Waiting for the Key Change

I stood at the checkout counter of one of our local nurseries, my hand on three huge and overpriced flower pots I had purchased there two days earlier. “What do you mean I can’t return them?” I said, my voice rising to a slightly embarrassing pitch.  “I have my receipt. I bought them two days ago.  They can be resold. I’ll take store credit.” The cashier pointed to small print at the bottom of the receipt: No returns on sale items, because we enjoy crushing people’s hopes and dreams.  I sighed, because in addition to eating 14 servings of dark leafy greens a day, using egg yolks to reduce undereye circles, and regularly scooping the dog crap in our backyard, Carefully Reading the Fine Prints of Receipts was apparently something I needed to add to my Things Grown Ups Do That I Should Too list.  I pleaded with her: “Look, I’ve returned sale items here before,” (read: I clearly don’t think through my purchases before buying them) “and I didn’t have a problem then.” She looked at me, truly apologetic: “I’m sorry. You can come back the third Tuesday after winter solstice during the full moon at low tide when the manager is working. It’s store policy. There’s nothing I can do.”

I stared back at her, suddenly aware of that my eyes were filling with tears and there was nothing I could do about them spilling over. I repeated lots of things about how I know it wasn’t her fault and she’s just the messenger and it’s just that I’m frustrated with the store policy and I spent many many dollars on these stupid pots and that’s a lot of money for me.  I then attempted to make a swift, dramatic exit while wrestling three huge flower pots that could pay for a decent percentage of my mortgage, which looks remarkably similar to attempting to limbo while carrying a sea turtle. As I crabwalked toward the door, another associate swooped in. She glanced at me, lookin’ fab lugging flower pots with tears streaming down my face, and whispered to the cashier, “We’re just going to do this for her,” (subtext: Give the crazy lady what she wants so she’ll leave). She then pulled the magic strings to override the Holy Word of the Receipt Fine Print. With the click of a few cash register keys, I had many many dollars on a nursery gift card to buy all the overpriced pots I wanted.  I thanked the cashier angel profusely and submitted a five star Google review on the spot. I even turned my phone to show her: “See? I mentioned you by name.”  She smiled politely and didn’t mention me bawling over flower pots three minutes earlier. With a full 8 minutes to spare before closing, I grabbed my shiny gift card and ran towards the flowers, where I grabbed two flats of pansies, an ironic similarity to my behavior.          

            At this point a couple of things are clear: I either regularly shed tears over monetary misunderstandings, or my emotional reserve bank was overflowing into other compartments. A couple days earlier, we had received confirmation that our last infertility treatment had failed. Our tenth try. Ten rounds of emotional ups and downs and mid-workday doctors appointments and ultrasounds and pills and hormones and giving myself shots in my car in the hospital parking garage because that was the most private place I could find. And money – lots of money. And I can wax poetic about how money doesn’t matter and love is all we need, but the bottom line is that money does pay our mortgage and buy us bacon, so while it sure isn’t everything, it is something.

            And now – I don’t know. I’m not sure where to go from here. I find myself paralyzed in this state of limbo (figuratively – no pots this time). I’m under the bar and I don’t know whether to keep shimmying under the bar or to back up or fall on the ground or grab the damn bar, throw it aside, and walk with my girlfriends towards an actual bar. I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do but I also want someone to make a decision for me. I don’t want to give up hope, but I’m tired of hoping and being let down. I don’t want to keep doing what we’ve been doing that hasn’t worked (IUIs), but I know we are edging precariously close to the point where our doctor will say, It’s time to either stop trying or pursue in vitro (IVF), and I don’t want to face that yet. I don’t want to stop trying, but the thought of completely draining our resources in the unlikely pursuit of in vitro being successful (our odds are quite a bit lower than most) isn’t appealing either. I can picture an IVF-conceived child asking for piano lessons and us replying, Sorry, dear, but we spent our savings and took out a second mortgage just to conceive you, so we’re going to need you to be satisfied with your mere existence.  And in the same breath I know piano lessons aren’t a big deal and they seem silly in light of bringing a child into the world, but the thought of putting all of our financial resources and a chunk of our emotional ones into the IVF basket, which is more likely to fail than be successful, feels like a bigger mountain than we have the energy to climb.

            And so, we lay our options in front of us. Continued fertility treatments. Foster care. Adoption. Foster to adopt. We stare at them all and are not sure which deck to draw from. Each has its own risks and rewards and beauty and potential heartbreak.  I feel inert and paralyzed by the decision but also viscerally anxious about doing nothing.  I offer halfhearted prayers for direction but am also scared of the direction I might be prompted to go. I hold tightly to my dream of what our family will look like and also want to set it down and walk away, because the dissonance of my hopes and current reality hurt my ears.

            The other night at church we sang a hymn that I love but don’t hear often enough to remember the words or title. I do remember the emotional progression of the song. It starts slow and low in a minor key, creating a feeling of tension and somber waiting.  The melody begins to intensify and our hearts follow along with it, hopeful and waiting with expectation.  The chorus leads to the bridge and we can feel the energy towards a key change building, our voices increasing in volume and passion.  As the intensity continues to grow, I find myself flashing to snapshots of our infertility journey thus far. The repeated negative pregnancy tests. The nights of my tears and Seth’s devoted but weary support.  The momentary hope of a pregnancy and the silence of the ultrasound screen. My eyes well up and I struggle to keep singing, leaning into the tension and hoping the resolve will come. 

And then the moment arrives – we break into the key change, our voices jubilant and relieved.  The tension and dissonance only added to the joy and relief that we feel at that moment. At that point, new images come – those of my unabashedly optimistic hopes for the future. Seth and I huddled around a child, our faces pressed together, sticky with mixed tears as we stared at the child so long hoped and prayed for. I watch Seth say, Daddy loves you, and my heart bursts with a love my mortal body can barely contain. In my vision the baby’s face is blurry; the physical details are unclear and yet I am so certain of this love for a child I do not yet know that it vibrates deep in my bones. I stood there, voice cracking, tears running down my face, singing from the very marrow of my being.  We are waiting for the key change. Waiting to see where the tension and buildup leads us. Waiting for a resolve, even if it is in a key entirely different than we were expecting. Continuing to stand in the dissonance and wait for our child, hoping against rationality that he or she is out there, waiting for us. And we continue to pray our prayer: Where are you? I hope we find each other soon.

The Next Right Thing

The recovery time after finding out about the miscarriage included more ups and downs, both physical and emotional.  People find out about miscarriages in different ways – either you start to experience the terrifying symptoms of one or you find out during a doctor’s appointment that the pregnancy is no longer viable, as we did. Neither is easy. For us, the path involved lots of waiting.  More. Freaking. Waiting.  But this time we were waiting for the thing we had hoped would not happen. As much as I didn’t want it to be true, I also wanted the miscarriage to happen so I could stop dreading it and just move on already.  When people would ask how I was doing, I would often reply with something like, “I’ll be okay when this is all over.” I really believed that would be true. My vision was narrow, and all I wanted to do was to put this in the rearview mirror. And so, we began praying for the thing we had for so long been praying against.

Since I had been on meds (progesterone) to maintain the pregnancy, it seemed my body was taking longer to recognize that it did not need to keep sustaining it. When it was clear I wasn’t showing any “progress” towards a natural miscarriage, my doctor suggested I take pills to induce it. While I did want it all to be over, that felt funny. I asked for one more ultrasound to again confirm there was no heartbeat.  While I knew it wasn’t a recommended medical intervention, for me, it was a mental health intervention. After all we’d done to try to make this pregnancy happen, I couldn’t take active steps to end it without being absolutely sure it was over. 

Said ultrasound confirmed what I knew it would, and that day I picked up a prescription for the pills that would “induce” a miscarriage.  Seth and I settled in with a movie (Redbox appears to be the official sponsor of our infertility journey) and waited, hoping they would “work”.  Without being too graphic, they did, and I spent most of that night curled up on the bathroom floor. However, one dose wasn’t enough, and over the course of the next few days my doctor had to prescribe two more doses of the meds.  I just. wanted. it. to. be. over.  To make matters more emotionally complicated, it was the last week for students at school, and I really wanted to be there with students and teachers. The real icing on the cake was that I was slated to lead a two-day training in front of 120+ people the following week. I know there is no convenient time to have a miscarriage, but in in the middle of a PowerPoint with over a hundred people watching really wouldn’t be my first choice.

When people asked how I was doing through this time, my repeated response was, “I’ll be okay once it’s all over.”  I was so ready to move forward (read: run away) from it all that I really believed this. I really believed that I would breathe a sigh of relief and redirect my attention to something else. I was, however, several shades of totally wrong.   The night after it was over, Seth and I took the dog for a walk to a park near our house. We strolled to a part of the park with less people, and without warning, I just plopped down in the grass and cried. And cried. And then couldn’t stop crying. Seth sat down next to me and was quiet for awhile, until he said softly, “Babe, I know this is really hard… but remember, at least now we know we can get pregnant.” And without thinking, from a visceral, childlike, deep-in-my-bones place, I exclaimed, “But I wanted that one!” Even though it had “only” been three weeks since I’d found out we were pregnant, I already felt bonded to this little being inside me.  And in that moment, although abstractly I absolutely did want to get pregnant again, I found myself turning away from the idea of another baby – I was still mourning the lost of our first. While we hadn’t even heard a heartbeat, the baby still had an identity. He or she was a January birthday close to Seth’s. He or she was one of the names we had started talking about (even though we knew it was way too early for us to do so.) He or she was our last “shot in the dark” we almost didn’t do because we were convinced it wouldn’t work. He or she was the videos of friends we’d taken of friends screaming and throwing their hands in the air when they found out we were pregnant.

While there was still a lot of mourning to do, over the following weeks, things did get better bit by bit. There were parts that were hard. Not being able to do the baby announcements we had been dreaming up when we went to see family in Michigan and Georgia – that was hard. Still getting the “Your baby is the size of a pumpernickel seed!” emails from the baby apps until I figured out how to “report a loss” – that was hard. And then the random sparks of sadness that would pop up unannounced – those were hard. But slowly, we did move forward. It’s still sad, and we still mourn that loss. But a few weeks later, after a period of healing, we had to decide – would we try again?

While originally we had decided that this would be our last treatment cycle (if IUIs are going to work for you, they typically work after 3-4 rounds – we were on our seventh) our doctor gained renewed confidence that it was still worth more cycles if we were up for it.  It didn’t take much thought to say yes.  We’re tired, for sure. We’re tired of the ups and downs, the many doctors appointments, the emotional exhaustion, the planning of work schedules around fertile days (this was entirely weird for me at first; now it just seems normal. What? You mean everyone doesn’t avoid planning important meetings when they’re ovulating?) But I guess we just feel like there is still some steam left in us.  It worked once – it could work again.

I have heard many stories of people who struggled with infertility talking about the moment they just knew they were done. They describe it as an emotional wall they could not climb over nor push through.   We aren’t there quite yet. Sometimes the wall feels close, like I’m walking through a dark room with my hands outstretched. But I trust that we’ll know when or if that time comes. For now, we focus on the next right thing. And for us, right now, the next right thing is to start again. So we did.

I recently walked into the clinic for the eighth time. It is getting to the point that I’m so familiar with the routine that I want to ask if I will save a few bucks by doing it myself.  Truth be told, this last time I actually complimented the nurse on her technique: “Wow! Hardly any cramping at all that time. I think it’s the best one I’ve had so far! Nice work!” (I am never not a teacher – you can always count on me to ensure that ample amounts of positive reinforcement are being provided.) I also couldn’t resist a smart aleck comment and asked her if she had any special healing crystals for lady parts. So, you know, things are pretty much back to normal around here.

And, so, we climb back on the horse again.  While we have several metaphorical saddle sores to deal with, we do know this routine.  And so, we just continue to do the next right thing.

Highs and Lows

I sighed as I opened up another bottle of Letrozole, a medication used often to treat infertility, as it encourages the growth of follicles (read: baby eggs). I muttered to Seth, “Should we even try this month? It seems like kind of a waste at this point.” It was our seventh IUI (read: expensive turkey baster), which we had decided with our doctor a few months earlier would be our last round until we reevaluated our plan (which would most likely be to stop treatment, at least temporarily.) We were told that at this point, doing the meds, shots and insemination added about a 1-2% chance every month compared to our typical Cheap Wine and Redbox routine.  Roughly $450 for 1-2%. (For the record, $450 can buy about 238 bottles of wine and 212 Redboxes, or 13 bottles of wine and 359 Redboxes, or 21 bottles of wine, 238 Redboxes, Chinese takeout, and an oil change.)

Despite my lack of confidence in it working, we quickly made the decision to do this final round; it was the treatment plan we had agreed to with our doctor, andpff  it made sense to just finish it out. Also, the only other plans we had for that $450 was to burn the dollar bills one by one, so, you know, why not just give it one last go.

So, we did the pill-ultrasound-shot-insemination routine again. I probably said more awkward things to nurses and I think Seth managed to make it through the “collection” piece without anyone calling in the middle of it this time. After the procedure, I scheduled a consultation with our doctor for a little more than two weeks away, assuming the procedure wouldn’t work and we’d need to talk about whether to stop treatment or notZ. We entered the infamous “two week wait” once again, trying to focus on other things and not get too caught up in counting days. The night before our appointment, I ran out to grab a pregnancy test. When I get home, instead of taking the test, Seth and I thought it would be a good idea to have a doozy of an argument instead! SUPER FUN.  Bringing children into the world is ALWAYS romantic and NEVER stressful!

The next morning, as we got ready for the appointment, it hit me that I still needed to take a test. (Clearly I wasn’t optimistic). I peed on the appropriate stick,  accidentally dropped it on the ground, and then forgot about it. Just as I was about to leave, I grabbed it absentmindedly, glancing quickly at it to confirm that it was the usual one line (not pregnant). And then I froze.

Two lines.

I had envisioned this moment for years. Seth and I would look at the test together, and cry, and hug, and cry some more. We’d sit and giggle and make up terrible name combinations and frolic through some fields of lavender and eat a pomegranate under a palm tree next to a grazing giraffe. Instead, it involved a lot of me yelling/barking over and over, “SETH! SETH! SETH. SETH COME HERE. DO YOU SEE TWO LINES? DOES THAT LOOK LIKE A LINE OR IS IT A SPOT? NO, NOT THAT LINE, THAT LINE IS ALWAYS THERE. I’M TALKING ABOUT THAT LINE!” We repeated things about lines and are you sure and maybe that’s just a smudge back and forth until we realized we were going to be late for our appointment.  We drove there in stunned silence, not sure what to believe and trying not to attach to the idea of being pregnant in case it was some cruel joke from the Pregnancy Test Scientists to make a test that produced false positives.

At the doctor’s office, I showed him the test, and he confirmed that, yes, there were two lines. So, instead of a depressing consultation where our doc said, “Welp, thanks for playin’…” we had an ultrasound, where we got to see the embryo, which those cute pregnancy apps say is like 1/5 the size of an invisible poppy seed. Somehow, though, we were able to make out a tiny gestational sac. Our doctor high fived us (literally), answered our 293 questions, and then left us in the room alone. I grabbed Seth, pulled him close, and sobbed. We were pregnant.

Over the next few days, I had blood drawn to make sure my HCG (not to be confused with HGTV) levels were rising to make sure the pregnancy was “taking”. They showed my levels to be rising – promising indicators that we were on our way.  While I kept the news a secret from our families (we would see them in a few weeks and would tell them in person then) I couldn’t help but spill the beans to a couple close friends who asked us about how our doctor’s appointment went. I recorded  their responses with the intent of making a video for our future child – See how excited all these people were? You were loved from the very beginning.

Our doctor asked us to come back at 7 weeks, where we would hear the heartbeat. So, one very early Friday morning before work, we headed back to our doctor. We tried to be nonchalant – we were aware of the very real possibility of miscarriages this early, and didn’t want to get our hopes up. But deep down, a soft mantra beat like a drum:  TodayIamgoingtohearmybaby’sheartbeatIcan’twaitI can’twaitIcan’twait. As the appointment began, Seth started recording the ultrasound screen. As the ultrasound began, the first magical words out of our doctor’s mouth were, “Wow, you have a REALLY full bladder!” Thank you, Doc, thank you.  I worked hard on that, and I appreciate you noticing. “It looks like there is a heartbeat of about 100 beats per minute.” He snapped a picture and printed it for us.  “However, visibility is difficult, so it would be helpful if you would empty your bladder,” which is professional doctor talk for “Please go take a piss, because I can’t see a damn thing.” I followed doctor’s orders, my own heart leaping – there was a heartbeat. This is real.

I went back into the room and the ultrasound continued. We could see the embryo more clearly now. Our doctor muttered some numbers to the nurse… click click click as she typed. He continued to try to get different views of the embryo, looking again for indicators of the heartbeat he’d seen earlier. More mutterings of numbers back and forth, asking about date of conception and other things.  I waited for what I’d been told by friends was the unmistakable sight and sound of a heartbeat. But from the ultrasound machine we continued to hear a long, sharp silence, which was broken by a deep inhale from our doctor as he said, “It doesn’t look like this pregnancy will continue. There is no heartbeat. What I thought I saw earlier was a distortion from your bladder. I’m so sorry.” He said a few more things, but what I remember most clearly was the ding from my phone as Seth stopped recording.  It punctuated the silence like a sad church bell.

Our doctor, who is truly wonderful, continued to say, “I know this is heartbreaking. But I want you to remember – we have still taken steps forward. We know now that you can get pregnant.  There is still hope.” I heard these words and filed them away in the Things to Reflect Upon at a Later Less Emotional Date part of my brain. He told us to take whatever time we needed in the room. On his way out the door, he took the pictures he had printed off of our baby before he realized there was no heartbeat.  My heart sank as I realized those pictures would wind up in the nearest trash can out of our sight. As soon as we heard the soft click of the door, the floodgates opened, and Seth held me as I sobbed in the same room we had confirmed our pregnancy 3 weeks earlier.  We had lost our baby.

Exhausted from spending most of the day crying, I uncharacteristically laid in bed all evening. My ever-supportive husband laid next to me until I could tell he was crawling out of his skin (he does not do well sitting still) and asked if I would mind if he got up. Later, I looked into our backyard to see him washing and tuning up my mountain bike. I smiled – there was not one cell within me that wanted to ride my mountain bike at this moment. But from his perspective, his wife was in pain and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it… but he could make sure her mountain bike was in perfect working order. I thought, if I told him that reroofing the entire house would make things better, he’d start on it now.  And through pain and sadness leaped a strong spark of love.

As I laid in bed that night, I reached into the mental file of the doctor’s words earlier that day. “We have taken steps forward.” I know. “We now know that you can get pregnant.” I know. I know. “I know this is hard, but this is nature’s way of protecting you. It means there was something really, really wrong.” I know. I know. I know. I know all of these things. They are true.  And yet – it is a loss.  Something went wrong inside me. We had done everything we could, and it wasn’t enough.

The next morning, I woke up to puffy eyes as the heavy realization of the new reality draped over me. I thought, I’ve got to get out of here. I can sit here and stay plugged into my sadness or I can get up and take it somewhere prettier with mountains and water and clean air and trees. So, we packed up our camping gear and our dog and all the carbs and bacon and headed to a lake high up in the mountains. We found a free campsite next to the water and breathed clean mountain air. I settled into a camp chair, watching Seth fly fish and the dog chase flies.  As I sat there, one hand clenched tightly around my sadness, I remembered what I had told friends before I was pregnant: I want to be open to being surprised at how God fulfills this desire. And through tears I thought – yeah. I do still believe that. That Hope is still there. She seems a little farther away from me now, but I can still see her.  In a little while I’ll walk over and sit next to her again, and she and I will keep moving forward, probably with a little bit of Sadness tagging along too. But for now – Sadness and I are going to stay over here for a bit. Not forever. But we’re tired, and we just need some time to rest.

  

Finding Joy in the Waiting

Early Easter morning, Seth and I stood at 11,000 feet, gazing over the Wasatch Range as the sun began to climb up over the tops of the peaks that surrounded us. Slowly, we watched as the shadows of the eastern faces were peeled back, making way for a new day. I have always loved the mountains – something about them has always drawn me in.  They are beautiful and majestic and scary and challenging and sharp and inspiring. They are both my favorite playground and spiritual retreat. So, attending an Easter Sunrise service at the top of Snowbird (a ski resort here) is an especially meaningful experience.

As I watched morning reveal itself, I kept reflecting on the Easter narrative and how it applied in our situation. In our faith tradition, we believe that Jesus was murdered but then three days later was resurrected, defying death and the evil that sought to snuff out his flame. I love the Easter story, because to me it means that death and destruction and pain and evil and suffering have not had the last word. It means that when I feel loss or longing or a sense of incompleteness, it isn’t the end of the story. It means that the deepest longings of my soul are not in vain, and someday all will be made right again.

I often think of what Jesus’s disciples were going through during the time in between his death and resurrection. I can’t imagine the pain and sorrow. They had left everything to follow Jesus and had clung to his promises. They had watched him heal the sick, raise the dead, break bread with society’s outcasts, speak for the disenfranchised, and turn the contemporary power structure on its head. They had thought, at last, our Messiah has come. But then – he was gone.  What were they thinking and feeling? Was all their hope gone? Did they feel duped? Betrayed? Did they regret trusting as they did?  They mourned the death of someone they loved intensely and waited, hoping against hope that the promise of a resurrection would be fulfilled. They had been assured of heaven, but I have to imagine those hours felt a lot like hell.

I have heard many Easter sermons refer to this time of waiting the disciples experienced and apply it to our lives. In periods of uncertainty, it can feel like nighttime lasts forever as you wait for dawn.  Though I won’t pretend to understand what the disciples felt like, or compare our journey to the suffering I see in those around me, in this season of our life I identify with this feeling of waiting. As I stood in the early morning twilight, watching the horizon for the sun to appear over the mountains, I thought about how life felt a little like twilight right now. While there is still much beauty and joy around us, we are also waiting. Waiting to see if our efforts to get pregnant are successful.  Waiting to find out how we should move forward.  Waiting to discover how our family would be built.

And through it all, we’re encouraged to just relax, which is perfectly easy to do when you are looking forward having a catheter shoved into your uterus. While I know that stressing doesn’t help and could hinder our chances, it’s easy to want to wrestle our future as a family within our control. And the thing is – thanks to medical interventions, there is a LOT you can control. I can control the meds that I take and the shots that I give myself. I can control exactly when I ovulate and exactly when I go in for an insemination.  I can control the supplements and prenatal vitamins I diligently ingest every day.

But yet – it is not enough. I have done everything I’ve been told and checked the boxes, And so, slowly, I have learned to let go.

This doesn’t mean that my desire for a family has lessened. That feeling is still there, strong, coloring my vision and influencing every major decision.  But I have learned to let go on how and when it will happen. I have loosened my grip on how exactly our family will be knit together through biological children and adoption. I have spent less time attending to all the questions – how long do we keep trying biologically and when do we pursue adoption and it would be nice to have a maternity leave over some vacation days and what if as soon as we stop “trying” and go the adoption route and adopt a sibling set of three and then get pregnant with triplets and then WHERE DO WE PUT THEM ALL DO WE HAVE TO BUY A NEW HOUSE?

Being held captive by anxiety can be exhausting, and there is something incredibly freeing about letting go. And yet – it is also hard.  It can feel like letting go of what you can’t control is, in a sense, admitting defeat. It can feel like a loss, because as much as those worries bring pain and stress, they are also a perverse sort of comfort.  It can feel incredibly scary, because letting go means acknowledging that this thing that you desire so badly is actually not yours to snatch with entitlement but to wait to receive with gratitude… and being open to the idea that what you receive could be entirely different than you had imagined.

Through all of this, I have begun to realize that, even if we continue with medical interventions, I needed to change the way I viewed our situation. I needed to shift my mindset from a narrow, impatient, tapping-my-foot waiting to an open-armed acceptance of the many ways our family could be formed. This shift started deep in my belly where words cannot reach and slowly bubbled up to the surface where I began to articulate it verbally. I found myself beginning to say to friends – I want to be open to being surprised at how God fulfills this desire.

The first time I said it, the words surprised me. Did I really mean that? But I quickly latched on to them with confidence: Yes! Yes. I want to be open to being surprised at how God fulfills this desire. Open, surprised, and joyful in the waiting. I want to slowly pry from my sweaty palm my detailed plan of how our family should be built. I want to open the doors and windows of my expectations, because squinting narrowly at the future can cause you to miss so much beauty in the periphery.

Waiting is hard. It creates space where fear and anxiety and uncertainty can quickly slip in. But Seth and I – we do have a choice. We can let Worry and Doubt stay and set up camp and rule our thoughts, emotions, and decisions. We can let them affect our relationship and steal our passion. Or we can look at them and say, Look, we get that you guys might be here for a bit. And that’s okay. But you’re going to need to move over, because we’ve invited some friends over. And then we open the door and let Joy and Hope in, and the air begins to smell a little less musty. We learn to let them all coexist and repeatedly remind Worry and Doubt to sit down because they’re not the boss. And in the early morning twilight, we wait, hand in hand, for the sun to rise – confident that it will, open to it defying and exceeding our expectations.

Sharp Edges and Sarcasm

And the journey continues.

It’s been interesting, to say the least. The roller coaster has continued in much the same way, but this time, it involves pills, more expensive pee sticks, and romantic visits to Inseminations R Us. Also, the cost of conception went from $4 for a glass of wine and a Redbox to $350 for Seth’s specially selected MVPs and a monthly visit to The Place With the Stirrups. So, if trying to make a baby before fertility treatments was like riding Space Mountain, trying to make a baby with fertility treatments is like riding Space Mountain while wearing an uncomfortably placed catheter and throwing hundred dollar bills over the side.

This last round of treatment involved taking Clomid (an oral medication that helps build follicles) and then going in for interuterine inseminations (IUIs). IUIs provide the unique opportunity to conceive a child with a complete stranger in a lab coat while your husband is twenty miles away. The first super-fun part about this experience is scheduling. I spend several days peeing on the aforementioned sticks, which are approximately $47.00 apiece (unless you buy a box of 2,000 on Amazon, in which case they are $45.39 each). When I get a happy face (it is literally a happy face – I think this is the first time my urine stream has made someone smile), I tell Seth, “CANCEL ALL YOUR PLANS. IT IS TIME TO SCHEDULE THE INSEMINATION.” So, we immediately quit our jobs and frantically call Inseminations R Us: “WE NEED TO GET IN IMMEDIATELY. I PEED A HAPPY FACE! I PEED A HAPPY FACE!” The nice people at IRU try their best to schedule a convenient time right in the middle of your work hours around all the other frantic people who have also peed happy faces.  Then, Seth goes in to our appointment. He goes and sits with other men who are also  trying to produce offspring in the Andrology waiting room, also known as The Most Awkward Room in Existence.  Another nice person calls him back to The Place Seth Never Wants to Talk About, samples are provided, and they are put in a cute little syringe with our names on it.

Here’s where I get a part! Yay! I show up about 45 minutes later.  Seth and I run into each other in the parking lot. Since this could be Conception Day, we make it super romantic by hugging, saying, “Don’t forget to grab cat food on the way home!” and maybe squeezing in a butt slap as we dash our separate directions – him back to work, me to get pregnant.  He shouts something like, “Go get ‘em, tiger!” as I run into the building. (Just kidding. He never says that, because he is smart.) I go up to the other waiting room that is slightly less awkward.  I am called back by yet another nice person (Seriously, I’ll give you $10,000 if you can find a jerk who works in an infertility clinic) who shows me a Styrofoam box.  On the top is a sticker that says Seth Foster and Bethany Foster. He asks me if those are our names. I say, “No, my name is Oprah.” I am very mature and responsible and simply say, “Yes.” He then opens a series of baggies and other containers like one of those wooden Russian dolls, each of which with our name on it, and asks me in three languages if the names are correct. I, still being mature, simply say, “Yes, oui, ja,” instead of snickering about my husband’s sperm swimming around in a syringe.

I then go back to The Room With the Stirrups. Yet ANOTHER nice person walks in, introduces herself, and tells me that she will be doing the procedure today. I say not-awkward things like, “Can’t I at least buy you dinner first?” and she chuckles and pretends that no one has ever made that joke before.  Then some stuff happens that I don’t wanna talk about because my dad reads this, and she says “All set!” I make another joke about could she at least offer me a cigarette, followed up with, “Just kidding, I really don’t smoke,” all of which she just ignores, probably for my sake. I lay there for 10 minutes, doing some conception visualization that looks surprisingly similar to early-2000’s anime, get dressed, and leave.

It’s all super hot, really.

In all sincerity, the hills and valleys of the roller coaster are steeper now. There is more hope because we are doing something, but with more hope comes higher expectations and bigger letdowns. We did what the doctor suggested – Clomid and 3 rounds of IUIs (plus one bonus IUI, because I have always liked earning extra credit.) For most people, this will work. For us, it didn’t.  While the rubber stamp of “infertility” was hard to swallow at first, we were quickly buoyed by the interventions available. I felt confident that our extra effort would pay off - we were going to do all the things in all the boxes and most likely our good faith efforts would be rewarded. We had everything under control.

Ha. Control. Funny!

After the four failed IUIs, we found ourselves back at the doctor, trying to create a new plan of action and hoping he would provide us with more boxes to check (I just LOVE me those boxes). We were left with few options short of IVF (which is not an option we currently have on the table).  Our doctor suggested one more Hail Mary: more intensive (and expensive) IUIs. These involved Letrozole (similar to Clomid) on Days 3-7, an ultrasound on Day 7, some self-administered shots to help “grow” follicles (eggs), another ultrasound on Day 11, another self-administered shot to induce ovulation, and then taking progesterone the rest of the month. Super simple!  But, since it is the last medical intervention available for us currently, we agreed to give this next round of treatment a shot. (Shot! Get it? I’ll be giving myself lots of those. Good thing I have absolutely no problem with needles and am not the least bit squeamish about this. Good thing my husband also does not sometimes pass out when he needs a shot of his own. Don’t worry about us, though; we’ll be fine, ‘cause we’ll just train the dog to do it.) 

So, we continue to move forward.  It is more challenging to stay optimistic, so I find myself becoming a bit more mechanical… going through the motions and relying rather extensively on sarcastic humor that isn’t actually very funny.  (For example: When I have to leave work early for IUIs, I always say to a certain colleague of mine, “Off to go get inseminated like a common barnyard animal!” And she always responds with a dry, “Mooooo…”) And I’ve decided that unfunny sarcasm and mechanical motion-going is okay for awhile.  When life’s edges get sharp, sometimes you need to do what you can to keep from bumping up against them.

And yet, despite my best efforts to avoid the pokey spots, they’re still there. I run into them more often than I’d like; usually at night, when the jokes have run dry, the day’s goals are asleep, and there is no distraction to hurl my emotional energy towards.  My eyes dart around the dark room as if searching for a distraction so I am not left alone with the question that I try to avoid: What if we really can’t have kids? The thought comes and I jerk away from it as if I’ve touched a hot stove. I’m not ready for that.  I can’t go there yet.  I still find myself thinking of “our child”, that hypothetical being who is wanted so badly that it feels as if she actually exists. I still find myself asking the same question, although this time with a crack in my voice and a distinctive tone of desperation: Where are you? Please, come.

I am still hoping, praying, that we find each other soon.