How do you feel about multiples?
I wasn't getting any younger, and even though he is a year younger than I am, he was also no spring chicken. So not only did I have baby fever, my clock was ticking and my time was running out. We made numerous jokes about how my eggs were all dried up. Maybe they were scrambled eggs from all the years of birth control and the copious amount of tequila I drank. Jokes about carrying his cell phone in his front pocket for years and using his laptop directly on his lap. Jokes that slowly stopped being funny.
Early in January 2014 we found out that we had a chance to go to Europe. London specifically and we would have time to visit other cities if we so desired. We'd been married eight months by then and decided that we were ready to start 'trying'. I put that in quotes because we really hate that term, yet there isn't a better word. What we did do though, is pull the goalie. I hope I don't really need to explain the metafore, but I will for those of you who may not follow hockey. I went off my birth control so that the puck could go in the net. Capiche?
I was thrilled to be going on vacation, even more excited when we decided that we could visit Paris while we were in Europe. 3 days in London, 2 in Paris and back to London for the last day. Our flight landed on Valentines' Day morning at Heathrow and we had a romantic dinner at an Italian restaurant later that night. It was perfect. Love was in the air! Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in London!?
The morning we left for Paris we almost didn't make it. I misread the time on the train ticket and we got up an hour late. Whoops. And then I discovered once on board the train that I left the envelope with our french sim cards in the hotel. Double whoops. Great possibility that I was hungover that morning. After bludgeoning my way through the purchase of two new sim cards (I sure don't know the term for data plan en francais) we make our way to the hotel. Its just down the street from the Eiffel Tower and over looking the river Seine. I am in heaven. We eat in cafes, we stroll along the river, we go to the top of the tower. And just as it turns to dusk the Tour D'Eiffel lights up a million little yellow bulbs, and little white lights twinkling to the music. It is literally the most romantic night of my life. Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in Paris?!
Weeks passed. Months passed. Our wedding anniversary came and went. Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in Las Vegas?! OK, no not really. Funny maybe, very "us", but I wouldn't call it amazing. Summer came and went. I was tracking my monthly flow and becoming increasingly distraught. I'd gone months at a time without having my period. I made an appointment with our family doctor. He ran a battery of tests: urine samples, blood work, the whole nine yards. He even put me back on the pill to regulate my cycle. (That was particularly devastating to me and I had a good cry about it). The longer I had to be on the pill, the longer it will take to get pregnant. This clock of mine was ticking away. It did regulate for the three months I was on it, but as soon as I went off it, I was back to wonky. December of 2014 was rough, bleeding more days than not. But we weren't pregnant after trying this whole year, so I knew we needed to take the next steps.
I made another appointment with the doctor and basically said,"now what?". He issued more tests. More blood and urine samples from me, and the dreaded one from him. He went, did what he had to do and left. He barely even talked to me about it. Its awkward and embarrassing enough, I won't share any of the details here. We'll just sum it up by saying he wasn't the problem, I was. By now I was charting my ovulation, fertile and not fertile days, taking my temperature before I got out of bed every morning. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, even two different kinds of thermometers. I was determined to make this happen. Two months into charting and monitoring I told the doctor we still weren't pregnant. He referred us to the fertility clinic. He told us to cut back on any drinking we were doing and keep tracking my ovulation. Any time that happy face appears on that stick we needed to stop what we were doing and do it. (Dear readers, sorry for the graphic info and possible mental images, but you don't just get to read the journey with out understanding the rough parts too:) ).
During the spring that year, during all the tests I went through, the doctor had put me on a pill. I took it for 5 days at the beginning of my cycle and it should 'force' ovulation. Clomid is a fairly common prescription given to women who are trying to conceive, and can't, before they go through the process of fertility treatment. I took it diligently. I had check ups frequently and during one of the early ones he asked me "how do you feel about multiples?". I looked him dead in the eye and said "I'll take it". I joked that my husband would probably lose his mind, but twins, triplets, even quadruplets was a risk I was willing to take.
Our wedding anniversary came and went, again. Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in Las Vegas? At this point, yes it would have been an amazing story, because that means it would have actually happened!! Another month passed.
Our friends gave us pointers, yes they did. From "keep your legs in the air" to "saturate" to the standard "stop trying and it will happen" to "just get drunk and hump like rabbits". Ohh...I get it. That's what we'd been doing wrong the whole time! We were sober!! Well shit, our bad. Let's try it again next month.
But we didn't have to. On June 30th 2015, I finally got those two pink lines to appear on a little white stick.
Early in January 2014 we found out that we had a chance to go to Europe. London specifically and we would have time to visit other cities if we so desired. We'd been married eight months by then and decided that we were ready to start 'trying'. I put that in quotes because we really hate that term, yet there isn't a better word. What we did do though, is pull the goalie. I hope I don't really need to explain the metafore, but I will for those of you who may not follow hockey. I went off my birth control so that the puck could go in the net. Capiche?
I was thrilled to be going on vacation, even more excited when we decided that we could visit Paris while we were in Europe. 3 days in London, 2 in Paris and back to London for the last day. Our flight landed on Valentines' Day morning at Heathrow and we had a romantic dinner at an Italian restaurant later that night. It was perfect. Love was in the air! Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in London!?
The morning we left for Paris we almost didn't make it. I misread the time on the train ticket and we got up an hour late. Whoops. And then I discovered once on board the train that I left the envelope with our french sim cards in the hotel. Double whoops. Great possibility that I was hungover that morning. After bludgeoning my way through the purchase of two new sim cards (I sure don't know the term for data plan en francais) we make our way to the hotel. Its just down the street from the Eiffel Tower and over looking the river Seine. I am in heaven. We eat in cafes, we stroll along the river, we go to the top of the tower. And just as it turns to dusk the Tour D'Eiffel lights up a million little yellow bulbs, and little white lights twinkling to the music. It is literally the most romantic night of my life. Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in Paris?!
Weeks passed. Months passed. Our wedding anniversary came and went. Wouldn't it be an amazing story if we conceived our child in Las Vegas?! OK, no not really. Funny maybe, very "us", but I wouldn't call it amazing. Summer came and went. I was tracking my monthly flow and becoming increasingly distraught. I'd gone months at a time without having my period. I made an appointment with our family doctor. He ran a battery of tests: urine samples, blood work, the whole nine yards. He even put me back on the pill to regulate my cycle. (That was particularly devastating to me and I had a good cry about it). The longer I had to be on the pill, the longer it will take to get pregnant. This clock of mine was ticking away. It did regulate for the three months I was on it, but as soon as I went off it, I was back to wonky. December of 2014 was rough, bleeding more days than not. But we weren't pregnant after trying this whole year, so I knew we needed to take the next steps.
I made another appointment with the doctor and basically said,"now what?". He issued more tests. More blood and urine samples from me, and the dreaded one from him. He went, did what he had to do and left. He barely even talked to me about it. Its awkward and embarrassing enough, I won't share any of the details here. We'll just sum it up by saying he wasn't the problem, I was. By now I was charting my ovulation, fertile and not fertile days, taking my temperature before I got out of bed every morning. I bought hundreds of dollars worth of ovulation kits, pregnancy tests, even two different kinds of thermometers. I was determined to make this happen. Two months into charting and monitoring I told the doctor we still weren't pregnant. He referred us to the fertility clinic. He told us to cut back on any drinking we were doing and keep tracking my ovulation. Any time that happy face appears on that stick we needed to stop what we were doing and do it. (Dear readers, sorry for the graphic info and possible mental images, but you don't just get to read the journey with out understanding the rough parts too:) ).
During the spring that year, during all the tests I went through, the doctor had put me on a pill. I took it for 5 days at the beginning of my cycle and it should 'force' ovulation. Clomid is a fairly common prescription given to women who are trying to conceive, and can't, before they go through the process of fertility treatment. I took it diligently. I had check ups frequently and during one of the early ones he asked me "how do you feel about multiples?". I looked him dead in the eye and said "I'll take it". I joked that my husband would probably lose his mind, but twins, triplets, even quadruplets was a risk I was willing to take.
Our friends gave us pointers, yes they did. From "keep your legs in the air" to "saturate" to the standard "stop trying and it will happen" to "just get drunk and hump like rabbits". Ohh...I get it. That's what we'd been doing wrong the whole time! We were sober!! Well shit, our bad. Let's try it again next month.
But we didn't have to. On June 30th 2015, I finally got those two pink lines to appear on a little white stick.
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