Ignorance Is Bliss. Especially When You’re Trying For A Baby

When my husband and I got back from a trip to Africa in January 2015, we both decided we were done with the birth control pills and going to let whatever happen, happen. A friend recommended I download the Glow app to track my cycle and said it helped her get pregnant almost instantly. We weren’t in a huge rush, being only 29 and 1 of 4 children; I thought I’d have babies cartwheeling out of me.

Well, I was wrong. Below I’ll chronicle how my ignorance about having a child was the greatest blessing and the biggest mistake I’ve made. When you think everything will be just fine you have no fear of pain, no fear of loss, just tons of joy and jokes and planning for the future.

Step 1: Baby making time

So we should all get refunds from our sex education courses in school. I walked around for 16 years (13–29) thinking even a sneeze could knock me up. There’s a lot more that goes into it, however if you are 16 you probably can get pregnant with a sneeze — which is just the cruel reality of life. If you’re 29 and financially stable it takes tracking and recording your cycle with the precision of a fucking auditor looking over Donald Trump’s tax returns. Am I ovulating today? Or was it yesterday? Do I feel a pinch? Or is it more of a dull ache? After several months of this, you finally get the hang of it but it’s not what I expected from a bunch of my friends who were like “oh man it took no time at all and it happened just like that!” (fuck off — I love you but seriously shut up).

Step 2: What is wrong with me?

Again, we are told over and over as women directly and via subliminal messages that conceiving and birth is natural. It’s the most feminine thing we can do — give life. Our sex ed teachers scare the shit out us with this natural phenomenon. Yet, getting pregnant has been the greatest challenge of my life.

Step 3: OMG I think I’m pregnant

My 30th birthday party weekend showed up and my husband was in a wedding in Mexico (didn’t attend because, Zika). I was drinking away, having a great time ringing in another decade with my friends and family. That Sunday I drive to my parent’s house for a birthday dinner on my actual birthday. Right before my wedding 7 months prior I had stashed away a pregnancy test because I was so stressed that it delayed my period. Pregnancy test comes in two’s for you men and women who haven’t run down a Walgreen’s aisle to knock one into your cart and sprint away yet.

Before dinner I secretly go upstairs and take the test. I didn’t even look at the lines, just stashed it into my backpack. Later, right before we sat down, my mom needed to pickup something. I volunteered to go with her to the grocery store. As I put my shoes on, I quickly opened up the front pocket where the test was and glanced at it.

HOLY SHIT. I am pregnant. My heart was racing. I needed to tell my husband, but I was just about to get in the car with my mom. So we drive around and I almost cause a car accident by blurting out “I think I’m pregnant!”

If you want to read more about what happened next, you can read about the sad ending to that pregnancy.

Step 4: IVF, IUI, I need help

So, to skip a step, I lost that pregnancy. It felt like I got pulled to the back of the start line. It wasn’t that I wanted to get pregnant immediately, I had this void and the most immediate instinct was to refill that with another pregnancy. I am glad I gave myself time, but that didn’t stop me from obsessively tracking my cycle and trying to convince myself that I was totally fine to get pregnant again. I wasn’t, I’m glad I didn’t.

So almost 6 months after we started “not not trying” and 3 months after my miscarriage, I went to see a fertility specialist. I honestly thought he’d look at me, tell me I was a crazy person, and send me on my way to keep trying. Instead, my husband and I got tested.

So, this is literally how this went down. The doctor reads off our results. Starts with my husband who had a sperm analysis done. The doc said he’d give us grades — which as a straight A student greatly appreciated. My husband got an A++. Overachiever. Then he looked at me and said D. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as extra credit in fertility land. I had terrible AFC which essentially is how many pepped up follicles I have on any given day and a low FSH which is something else I can’t remember. But the reason for the D grade was my old, shitty eggs. So we started IVF. For full transparency here was my protocol and outcome:

Ultimate goal was to freeze embryos since my shitty eggs were getting even shittier.

• 2 rounds of egg retrieval to “bank” embryos
• They’d stim me up on hormones — so I was a real peach to be around — then after two weeks they took out all of my eggs I had
• Each time they collected 18 eggs
• 18 of those eggs are introduced to my husband’s super DNA
• 11 of those eggs fertilized
• Then they watch them for 7 days, so they’re like super expensive babysitters and send us a report ever other day during that time
• We had 7 embryos make it to day 7 to a blastocyst stage (I think of it like a peanut M&M — shell on the outside with some good stuff in the middle)
• After that they send a small amount of cells to a lab to test for chromosomal abnormalities (abnormal chromosome is what most likely caused my miscarriage)
• Of our 7 embryos, only 3 embryos were normal

I actually had a retrieval done on Thanksgiving. It was an amazing excuse to be treated like a queen. Didn’t wash one dish. Highly recommend a retrieval on Thanksgiving to avoid doing a goddamn thing.

I could be a doctor at this point. I know all of the clinical terms for pretty much anything female reproduction-related. I have a Facebook group with other women who are going through other treatments such as IVF or an egg freezing cycle. It’s great to support each other and give each other tips since it’s not comfortable mixing up medication in a vial, prepping a needle, swabbing your stomach, and stabbing yourself. I am really good with needles now though. I saw a homeless man injecting himself in San Francisco and thought he did a good job getting the air bubbles out of his syringe (obviously drug abuse is a devastating thing — but come on I’m a fertile-challenged woman! Let me be a little funny).

Step 5: Angry, bitter, resentful

I’m happy all of this shit was because of me and not because of my husband. If it was my husband’s fault I might have been resentful. I might have wanted to stab him in the eyeball with one of the many needles I had to stab myself with every night for several weeks on end.

Don’t get me wrong, I was a raging bitch still even though I couldn’t take out my anger on my husband. I was happy for no one. I wanted everyone to be failing at the same rate I was. Ugliness pretty much consumed me. Not afraid to admit that I let a really bad part of myself take over during this time. My twin announced her pregnancy the day of my first egg retrieval and I was pissed. I am over the moon now to be an aunt soon, but at the time I was bitter and in so much pain that I was livid. Why not me? Why did this have to happen to me? Why do I have to have the shitty eggs? She probably stole them in the womb when we were together in there 30 years ago.

Thankfully, I got through that rough patch and got over myself. Life is moving even if I feel like I’m stuck in a fertility holding pattern. I can’t want for people to struggle with me until I’m pregnant.

Final Step: Inner peace, I mean wine

So now, I feel like I’m hopefully in the final stretch of this journey. This whole experience leaves you paranoid for a shoe to drop so I can’t totally say this for a fact. When I started IVF treatment, I was so hopeful. Then at an ultrasound they’d tell me the eggs weren’t growing right. Or on the 3 day embryo report they’d tell you that some of your precious few eggs died. So it does leave you a little fearful to ever be hopeful.

Wine, exercise, and just living my life again have been the biggest things to help me find some peace and get over the bitterness. I’m not pregnant, so I’m going to drink all of the damn wine I want. Not the shitty wine, the good Healdsburg shit that cost me a fortune. Highly recommend a Kistler chardonnay for anyone in the market.

So, today starts my first day of the next stage of IVF treatment. Fingers crossed. If it doesn’t work, I have a recipe for success — wine, the good stuff. I am jaded. I’m no longer an ignorant, youthful 29-year-old believing my dreams will come true with a little hope. This jaded, battle-tested lady has wine and good people around her for when that disappointment comes around again. This time I’m going to use my newfound wisdom to get me through what may come from this chapter. Ignorance is bliss, but knowing what kind of hell might be around the corner is what I am grateful for. I got my head out of the clouds and in this mother-fucking game. Let’s do this!

Good luck to all of you, too. And I genuinely mean that :)