How We Got Here

I remember interviewing for a college that I didn't really want to attend with a man who was a total pompous ass. He said several nasty and arrogant things to me before we even sat down for the formal interview, and then his first question was "So, how did you get here?" Irritated, I snapped back, "In a car."

I was not offered admission to his school.

This is perhaps not the best anecdote with which to begin an acquaintance, even one conducted solely over the Internet. But if you're reading this, you just might be infertile too, and I'll bet you can relate. How do you think I got here? No one starts blogging about infertility for fun. Being declared infertile usually means lots of painful and embarrassing tests, sleepless nights, urine-soaked sticks filling up your trash can, and probably at least one conversation with a doctor where you had to clear your throat a few times before you could continue speaking. Oh, and let's not forget the hours devoted to asking Dr. Google for some advice, or scrolling obsessively through the archives of a stranger's blog hoping that you can find someone just like you who had the same diagnosis, same treatment protocol, and a happy outcome. It is in thanks to those bloggers who have come before me that I have started writing about my own experience. Ladies, you made my productivity at work plummet, but you also gave me hope, made me laugh, and it is an honor to add my voice to yours.

So, where do we start? I'm 28 years old, I'm married to a wonderful man who we will call Harry, and I have endometriosis and blocked Fallopian tubes. (Oh, and I did get here in a car.) We tried to get pregnant naturally for 11 months before my Ob-Gyn discovered a major problem at what should have been a routine annual appointment: a mass in my belly that required further evaluation by ultrasound. A week later, the ultrasound tech waited about 15 seconds after inserting the wand to tell me I had a large endometrioma (9 cm.) on my left ovary and a smaller one (4 cm.) on my right ovary. I asked what that meant exactly and he stage-whispered, "You didn't hear it from me, but you're looking at laparoscopic surgery."

Laparoscopic surgery didn't sound all that bad at first. A few incisions below the bikini line, a couple of days off work, lots of movies and magazines and soup, and then we'd evaluate our reproductive options. Yes, the size of the cysts indicated that I had probably had endometriosis for a long time, but I wasn't in constant pain like some women experience, and I was in otherwise good health. I figured that after the surgery we'd probably try Clomid, maybe have an IUI or two, and someday if things got really desperate we'd be told our best option was to move on to IVF.

Nope! I woke up from the surgery to hear my doctor say that although there were no complications, and I had been able to keep both ovaries, my Fallopian tubes were irreversibly and completely blocked by scarring from the endometriosis. If we wanted to have children, the only thing we could do was move directly to IVF. At the time I was fighting the simultaneous urges to sleep and throw up, so it's not like we had a very long chat, but I was awake enough to be devastated. The process of going through surgery was itself surprisingly upsetting, and waking up to bad news... well. And yes, IVF was bad news to my ears. To me, hearing "IVF" meant that something was terribly wrong with my body, that I would have to endure pain and discomfort and financial burden that most people never need to consider, and that there was a pretty decent chance at the end of the day that we would genuinely fail in this endeavor.

One tough thing in all of this is that even the few people who knew about my surgery and its outcome were sympathetic because they assumed I was just upset that I wouldn't be able to have children. I am, of course. Reproducing is a big deal to us mammals, and I - like anyone - would love to hold my own live young in my arms. Except for one little problem.

Midway through our year of TTC the old-fashioned way, I came to a realization: I'm not all that crazy about the idea of having a baby right now. I love my husband, and we are financially stable, and our apartment even has a second bedroom... but I kind of wanted to do other things first. Like maybe get my PhD. Or write a novel. Or live abroad. It's okay that this is taking a while, I told him. It could be that there's a higher power who knows that this isn't the perfect time for us to have a baby.

Except now, post-surgery, medical science has decreed that this is the ONLY, BEST, MOST PERFECT time for us to have a baby or three. I'm 28, and my ovarian reserve numbers look good even after surgery. My insurance covers a very generous four rounds of IVF. The fertility clinic is two stoplights away from my work. And I'm going to delay this because I think it might be kind of fun to live in London for a year, assuming that we could find jobs and an apartment and get the right kind of visas and figure out the difference between a crumpet and a strumpet?

So, IVF it is. I'm clutching a copy of my CD3 bloodwork in one hand and my sonohysterogram results in another. I start injecting myself with hormones on December 12th. I might be a mother by this time next year, or maybe never. Here we go.