In October of 2005, a few months after M and I married, we went to visit my OB/GYN for what is known as a "Family Planning" visit. Our Mexico wedding was just a month away, and we wanted to get off of birth control and get moving on a family. I was 30 years old, M was 33 - it seemed the right time.
First, it was strange being off of birth control. Awesomely strange. We were worried I'd get pregnant right away and not be able to drink in Mexico. Or maybe it would take a little while and I'd have a sober Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Then it took a bit longer. Maybe I'd have a sober Valentines Day, no biggie. Ok..maybe a sober St. Paddy's Day. Cinco de Mayo? Memorial Day? Huh. Weird. Humping like mad, but nothing. We thought something might be wrong, but we're young, you know? They say if you're under 35 to wait a year before worrying about infertility. No problem.
In July, I saw my OB/GYN for my annual exam and expressed some concern, and she said, "Layla, don't worry. You'll be pregnant by the end of the year." Oh...ok. So I started to read up about how to maximize your chances of conceiving. After sex, don't move. After sex, stand on your head (seriously). After sex, prop your hips up in the air for 15-20 minutes. Don't screw in any position other than missionary. Wooo. Fun. No lube, it kills sperm. Morning sex is better than night sex for conception. Don't let M jerk off ever again. Make him save it for 9 days and then do it. Make him jerk off every 3 days to keep it fresh. Have sex the 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th day of your cycle. Don't take baths. Ice your balls. What. The. Fuck.
So on goes the year. My birthday, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Again. Every single month, we're convinced we're pregnant. Every month ends in tears. And yelling. And being mean. And it fucking sucks. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Marry, fuck, baby. Easy-peasy.
On December 27th, we went to our first Infertility Appointment. My OB/GYN ran a bunch of tests over the next few weeks: Day 21 test to check Progesterone Levels...I wasn't producing. That meant that I wasn't ovulating. Semen Analysis for M....virtually no sperm. That meant - well you know what that meant. Another Semen Analysis...ooo! They got a bunch of sperm. About 10 million. Normal is 200 million. Hmmmm. Ok, next up for me: hysterosalpingogram (HSG) to see if my tubes are ok. After and extremely painful procedure involving a catheter in my cervix, a balloon in my uterus and a completely blocked tube, we found (and fixed, thanks to the radiologist blasting my left tube open) one of my problems. This is all in the beginning of February. My OB/GYN said that she really couldn't help us further, and we need to go to a Reproductive Endocrinologist (RE for short. Fancy was of saying Fertility Doc).
On February 22nd we met Dr. Lee. Hot Dr. Lee, as M likes to say. She looks a bit like Lisa Ling. Undergrad work at MIT, Med school at Harvard, Interned at Duke...she had a great CV. We loved her from the moment we met her. She has a great bedside manner, she's honest and has extremely high rates of success. She examined me and looked at M's info and told us some fucked up shit: we were never going to have children without help. IUI, which is a method of inseminating me directly with M's sperm, was something we thought about. It's really not too invasive, and has a pretty good rate of success. Dr. Lee said that we have about a 5% chance of success with that. Is that something we want? To use up our insurance on that? Our insurance pays for fertility treatment, with a cap of $20,000. Seems like a lot, right? Well, not when you think about everything associated with treatment.
Anyway, the methods we thought would work didn't look promising. So we're going high-tech. I never thought we'd be IVF people, but it seems we are. On this coming Monday, I start my injections. My schedule is something like this:
3/19 - Begin injecting 10u of Lupron into my thigh every evening.
3/28 - Get baseline sonogram to see how my follicles are reacting.
3/31 - Begin 225u of Gonal-F injections into my stomach nightly. Reduce Lupron to 5u nightly.
4/2 - Sonogram and blood test
4/4 - Sonogram and blood test
4/5 - Orientation into the ARTS (Assisted Reproductive Technologies Services) center.
4/6 - Sonogram and blood test.
4/7 or 4/8 - Ovidrel injection into my stomach to trigger egg release.
4/9 or 4/10 - Egg Retrieval, done under sedation.
4/10 - Begin injecting Progesterone in Oil into my ass every night.
4/10-4/16 - Hope and pray the eggs and sperm fall in love and fertilize in petrie dish.
4/16 - Embryo Transfer.
4/24 - 4/25 - Pregnancy Test (If positive, Progesterone Shots continue for 6+ weeks)
Jeez Louise. So we got a lot going on. Forgive me if my updates aren't as frequent as they should be. In order to help everyone involved with us in our lives, I'm going to do a quick FAQ here, which you can use with your friends and family going through infertility. These are just some questions people have asked me lately.
Q. Why don't you guys have kids?
A. None of your fucking business.
Q. You know that once you go through IVF, you're going to get pregnant right away, right?
A. You think? Are you going to help my husbands Frankensperm or my ovaries to start working?
Q. IVF is expensive, right?
A. Yes. Each round is about $11,000 for our situation, but each case is different. Meds alone cost over $1,500. We're lucky in that our insurance is covering the whole thing.
Q. Why are you doing IVF when there are so many babies in the world?
A. This question kills me. Because it's asked with no thought, normally. Here's the deal for us: IVF is covered by insurance, and we'll be parents relatively soon if things work well. Adoption, can cost over $30K for a white infant in the US. African American children can run over $10K. International adoption can run over $20K. Fostering, while noble, rarely ends in adoption of HEALTHY infants and babies. The wait on private adoptions can be years. Bio moms can change their minds. And, most of all, who says that infertile couples are meant to take care of kids that others can't take care of?
Q. Won't the shots hurt?
A. Not most of them, but the Progesterone one will. It's given in oil, so it's thick and needs to be warmed before going in. Progresterone is what keeps you pregnant until your placenta kicks in a few weeks into the pregnancy.
Q. Are there side effect from the drugs?
A. Lunacy is one of the ones I've heard of. I'm pumping loads of hormones into my body at once.
Q. Is there a chance you'll have twins?
A. Um...yes. A pretty good chance. We're bracing ourselves.
Q. You know my neighbor had IVF and it worked. That means it will work for you.
A. First off, that’s not a question. Second, don’t be a fucking idiot. How the hell do you know what our issue is? Maybe your neighbor had endometriosis. I don’t. Maybe she was 42 years old. I’m not. Maybe she did it because her partner has a vagina. Mine doesn’t. Every single case is different, so don’t compare.
Q. It took us 6 months to get pregnant. I totally know what you’re going through.
A. What, you don’t know what a question is? Seriously, you have no fucking clue what we’re going through. Unless you’ve been through the process of infertility, don’t assume you know jack shit about it. It’s obnoxious and rude.
Can you tell we’ve gotten some really lame questions from friends/family/acquaintances?
That's it for today folks. I'll keep y'all up to date with our progress. Hopefully I'll be having a sober Cinco de Mayo THIS year. 17 months and counting, but we'll keep trying.