Level Two
In the Infertility Video Game (which really needs to be invented), an early level would perhaps entail scoring some ovulation prediction kits, jumping through insurance coverage loop holes, and finding a Reproductive Endocrinologist that will help diagnose your issues.
Other levels could be having your husband’s sperm fight off antibodies, slaying hospital bills, finding the money to pay for an in vitro and then, hopefully, getting pregnant. Getting pregnant would then lead to another series of levels, such as getting through the first trimester, having an NT scan and making it through the labor and delivery without causing bodily harm to your husband. Really, as far as I’m concerned, the game isn’t completely over until you hold a healthy baby in your arms.
For the record, I’ve never been good at video games. I’m always the one who gets disoriented in the very first room and who can’t figure out how to even use her controllers. I truly suck at it. We have Nintendo Wii and while my husband can sail through Lego Star Wars with his eyes closed, I stick mostly to games like Wii Music where there are no levels. They are just entertaining games that involve little skill other than being able to recognize where the television is in your living room.
This past Thursday night, June 9th, was the night before my beta. It had been an extremely difficult week as I had been getting pretty much all of my usual PMS symptoms (cramps, moody, bloated, migraines and that oh, so familar feeling of wanting to punch someone in their face). The migraines especially have always been the death knell. Whenever I’ve gotten a headache, my period is always sure to follow. That’s how it’s been for the past twenty years I’ve been getting those bastards. I actually almost wrote an entry last week called, “Between a Rock and a Headache” but I was simply too depressed that once again, this cycle looked like a total clusterf*ck.
At one point last week, despite the fact that I’m a grown woman, I cried hysterically on the phone with my parents. We had a bunch of bills that had come in from the clinic, I had my signature knife-in-the-brain-like-migraine and I was convinced we’d have to do a fourth IVF. I was stressing about how we’d pay for it, that we would still have no guarantees, that maybe we should just give up altogether and whether my marriage could take much more.
My parents were comforting and my dad said that if push came to shove, they would help me pay for the fourth in vitro. It would be my birthday gift, Christmas gift, and my inheritance all rolled into one if I needed it. This offer made me cry even harder to which my dad responded with, “Ok, you’re making me cry now so I’m hanging up.” *CLICK!*
So, on Thursday night, as tensions grew over the impending beta test/results the next morning, I wrote out a list of next steps I would take in preparation for yet another negative (join a gym, overdose on chocolate, buy a huge bottle of wine, take a writing class, schedule and cancel an aborted suicide attempt, etc.) and what questions I wanted to ask the doctor at our inevitable next “WTF Appointment”. I even wrote out an email I would send to the friends and family who knew we did another IVF. In it, I thanked them for their support and told them that we had no choice but to take a break for a while.
As I finished the letter, my husband asked to speak with me. He sat me down and for the first time ever, he told me that he didn’t know if he had the heart to do a fourth in vitro. He seemed so sad, beaten down and simply done. He talked to me about how bad things have been; financially, emotionally, sexually and physically (as if I needed him to point this out). He suggested we should not think about this for the rest of the year and start thinking about adoption as clearly, we can’t seem to produce more than one embryo.
I let him talk as I could tell he needed to. It’s not that anything he said was dead wrong; I just didn’t think I felt the same way. I ended up telling him that this is something we needed to talk about but not tonight. He quietly left the room and went off to watch television in the living room. It felt like there was an entire ocean between us and I went to bed that night thinking, “Hello rock bottom! My name is Jay!”
The next morning, I woke up and on the advice of a few of my friends, I grabbed a home pregnancy test. Since I would be getting the results of the beta when I was at work, I wanted to be prepared for bad news so I grabbed a digital Clearblue easy test, peed on it and fixed my hair while I waited for the result. I glanced over at the test, saw it was done, picked it up and saw the word, “pregnant”.
I froze and stared at it confused. I flipped it over to look for the “not”. I have seen “not pregnant” every single time I’ve used this test in the past two and a half years that I was in shock. It was only one word and yet I read it over and over again convinced that I was wrong or that this was a very odd and cruel pratical joke. "We've secretly replaced an infertile woman's urine with a pregnant woman's urine. Let's watch and see what happens!"
The last two and a half years flashed through my brain… my uterine polyp, Jackson Polyp, the pre-ivf bikini waxes, the sperm sample my husband produced in a Starbucks bathroom, Rudy – the lone embryo, the dog downstairs almost eating my estrogen patches, the tears, the drama and all the money I could have used to buy a house with. But now here it finally was: I'm pregnant.
When I woke my husband up, it was 5:45am and told him the news. He was so shocked and confused that he looked at me like I was a modern art painting that he couldn’t make out.
The beta results were 90 (anything over a 25 means pregnant) and what I love is all this time, I’ve been getting these sad disappointing calls from one clinic or another that I was so excited to get a happy call from them for once! However, the woman who called me was so blasé about it. “Hi. This is Dawn from the clinic. The test was positive. Any questions?” She sounded like she was ordering a pizza. “I’ll take pregnancy with a side of pepperoni please… extra anchovies”
After I got the results, I called my parents who both topped my hysterical crying from the week before. They told me how overjoyed they were, that this was the news they hoped for and my father added, “Plus, this saves me $15,000!”
I’ve never been pregnant before and I’ve got to tell you, after trying the old fashioned way, three inseminations and three in vitros with dissapointing fertility reports, I seriously began to think that my trying to conceive efforts were similar to my video game skills: I’d be trapped on level one forever.
Many of you who read this blog are like me; fertility issues, financially challenged, hormonal, frustrated and feeling like you’re stuck in purgatory. I’m sure that although you are happy for me, it may be also difficult as perhaps you feel I’ve “crossed over to the other side”.
The thing is though, I’ve just cleared level one. I’m not yet “home free”. There are so many more levels ahead of me and I can’t imagine doing it without the readers I’ve connected with through this blog.
I started writing 'The 2 Week Wait' to share my journey and frankly, you’ve all become a part of it. I know this will be difficult for some of you to read that I’m now pregnant but you have my word, I will never, nor would I want to, forget all that it took to even just get to this point. I will continue to be funny, snarky, resentful of the fertile world at large on occasion and on a personal note, it would mean so much to me if you could just stick with me through the first trimester as I truly don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing.
For now, no matter what you may be feeling about this news and more than I can possibly say, I’m so happy to be sharing this first milestone with all of you. I hope there will be more to come, that this truly is the little embryo that could and that we have a happy and healthy pregnancy ahead of us.
And yes, I'm still totally stunned and have peed on more sticks in the past two days than I thought possible.
Thank you… thank you… thank you…
Now on to level two.
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