 0. 

But with other major life decisions (crisis), like where to live, whose job to give up, which house to buy, you can control a lot of the variables that go into those outcomes.  So that’s it, the gift infertility is one of perspective, as in “finding a new house and living on one income is a lot easier than going through mind fucking infertility treatment and trying to get pregnant.” 

And I’m sure most of you would agree with that last statement.

P.S. The “twins” are doing great; measured right on target for 13 weeks with crown to rump lengths of 7 cm, on Thursday.  Dr. Delightful said “It doesn’t get better than this.” And with that, I concur. 

Well, that was a close call...

Innocently, I was sitting at my desk and when one of the other associates circulated this e-mail:

“Come join us in celebrating David’s graduation from Washington University's LLM program and the news of being a new dad at Kilkenny's at 4:30. Congratulations David and Suzanne!”

You know that clock you have inside your head? not the biological clock in your body, but the one that goes “at least I’ll be pregnant before _______________ [fill in the blank]”.

That was one of my blanks. Before that, I was going to be pregnant before my First Time We Tried nemesis, I reasoned, b/c my husband and I had already started (again) the beginning of 2003. Well, you know how that turned out. She went off birth control in the fall, got pregnant and delivered summer 2004. I actually did get pregnant before her in a technical sense; the promise was just never delivered.

So my fallback position was that “surely I’ll be pregnant before David and Suzanne”.

If I were not pregnant now, my weekend would have been ruined for sure. As it is, if I miscarry this time, I’m going to have to quit my job for sure b/c I won’t be able to bear witness to the baby joy that will ensue in the next several months with 2 of the other associates wives pregnant at the same time.

I sure would have loved to join in the celebration and shared my happy news. I would have loved to have said “Why no, I can’t go to happy hour b/c guess what? I’m pregnant too!” And in the fantasy, everyone would have been surprised and delighted. In real life, I am still only cautiously optimistic; afraid that any moment it will all be snatched away.

The only up side to the whole thing: Old Cigarettes and BO (my scty) likes to make a point of calling every pregnancy and birth announcement to my attention. I’m sure on some level that evil bitch can sense my discomfort in which she delights. But not today. When she asked smugly “Did you hear David’s good news?” I replied with a smile “yes, they are having a happy hour at Kilkenny's in his honor.” When she said “WELL, the girl’s [staff] weren’t invited!” I thought smugly to myself “I know, I know, ha ha you bitch, I know!”

Right now I feel like I need a scan in the worst way to make sure I’m still pregnant. I ask you, where is that bitch with the vaginal ultrasound probe when you really need her?

I must go now, I have this compulsive need to google “ten weeks, heartbeat, risk of miscarriage…”