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.
