In early September 2009 I had given up the possibility of getting pregnant naturally.  The “Job Sex” had already put such a strain on our marriage, I think we were both ready to be away from each other for a little while.  Sexually anyway.  Most people think the baby making sex is fun.  “Have fun trying, if you don’t get pregnant right away at least you can have fun practicing, blah blah blah.”  Don’t get me wrong, it is fun in the beginning, but it gets to be like work very quickly.  You have to remember, along with the “hurry up, lets have sex” mentality, your also dealing with monthly disappointments, doubt, frustration, maybe even a few Dr.s appointments answering some very personal questions.  Combine all of that and try to relax enough to be intimate with your husband, it just doesn’t work.  Women are so emotional in bed anyway, and men can most times physically perform, but husbands can read their wives.  They are very sensitive to what you’re feeling.  They may not be experiencing it the same way you are, but they pick up on what your putting out.  And I mean that literally, with all that negative in your head, its difficult to “put out.”  I’d be lying if I said we weren’t relieved to accept some medical assistance.

First come the tests.  Other than your run-of-the-mill exams which are child’s play, pardon the pun, the two major tests are the hysterosalpingogram (good luck pronouncing that, HSG), and the saline sonogram.  The first is to check if your fallopian tubes are blocked, the latter is to see if there are any major obstructions, polps, or cysts in the uterus.  I was told the HSG would be painful.  They insert a catheter through the cervix, shoot this radioactive dye up there, and watch the dye move through the tubes on an x-ray machine.  I took a few Advil before the test and it was not painful, however this was the first time anyone other than an OBGYN was digging up there.  That was awkward.  The radiologist I went to was about 5 feet tall and about 80 years old, and the table did not have stirrups, so I just laid there with my legs akimbo.  Can we say awkward?  I think any embarrassment I had disguised any pain I might have had.  The dye spilled out of my tubes as it was supposed to indicating I had no clogs or obstructions.  First test, A+, I passed with flying colors.  A week later I was back at the clinic for the Saline Sonogram.  Now I was back in a familiar environment, comfortable stirrups (ha ha ha), and a Dr. more appropriate to be in this area.  Meet the trans vaginal ultrasound wand.  Its a long E.T finger looking tool with a condom over it placed in what looks like a gun holster attached to the examination table.  It stares at you, mocking you.  It looks very unassuming, you’ve more than likely seen men bigger than this thing.  The Dr. comes in, you lay back, relax, hands behind head in that very cocky, laid back position, and in goes the catheter again.  Ok, a little uncomfortable, but I can handle this.  Now they start shooting water, filling your uterus.  This is interesting.  The slightly full feeling quickly turns into a rather uncomfortable stretching from the inside.  And now, introduce the wand.  You’ve heard me talk about prodding.  This is the prodding.  The Dr. sticks this thing up and rotates it around like an Atari joy stick.  Just breathe, you can do this, I kept talking to myself.  Hubby was in the room with me, I just focused on him, staring at him, trying not to flinch, I had too much pride to admit I was in pain.  I felt like the Dr. was driving a stick shift with my vagina.  It seemed like an hour went by.  I started saying to myself, just another minute and then tell him you can’t take it anymore.  End this.  Right when I was about to open my mouth to plead for mercy, the test was done.  “Everything looks great, I didn’t find anything to be concerned about.”  It was then that I would experience the closest thing to water breaking before labor,  I stood up.

An IntraUterine Insemination (IUI) procedure is more awkward than invasive.  The first three we had done were medicated with Clomid which is an oral medication.  This was easy.  I don’t remember having too many side effects from this drug although I’ve heard women lose their minds on this stuff.  I tend to be a tad over-emotional anyway, so who would know the difference.  Physically I felt normal.  The clinic we were going to at the time was about a 45 minute drive from our home.  It was also the largest infertility clinic in our state.  We learned very quickly that if we didn’t leave the house by 4:45am to get to this place by 5:30am (the doors opened at 6am) we would be behind at least 20 couples and it was first come first serve.  This place had so many patients they would be backed up before 6:30am and you’d sit in that waiting room for well over an hour.  Later we would affectionately call this clinic “the factory.”  The monitoring visits were once a week and twice during the week of ovulation.  We were getting up early a lot.  I am Not, with a capital N, Not, a morning person.  Hubby came with me to every appointment, God bless his heart, we truly went through this together.  He even came into the exam room with me to hold my hand.  I was so lucky to have him, that waiting room was filled with many women and not too many men.  I was glad he was with me.  The best part of these very early morning appointments was the time we spent together, we were bonding in a very different way as husband and wife, it brought us closer together.  The next best part was when an appointment fell on a weekend.  This was because the clinic would order trays and trays of fresh bagels from the bakery up the street with cream cheese and butter.  We’d be so excited to go to the clinic on a weekend morning knowing those delicious bagels would be waiting there for us when we came out of the exam room.  We would make the morning drive up to the clinic and be singing with bagel excitement.  “It’s bagel day!”  It’s the small things that make the difference.

So I was taking the Clomid, going for weekly monitoring visits, seeing a different Dr. every time I went as this clinic had about 15 doctors on staff, and waiting to take an ovulation test.  Once we knew we were ovulating the Dr. gave us a very specific time to take a subcutaneous shot in the tummy to release the eggs from their shells (the follicles).  Being a diabetic and taking daily shots of insulin in the tummy, these shots were no big deal.  Looking back now, the medication was always the easiest part of any procedure we ever did.  Its the anticipation of having to take these types of meds that is worse than the actual shot itself.  Then it was IUI day.  Once again, on the specific day we were told, we went to the clinic at an unGodly hour of the morning, and the first thing to do is get the sperm sample.  I should really let Hubby post about this, but what I can tell you, from what he told me, is that it wasn’t so bad.  My darling husband could perform on que, but what was difficult was the forms of assistance sort to speak.  Apparently this clinic thought a Homes and Gardens magazine and a 70’s porno on VHS tape was hot.  Not to get too personal, but it is 2009 at this point, there are hotter sex scenes on “Two and Half Men” with Charlie Sheen’s many girlfriends.  My poor husband was going to have to improvise.  The wives are not allowed to “help.”  I’ve heard some couples actually provide the specimen at home and then carry it to the clinic in a plastic container stuck between their legs or boobs to keep it warm in an attempt to provide a high sperm count sample.  Hysterical, we’ve never done that, but maybe we should have.  Once the sample is provided, they “clean” it.  This is where they put it in a tilt-a-whirl machine and the two-tailed, two-headed, backward swimming, “special” sperm get spun off to the side and you are left with the gladiator sperm.  They are sucked up into a catheter, the catheter goes through the cervix again, and quite literally turkey basted into the uterus.  Lay back for about 10 minutes and go home and wait.  Its that simple.

Now, what is supposed to happen is this.  The many follicles you have from taking all that Clomid are supposed to break open like an egg shell and release their yolks, in this case, a human ovum.  The ovum; well when your on Clomid you have multiple ovum hence John and Kate Plus 8, travel into your unblocked, healthy fallopian tubes where, if the planets are aligned, they will meet up with Hubby’s gladiator sperm.  The sperm have gotten a head start, bypassing the Great Wall of China that is the cervix.  Back to the planets being aligned.  In the fallopian tube is where the magic happens.  One sperm meets one egg, fertilizes, becomes an embryo, and continues to travel down the fallopian tube into the uterus where it is now a blastocyst, and will find a cozy home snuggled into the uterine lining.  This can take up to five days and there are a million things that can go wrong.  First, sperm may completely miss egg, if one of them is late its a no go.  Second, egg may not fertilize normally.  Embryo may get caught in the fallopian tube (ectopic pregnancy), or embryo may make it into the uterus and just not attach.  So many things could go wrong.  Truly the planets must be aligned.  To think this happens at all naturally without any medical assistance, is amazing to me, now that I know what is actually going on in there.

So after 3 Clomid IUIs, and 1 injectable med IUI, and no success, we were ready to move on.  As I said before, the drugs are the least of the challenges in an IUI procedure.  When your that early in the journey to parenthood, just coming to terms with not getting pregnant the old fashioned way, your cup runneth over with hope.  I just felt like I needed this little push to get pregnant and it would happen.  When the first one failed I was devastated, collapsed in an empty office at work, but I also didn’t really expect it to work the first time.  So I picked myself up rather quickly and regained my strength and hope and tried again.  I had more expectation the second time, more hope, which made the second failure worse.  It doesn’t get easier with time or with practice or with more experience.  It gets worse.  That’s the part so many “fertiles” don’t understand, we don’t gain strength as we move on, we lose it.  We often realize we had some reserve of strength hiding somewhere inside us and we are unwilling to give up, but a piece of us dies with every failure.  We push forward every time, yes, but don’t confuse that with strength, that’s not strength, because the last thing we feel is strong.  I picture it like climbing a hill.  You start off with a steady pace at the bottom of the hill, and by the time you reach the top your breathing heavy, sweating, exhausted, and clearly weak.  It is not strength.  It is motherhood.  That is a completely different drive.  Your strength tank is empty, you’re weaker than you’ve ever been, but motherhood is the reserve that keeps you going.  You know you’re a mother long before you ever have children.  You can feel them, you already know them, you can picture what they look like in your mind, they are already there.  It’s your motherhood that helps you fight to bring them to you, not strength.  God gives you strength, your husband gives you strength, your friends and family give you strength.  Motherhood is that thing you always have inside you, that no one can give you, that you tap into to keep you going.