IVF Real Talk: How I Spent $10k To Gain 10 Pounds (but more importantly, why)
Fertility is a touchy subject. Everyone has so many opinions, but only one experience (their own). It’s something we can accidentally take for granted. Something we may not even think about at all.
Unless (or until) years of subtle gnawing suddenly leaves a hole yearning to be filled.
Awareness of that hole ignites a panic. That panic yields an awakening. An understanding that Mother Nature offers some pretty great gifts in some pretty small windows.
Is there ever really enough time to make the right decision?
If we’re being honest, I never thought I’d have to make the decision. Maybe I’d have kids, maybe I wouldn’t. If it happened, it happened. If it didn’t, it didn’t.
Commitment of any sort gives me anxiety. And tiny carbon copies of oneself seem like the ultimate commitment.
I’ve also had an irrational fear of childbirth for as long as I can remember. In fact, one of my early childhood memories of trying to understand where babies come from goes like this:
Back Story
Setting: me sloshin’ around on my parents’ water-bed (the 80s seemed to be a weird and wild time — I’m pretty bummed I was only around for the tail end of ’em) and dragging out story time with questions well beyond my comprehension.
Dad was the storyteller and Mom sang the songs. Dad did naps. Mom did bedtime. So Dad was the only one on duty this day. And bless him for carrying the full weight of the burden of what was about to transpire…
The post-nap-time-story subject matter I’d selected this particular day was, babies.
Now, I’m not 100% sure why, but the idea of having children horrified me without really understanding how or, god forbid, why that whole process all went down. Forget the monster under the bed, I was terrified about the stork in the sky.
But, I assumed it was inevitable. Mom had babies and I would grow up and have babies. It’s just the way it was.
What a revolting idea though. Little four-year-old me was desperate for an alternative.
“Dad, what if I don’t want to have babies?! Is there anything people can do to stop them from coming?!” I asked, wide-eyed and intense, clutching the stuffed polar bear I’d had since the day I was born.
“Sure if that’s what you really wanted. You can take special vitamins,” he said without skipping a beat. So calm, cool, and collected.
How could he be so blatantly nonchalant about this, I must have thought… had I known what “nonchalant” or “blatantly” meant, of course.
He skipped over the chapter about how those vitamins are actually birth control pills and… come to think of it… he glossed right over the birth chapter too.
To be fair, I was four.
But I was onto this whole grotesque birthing thing, regardless… I’d seen my earliest not-so-glamorous birth shots. I saw my mom’s even less-glamorous shots with me on that “birth” day.
I knew it wasn’t gonna be pretty and I wanted nothing to do with it. And I was a very pro-active four-year-old.
“Ok, can I start taking them now, Dad? Please?! With my Flintstones and cereal,” I pleaded.
I don’t remember the rest of the conversation because it was 27 years ago, but I know he said I was too young for those grown-up vitamins. Cue a budding case of childhood anxiety…
I had a lot of nightmares growing up — and I’m nearly positive that day was no exception.
“Made for Baby-Making”
Flash forward 27 years later and who would have thunk I’d be putting my body and bank account through the ringer in order to do the very thing my four-year-old self found so maddeningly distressing?
Especially after my doctors told me I was basically made for baby-making (in the least offensive way possible). Wide hips, perfect ovaries, high AHM (Antimullerian hormone), normal thyroid function, stellar ovarian reserves, and relatively young — 30 at the time of all the female fertility testing.
But lo! Here I am.
My husband had an emergency surgery as a newborn and the doctor accidentally snipped his vas deferens. Think: a vasectomy, but not on purpose. Performed on a newborn. Nothing “ordinary” about the situation. And apparently, my husband was unaware until we were about three years into marriage and “not NOT trying” to conceive.
So after a rough first year of marriage, we ultimately decided having a family was an important goal we were going to work towards as a couple, in spite of my initial reservations — completely unaware of the complications (and expenses) this compromise would entail, of course.
But, thus is life, right?
Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems
Oh, and that $10k I referenced in the title: it’s just for a couple weeks’ supply of the injections I’ll be mixing myself at home next week.
Don’t worry, my husband found a pharmacy in Massachusetts that is shipping them to us for half of that. Everything else is thousands more...
This is all pretty invasive, expensive, and time-consuming, but hey… it’s not as bad as some people make it out to be.
Except don’t ask me to repeat that when I’m in the middle of a hormonal breakdown after accidentally injecting progesterone (this stuff moves into the muscle like molasses — and it’s far more painful than the simpler subcutaneous stomach injections) into my damaged sciatic nerve, leaving me unable to walk for an entire day.
I go back and forth between a bit of Jekyll and a little of Mr. Hyde lately.
Apologies to my friends, family, and colleagues. As if you needed a more dramatic version of me to deal with.
Anyway, follow along with this section tab of the website for more related stories. I’m hoping to build a community of humans who have gone through or are going through “unconventional” roads to parenthood.
Let’s re-define parenthood. Because one size does not fit all. And the journey to parenthood is about more than sex and biology. It’s about love and commitment. And it can come in the human and/or pet variety.
Whether you feel pressure to have kids but don’t want them. Want them, but can’t have them. Don’t know what you want. Whatever. I want to know your “why”. Because knowing “why” we make our choices isn’t always clear.
So we go through the motions until we have a breakthrough. And then that “why” emerges, through the beauty and the pain.
I’d like to share some beauty and some pain with people living out their own questions… figuring out their own “whys”, while navigating all their own beautiful and painful bridges to get where they want to go.
I’ve gained at least some insights throughout this experience and I’m looking to story swap with other folks who’ve experienced fertility roadblocks — mental and physical ones alike.
Please comment below if you have a related story you’d like to share here. Or email me directly and I will feature your story here at BRAINWASH.
