I remember going in and doing some basic small talk about summer and preparing for the school year before saying that I was there to tell him that we were doing IVF. He gave me a curious look that told me the information didn't land quite right so the teacher in me went about delivering the message a different way. I told him we were trying to get pregnant which has no shades of other possible meanings so the wait time on that understanding was much shorter. He laughed and said he was worried that what I had said before was some kind of relationship counseling and that our marriage was in some kind of trouble.
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| How can there be marital discord; we have a SPAM selfie together. |
IVF and infertility in general is not a subject of much conversation. We just passed not too long ago National Infertility Awareness week where there were several articles and pieces out in the inter webs explaining that some kind of barrier to having a child is experienced. I will not pretend to be an expert in infertility stats or the various options and procedures available to couples and individuals trying to conceive (or TTC in the web lingo) as we were fast tracked to IVF because of some insurmountable odds PAG and I would experience without.
We were walked through the routines and the procedures formally twice, once with one doctor who ended up not working with us (I think she was focusing on some other area of doctoring or research, maybe) and then again with Dr. A, who oversaw our case until we were discharged as successfully preggo parents to be. I remember there was a handout/booklet on the center of the table that outlined, with illustrations and diagrams, the egg retrieval. The needle was magnified to encourage nervousness that a bubble tea straw would be needed to suck up our grape sized eggs. This is not the case---please read those pursuing infertility treatments---I am not a doctor and will not describe things accurately at all or without hyperbole; your eggs will be normal sized and I don't even remember the ins and outs of the procedure.
We knew we were doing this so no matter how scary the pokey needles or big the bucket of money we would need, we were ready to sign on the dotted line. And here's what we knew going into it what IVF was: I would be on a variety of drugs and hormones throughout my monthly cycle first to chill out my ovaries from producing anything, than kicking them into overdrive to make as many eggs as possible without putting me into estrogen shock (again, not really, but there is OHSS which sounded super painful and highly likely). Then when the eggs had reached peak ripeness (this thing with being ripe will come up again and again in this process and it is never, not gross) the doctor would retrieve them. Meanwhile, my partner would supply his end of the reproductive ingredients in a manner not fun or convenient and also involving needles in places most people just don't want them. The doctors of the laboratory would arrange fixed marriages of sorts via a process called ICSI (it's the one everyone shows with the needle putting the sperm into the egg) with as many eggs and sperms as possible. Then they would be set to hang out while we fret and hope and begin using progesterone with the needles much bigger than the previous ones. There would then be a transfer day where I had to have the most water in my bladder as possible and they took the best embryo and introduced it back into my uterus ready and welcoming for the embryo to look around and say "gee, this is a swell place; I'd like to make my home here for nine months." At that point we hope that the odds are ever in our favor and in about two weeks there would be a blood test to check for pregnancy. Oh did I forget to mention the fifty million blood tests and the 1,000 ultrasounds I would go through for not just an IVF pregnancy, but an IVF twin pregnancy?! I guess we can talk about all of those adventures another day.
While that is all easy to understand and fairly straight forward, I needed it explained to me in language I most understood, and by that I mean book language. I absolutely lived with "Get A Life" : A His and Hers Survival Guide to IVF" by Richard Mackney and Rosie Bray. The couple reference a UK experience of IVF which had some key differences especially when it came to insurance and the payment end of things, but each chapter was designed to give a thorough layperson's experience of both the pitfalls of failure and the joys of success. Web articles are meh for information about reproductive services, and each individual clinic is going to be different slightly in their procedures and how they arrange things. We loved RHS in Monroeville, seriously loved them. Dr. A was the stern, serious straight talking woman I needed getting started and answering my initial questions. Dr. S did my retrieval and my transfer and I am sure she is an angel sent to earth to help families conceive children. Even the receptionists and the blood draw technicians made the whole experience as fun and calm and comforting it can be. I didn't go through the hardships I am sure many families endure, not by anything I did but through sheer luck, but I can imagine they are the perfect staff to console and encourage others in their trials and IVF missteps.
IVF is mysterious and intimidating to the medical novice. Knowing that babies are made of female eggs and male sperm is just the tip of a big complicated iceberg. It is seriously impressive that so many folks get preggo so often or with so little effort as the odds of the sequence happening just perfectly so is daunting. I am glad we went against the odds with our IVF adventure. We are nearly at a year, even though that conversation with my boss seems like just yesterday. PAG and I are lucky, blessed, fortunate, and thankful that we now are experts with our own IVF adventure.
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