Mission; We Can’t Say Impossible Because What If You Fall Pregnant And Then Sue Us So We’ll Say 1% Possibility

25 weeks, what a beautiful phrase.

Inside of me a little girl punches at my belly with tiny little fists, each with four pudgy fingers and a thumb per the sonogram.

Yes, folks, it finally happened, and even though, according to The Guiness World Records, ten months is not even a remotely long enough time to conceive to even call it “a struggle”, for me every two-week-wait (TWW) was like a lifetime.         

              

Let me start at the beginning.

It was a hot day in Feb when the fertility expert informed us that a problem did show up in our bloodwork but he needs to do some more research into how much this will affect our fertility.

While he did his research, I did mine.

And I found what I thought could be a potential solution.

Because of the personal nature of this problem I will not go into details but the potential solution I found came not from the countless clinical studies or medical webpages I scoured but from one unassuming lady that posted it somewhere on a lonely thread that’s at least five years old.

For the life of me I can’t find the thread again to try to somehow thank this nameless lady for her contribution which makes it seem even more mystical to me, like Aladdin opening the forbidden cave and finding the golden lamp but being unable to locate the cave again after the fact.

Either way, after reading everything in the whole world on this topic, we met up with Dr Fertility again who informed us that this is bad, very bad.

Our particular problem basically makes it impossible for us to conceive naturally.

“Miracles have happened, of course, I cannot discredit that, but your chances are less than 1% of conceiving naturally.”, he said, a slight smile playing around his lips.

Edrssssssss.

My cat just typed the above word and I find it so apt a reaction that I am leaving it in.

Was the dr laughing at us? Was he high? Which part of what he just told us leaves any room for joviality?

“Of course, not only does it impede natural conception but also artificial insemination so we must start ICSI IVF treatment in April. I am giving you a month to quit smoking, both of you.”

Ah, there it is. The proverbial money shot.

Do you know what IVF is?

IVF is an abbreviation for In vitro fertilisation. Furthermore ICSI IVF is when they individually ram the little sperm into the egg with some kind of syringe, leaving no room for error or anyone getting confused, lost or rejected along the way.

The embrio is then implanted directly into the lady which then hopefully culminates in a squalling baby in nine months or so.

Of course, before this can happen the lady in question first needs to undergo a barrage of hormone treatments, injections, potions, lotions, powders and sacrificing a small mountain goat on a koppie at new moon.

For any non-South Africans reading this post; first of all, thank you for reading a humble boere-meisie’s ramblings. Secondly, a “koppie” is a very small hill in a generally flat area, usually referred to by people in Gauteng as a “berg” (mountain), confusing the hell out of any Capetonians (people who live in the Cape) who actually know what a “berg” looks like and does not see any in Gauteng.

As many eggs as possible (hopefully between eight and twenty) are then harvested from the lady in “an uncomfortable but not otherwise painful process”.

Translation: excruciatingly, life-alteringly painful.

Costs are between R50 000 and R100 000 a shot.

Success rate: 40%.

As if this is not bad enough, the Dr (again with a smile playing about his mouth) cheerfully informed me that my ovaries are not exactly in mint condition and is in fact behaving like a chain-smoking, alcoholic, 40-year old’s would be expected to.

They absolutely refuse to produce more than three eggs per month it seems and will have to be spoken to rather harshly to get their show on the road.

He didn’t seem all that optimistic about any of this.

To make matters worse, we are not exactly swimming in dough at the moment.

We literally just found a house we wanted to buy, which we have been searching for for a year, because everyone knows you need to at least have a house before embarking on a family, right?

The Dr sent me for some more fun blood tests and off we went, me crying openly on the way to the car as per usual.

Right, we can do this. It’s at least a good excuse for both of us to quit smoking, let’s start there, I told myself soberly, because by then I had been five months sober and stumbling through life one day at a time.

As soon as we got home I started making plans, writing notes, drawing up diagrams, just about stopping short of compiling a PowerPoint presentation for myself.

Queue Mission Impossible theme song.

It would have to be Anonymous Post on Five Year old Thread’s solution.

For this “solution”, I needed a script. 

I could not get this script from the fertility dude because he already informed us that this solution is really not a solution at all, and he can feed as all the meds in the world and it would not help one iota.

So, it would have to be my house doctor. 

A man with such fantastically slow speech that it actually, physically calms me down to have a conversation with him, even if it is a conversation about possibly never having my own children.

I decided to call him first and see if maybe I can get the script without seeing him first, because we saw him just a month ago, for a referral to the fertility dude and even paying that consultation fee without even having a cough hurt my miser’s heart.

He was busy and I had to leave a message for him with a bored-sounding and also unreliable-sounding receptionist.

I was sitting in a soapy tub, discussing my mission impossible plan with my husband while lathering his back when the Dr returned my call.

And thus, the record would say, as she paced frantically in the nude, ignoring the bubbles clinging to her ass, dripping water all over the house, Elmien finally received her script.

“I…suppose…it…can’t…hurt…to…try…it….shall…I….leave…it….at (and here he paused so long that I thought maybe he had fallen asleep) reception for you?”

I carefully made my way back to the luke-warm bath to share the good news with my husband who had by now a kind of “Yes, I’ll humour you, dear” expression on his face.

It could also have been a “Would she notice if I peed in the tub?” expression but they are closely related and I was distracted and fidgety with delight at succeeding in this, the First Step to Literally Scheming a Baby into Existence.

The next morning, bright and early, I picked up the script in question from the doctor’s office. The receptionist looked scared as I beamed at her. No one has ever been this happy about a pill that has no mind- or mood-altering effects whatsoever.

I then went to Dischem where I bought all the rest of the (probably bullshit) remedies for this problem and went home with a bag bulging with supplements, leaflets and ovulation predictor kits, as well as the golden prize, the scripted pills.

Literally, the only thing I didn’t have now was a Ouija board to ask the spirits which way my bum should be pointed during love-making to favour natural conception, but I decided against going full-tilt at the last second.

It was also extortionately expensive for one and I had no intention of continuing a relationship with the helpful spirits after this because I had seen all the Paranormal Activity movies and secretly still can’t put my foot over the side of the bed at night for fear of being dragged down the hallway by a demon.

Resume mission impossible theme.

Get husband to agree to take handfuls of pills every day.

Get self to remember to also take handfuls of pills every day.

Work out cycle to optimally establish best time to “go at it like rabbits”.

Remind self rigidly to use Ovulation Predictor kit to further optimise chances of baby-making.

Stack half of Mr-Price Home’s hollow fibre pillows by side of bed to prop self up at 90-degree angle, hips in the air, after even thinking about having sex.

Right. Husband agreed to all, app successfully downloaded to sound a deafening siren whenever ovulation might be imminent and frantic copulation should commence.

This was all rather fun actually, because despite having been doing it on a schedule for almost a year, we are still technically newly-weds and not exactly averse to the idea of getting nekkid either way.

It was about a month later that the faithful fertility app told me it’s safe to test for possible pregnancy.

I hated this bit by now because I have never in my life had a positive pregnancy test despite screaming  at top volume at the test window before, during and after peeing on it.

Talk about abuse.

I had just finished my work for the day and was on my way home with fresh Burger King in the boot for dinner.

Why in the boot you ask?

Because if I had to act all helpless and change-less one more time to a beggar next to a stop-sign, with a steaming bag of expensive take-away next to me, I might give the bag in mention to the beggar and then I would have to battle the inevitable resentments that would follow, flinging me into insomnia-fueled witching-hour arguments with myself about the economic climate in the country, bringing me full-circle to a place I call “Honey we have to Immigrate Immediately” territory.

For any non-South Africans reading this post; first of all, again, thank you for reading. Secondly, we call the trunk of a car a “boot” here. I know, it’s weird. But it would be weirder if I had placed our dinner in one of my fake leather, knee-high boots to throw off a beggar.

Side-note finished.

I knew I didn’t have any pregnancy tests at home because, like with any unhealthy addiction, I would use all of them at once even if the first one didn’t yield favourable results and then cry over them, wishing I was dead, as soon as I was finished.

I honestly did not feel like stopping at Clicks to buy one and allowing my Burger King chippies to grow cold and inedible but I also didn’t want to maybe be pregnant (ya right, as if) and then smoke a pack of ciggies, drink ten cups of filter coffee and swallow an antihistamine tablet that night, accidentally aborting my, what could be, one chance at motherhood.

So, I stopped and bought one (1) cheap little test and went home, feeling depressed already.

I quickly did the test to I can relax with my beloved burger and only slightly stale chips.

As I settled in front of the tv I almost forgot about the test, testing away in the bathroom.

I finished my meal pretty quickly because being the fourth child, I kinda had to, growing up, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and casually glanced at the test.

Now if you’ve ever tried to fall pregnant and didn’t succeed immediately, you would know that if you stared at one of these little tests long enough, it could start almost looking positive.

The trick is to keep tilting the test this way and that until a shadow falls across the test-window making it look like there could be a line there. You then stand perfectly still, staring at that could-be line and fantasising away at the wondrous possibilities it might bring.

All the while knowing you’re actually just full of shit.

This was not one of those times.

No matter how I tilted the damn thing, the extremely faint line in the test window would not go away. I took to my bed, all the while Googling like a mad person.

What could possibly make a test positive, apart from pregnancy, of course, I asked the Internet with trembling fingers.

The overwhelming response was Congratulations, you are pregnant.

Of course, some sites said that it could be an evaporative line, a thing that mostly appears when you saturate the test in about a gallon of urine and then leave it in the sun for a week.

Which is funny because I have done this and never in my life have I seen an elusive “evaporative line” because I would be off to French kiss a nurse and have some blood tests done immediately if I did.

After scouring the internet for possible reasons for a false positive I hesitantly went to my husband.

Here is how that conversation went:

“Baby…” hovering in the doorway.

“Yes?” said while staring distractedly at a computer screen.

“I think I might be pregnant” said while numbly holding out faintly positive pregnancy test.

“No way” said finally looking up lazily, with happy, laid-back smile.

This is a sign of the utmost excitement and thrilledness coming from my husband who is not the crazy clown-like exhibitionist type like I am.

I showed him the test, he tilted it every which way and agreed that yes there is definitely a faint line.

We decided to not crack the non-alcoholic champagne just yet but rather jumped into the car wearing our post-Burger King slippers and slacks and invaded Clicks again.

This time we bought two (2) tests.

One cheap and one very expensive and fancy wancy (yes it was a Clear Blue).

The teller looked scared as we beamed at him.

No one has ever been this happy about having to pay this much for a pregnancy test.

In fact, there’s a reason why home pregnancy test kits are weighed down with about a kilogram of anti-theft devices.

We decided to use the first urine of the day, the next morning, also known as FMU (first morning urine).

You see, people who struggle with infertility are so tired from having military-style, gun-enforced sex that they simply cannot abide by typing out full phrases or even words in some cases.

This means that the infertility websites are peppered with indecipherable abbreviations and acronyms, making the whole experience even more fun and exhilarating.

At 04:13 the next morning (middle of the night) I had to pee so badly (hello, first clue) that I decided to wake up my husband so he could blearily watch me take a leak on two sticks.

As we stood there, staring at the two tests, the Clear Blue taunting us with a little hour glass flipping around on the screen, millennia passed. 

Koppies turned to dust and oceans dried up. 

New species of homo-something-or-other was discovered in Krugersdorp, fifty billion new iphones were released. 

Adele released another album.

Finally, one word appeared.

Pregnant.

And then:

1 – 2 weeks.

At approximately 5 AM our families received an image on Whatsapp.

A photo of the Clear Blue test stating the most wonderful fact ever stated in the history of anything.

As long as you are not a 16-year-old crackhead with an asshole boyfriend that lives in his car with his mom, of course.

From there it really has been a blur but let me tell you, it’s been a most splendid blur.

One with lashings of bright gold and shocking pink and tiny circles of glittering confetti and then acute terror and the urge to run screaming into the nearest koppie, but then glitter again.

Getting Sober; a Positive Trajectory

If you have been following my posts you would know that I am by now almost, but not quite, four months sober.
The same amount of time it takes a fetus to grow legs strong enough to start kicking its mother.
Incidentally I am also trying to get pregnant, thus the baby analogy.

I could liken my experience of getting sober with coming out of a cocoon thinking you're a worm and discovering you are a butterfly.
Not the most beautiful butterfly, not the most intelligent, talented or the best organised. Definitely not the best organised...
Close to being the worst organised butterfly in all of existence.
But still better than a worm.

Of course, this might not have the same significance to everyone.
For me it is a new life, one that I have never experienced but often witnessed (and with great jealousy and incomprehension) in others.
To completely understand this statement I will have to tell you a little bit more about my drinking habits.
If you are an avid reader of my blogs you might have suspected a teeny weensy problem but you never know for sure until
the fat lady sings.

And boy did that bitch sing...

I've always liked wine. Specifically red wine. Tassenberg was for sale at my favourite club for R20 a bottle.
It was cheap and highly effective. It even tasted okay sometimes, differing from bottle to bottle.
Black Label beer also fell into this category.
Back then I had very little money because I was a student and worked at Spur for "party money".

I was the world's worst waitress.
Customers often looked at me slack-jawed when I asked the man at the table to open the bottle of wine if it had a cork.
I could not afford cork wine, always screw top, so I did not have the expertise necessary to flawlessly execute the opening thereof.

I constantly slipped on wet spots on the floor and fell on my ass, spilling buffalo wings and lemon wedges into my hair.
I had no clue how to pronounce Quesadilla (it came out kasadia) and often brought absurdly wrong food to my tables.

Case in point, I was skint.

So I often had to make do with less than R50 on a Saturday night, depending on how wrong I got that week's orders.
So Tassies and Zamaleks did the trick quite nicely. I could get a nice buzz on and not break the bank.
This is probably something a lot of people could relate to, most students drink whenever and wherever they get the chance and I was desperate to be "a typical student".
A nice normal young person.

Of course life will have its trinkets and soon became harder.
My first real job as a hygienist gave me insight into why alcohol was invented, to the max.
Every Friday my bff and I would meet after work to lament our loveless lives and torture jobs, sometimes drinking red wine and other times Martini's. Hers with Vodka and mine with Gin.
We would cry rivers into napkins and then eat what we called "traumazini's", often throwing them back up later that same evening.

This was still okay because we were both going through terrible heartbreak and really only drank over the weekends.
We were after all, still too broke to really invest in a bright future of alcoholism.

Over the years, this changed, however.
She basically stopped drinking and I kept powering on, drinking more and more frequently until finally it was a daily habit.
I was still functional, still working and paying bills and brushing my teeth and washing my hair, but it all started becoming more and more taxing.

As the day wore on I would start thinking about that first round glass of red, still spanking and free of grubby finger marks and lipstick. What a relief it would be to take that first sip, feeling the sting and the beginning of a tiny case of heartburn. Even before that! The sound of the bottle uncorking and the wine decanting into the glass (I had mastered this art by that point).

Phwop! Gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog.

I loved it all.

Wine immediately cheered me up and the good Lord knows, I needed cheering up.
Everything was a complete disaster.
My boss had started seeing problems with everything I did, my marriage was a nightmarish soup of horrible fights and lonely nights and I had gotten down right chubby.

Wine was my friend and she could be found everywhere I went.
Except church. Not that I was exactly in the habit of going there anyway.
Everyone else went to church and I went to Cool Runnings.
That was where I healed my hurts.

I had many problems and alcohol sure as hell wasn't one of them.
It was the only thing keeping me from driving off a bridge.
Except when I was drunk, Then I tried to steer clear of bridges.

As most of us knows, especially those of us who tend to stay up all hours of the night, it is often darkest before the dawn.
The divorce drove me absolutely insane. I went out of my way to destroy myself, making incredible, mind-numbing mistakes (I am not going to go into detail here but if you want you can go ahead and cringe as if I did.) and isolating myself more and more.
It is a miracle that I am still alive.


Until one day things started looking up. Someone (now my husband) came into my life and treated me with so much kindness that I was deeply suspicious of him. Who sent him? What did he want from me? Blood?
I mean had I not bled enough?!
And just when I had made peace with the fact that this will now be my life, drinking wine, sometimes mixing it with a sleeping tablet and falling asleep watching horror movies, with my cats and laptop on top of me.
I had sworn off contact with other living beings as far as possible while not getting fired from my job.
For years my mantra was simply "Step one; don't get fired today".

I was so overwhelmed by the muchness of my life that I even made a rule that people can only ask me questions on Tuesdays.
Mondays were reserved for catatonic, drooling-on-myself, gibbering with fear of what the week will bring but on Tuesdays I sometimes came alive for a few hours and steeled myself for adversity.
On Wednesday I would come to the realisation that all that steeling myself only set me up for more disappointment and so I would go back to drooling on myself until Friday came and released me from the hell that is getting out of bed.

On Sunday I would seriously contemplate suicide but then the wine and sleeping tablet would kick in and I'd be back to Monday.
Just a few days ago I was asking my husband a bunch of senseless little questions and he replied with my standard statement of that time: "Questions on Tuesdays".
I laughed, at first more out of surprise at the reminder and then laughed harder at the silliness that was me.
Then stopped and reflected on the insurmountable gratitude I felt at not being there anymore.

How difficult must my life have been for me to not even be able to reasonably respond to a simple question like "what would you like to eat tonight?" on any other day except for Tuesdays?
The answer is, of course, very. Very hard. I know this with my mind but I can't truly remember exactly how it felt because it scares me to even try.

Just the other day I was telling someone about my latest adventures in the land of iced tee and she said: "I can't stop drinking now, not with the divorce" and I found myself wondering how I would have coped without it when I was going through that.
Where I am sitting now, I believe I would have handled it better. The wine did distract me and kept me warm at night (that and the uncontrollable sobbing, so loud the neighbours called the cops once) but did I really have a chance to just feel?
Just sit there and acknowledge that my heart was shattered and still shattering and my mind was slipping like a toddler on ice skates and that all of that is normal.
And will pass.

Maybe, maybe not. But I do know this; if ever there was a time for me to not "need" mood-alteration anymore, it was when Mr T (now husband) walked into my life and made everything bearable again.

And yet Phwop! Gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog-gloog.

I didn't think too much of it because judging from Facebook posts by my acquaintances, I was pretty normal.
Three or four glasses of red wine per night seemed okay and they were really only two because I never really finished a glass before refilling it. So actually just one.
Right?

Then one night I was lying in his arms (little birdies and bubbles would have been surrounding my head if I were a cartoon, from all the wine I had that night) and he said these words:
"Baby, I see you struggling and I want to help you but I don't know how. And you are so much better than this."

And suddenly and in stark relief I realised: I am an alcoholic.
I am Elmien, and I'm an alcoholic.