Val's getting to be That Age where people find it reasonable to ask if we're Thinking About Having Another. Perhaps because Val is oh so very excellent that it seems natural that we'd want another child just like her, or perhaps because now that she's past that adorable baby phase, we'd want to return to that phase sometime soon, giving up our largely-uninterruped sleep and augmenting the joys of our 99% potty-trained child with a wee child who doesn't sleep much and who blows through diapers at a ridiculously fast rate.
Until now, I didn't have a good answer for this question because 1. I find it kind of rude/personal (note: I find virtually all questions of a personal nature rude/too personal to be asked of aquaintences so this could be just me.) and 2. because we have indeed thinking very very fucking hard about this question since late last year when on a whim we headed up to San Francisco, to once again grace the Hallowed Halls of Sperm Distribution and just see what happens.
What's happened so far is 8 cycles of nothing and about $10,000 (that is the correct amount of zeros) spent, er, wasted, in what's becoming a very fruitless effort.
Considering that it took us 3 cycles to conceive Val, this makes no goddamn sense to me. And every. single. failure. breaks my heart all over again. Each time is a whole different set of pain, it's hard to explain but it sucks, it just fucking sucks.
At this point, you may be thinking 'well, you have Val, and she's quite swell. Just be happy you have her.' And I assure you, we are very very much happy, no, thrilled to have Val. But (and there's always a but) there's this empty seat at our table that needs to be filled, there's room in our hearts for two kids and goddamn it, we'd like to use up every inch of that room on two kids. I see Val playing by herself at home and I think, yes, this is fine, just fine, but it'd be even nicer if she had someone else to play with and be irritated by.
Plus, I'm always looking for an excuse to buy another carseat.
You may also be thinking of your friends, or friends who also struggled with this and eventually had some cathartic moment that allowed them to 'relax' and poof! They got pregant.
Those stories are really nice, especially if your sex life regularly involves sperm. But, um, ours doesn't so that sort of leaves us with charting, temping, ultrasounds, oral medications and really painful shots in the ass. And as you can imagine, it's really hard to relax when you're on an exam table, tilted backwards, holding on so you don't slide off backwards for an ultrasound because your ovaries, which at one time in the not-so-distant past worked overtime to help create a little girl who is just fucking amazing, well, those ovaries no longer seem to be up to the job. Add in the fact that our sperm donor has long stopped donating, that we own/have wasted much of what's left already and the pressure just adds up.
If we didn't have Val already, we'd likely have switched to a different donor. But I'm so not wanting to do that.
I do not see how it's possible to have that happen and be able to 'just relax'.
We've been trying for so long that Val now has a bit of a ritual at the sperm bank. She ransacks the drawers, removing a giant swab (think of a q-tip on steriods) then after we're done runs around this open area outside the bathrooms waving the swab like it's a baton. She also likes to point out 'Mommy's parts!' which is a real hoot for all of us. Add to that the fact that my innards seem to have moved around since Val -- did you know this routinely happens after you have a kid? Maybe you wouldn't, unless you need to have a tiny catheter threaded up your junk in order to make a baby. Because if that's how you have to try, you might find yourself in the company of a well-meaning nurse practitioner with limited social skills who Cannot Find The Right Spot To Save Her Life and eventually feels the need to admonish me for being so difficult. We ended that attempt by her asking Andrea if she wanted to admire the 'cute cervix.' Pretty fucking swell, considering that 'cute cervix' was mine and I was already in pain from the many minutes of poking and prodding I'd had to endure to get to that point. No, I said, please, just remove that speculum now, if you don't mind.
One amazing thing that's happened during all of this is that Andrea's company got bought by the Evil Empire. And you know what? The Evil Empire has fucking kickass insurance. So much so that THEY COVER THE PURCHASE OF FROZEN SPERM. Nobody does this. 75% of the money we've spent has been on that shit and here comes EE with their amazing insurance, insurance considers frozen sperm a 'supply.' Thank the Jesus for this. It also covers a shitload of infertility services, including IVF, another thing that nobody seems to cover.
So, given that this magic new insurance has arrived in our lives and given that attempt #8 was a bust, we're taking some time off. Later this year, we'll hit the House Of Infertility Treatment at the Giant University up the road, we'll use our amazing insurance to cover whatever they have in store for my womanly parts and, God willing, we will, at some point have another child.
But for the moment, we're taking a break and trying to pay down the bigass bill we've run up so far. And yes, crying a lot.
I won't be posting when our next efforts resume. Last time around it was way too hard to have people asking me how it was going, the final straw was when our goalie asked if I'd been 'inseeeminated.' I'm hoping to avoid all such questions now so vagueness is the best protection against that.
I had so hoped to post this along with a cute little annoucement about how Val's going to be a Big Sister next year but that's just not in the cards. Instead I'll tell you that this post was brought to you by Tampax, Advil and Kleenex.
Labels: infertility, what's wrong with my junk?
4 Comments:
Bah. I am sorry things aren't working out the way you wanted. I know more than my fair share of people on the procreation rollercoaster and it is just a bitch of a ride. I have no advice, only sympathy.
Amber
AmFam
3:49 PM
That totally sucks. I'm sorry. :(
4:41 PM
We've been down that road and I hear you 100%. It sucks.
7:27 PM
Oh, Liz, I'm so sorry, sweetie.
When we were "shooting wads of wasted money up my who-ha with no success," we slowly stopped telling people, too. It helped.
hugs to you, and take the time, and the route you need, and Andrea's insurance kicks ASS, and I'd say go for the gold - go for IVF, and do it till it works.
And the asshats that make rude comments? well, just tell them to bugger off, your uterus is your bizness.
12:58 PM
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