How did I get here?

I am about to embark on my first, and hopefully only, IVF cycle. Do you even know what this is??

Medical version: http://www.communitymedical.org/144.htm

My version: I am pumped full of meds so that the doctor can go in and take out as many eggs as they can get. Hubby spends more time with the Playboy and gives them a sample. My eggs and his soldiers meet in a petri dish. The play together for 5 days hoping that they turn into healthy embryos. Then 2, only 2, are put back into my body.

And then, ta da!!!, I'm pregnant. Okay, that's just wishful thinking. Then I will wait 8 excruciatingly long days to find out if my wishful thinking is correct.

HOW DID I GET HERE?? I swore, I mean crossed my heart and hoped to die SWORE, I would never do IVF. When I learned about IVF all I could think about was something from the SciFi channel and some little freaky science project baby. Oh, the imagination ran wild! The price tag on it was the nail in the coffin. $12,000.00 for a single procedure? Really? I am 25, only 2 years out of college. I don't even have a $12,000.00 car. Everything about IVF in general was a big fat HELL NO!

Flash forward to 8 months of failed oral meds and 3 failed IUI cycles (see previous post for details). I laid in my bed and accepted my fate as someone who will never have a child and spend the rest of my life in misery hoping the next will be better.

As was previously mentioned, this lifestyle got old. I fervently scoured the internet for information on adoption. Wow, was I shocked at what I found! I'll leave you hanging on with suspense as we explore that in another post . . . .

Another roadblock was hit, hard, when we found out adoption wouldn't work for us at this time. I called a therapist and began having frequent appointments where I cried and explained my feelings to a stranger. It helped a little, but not a ton. I then did one of the other things on my list of things I swore I would never do, I called the doctor and got hooked up with some happy pills. I felt like such a cheater! But it was an excellent decision, as my doctor explained, each time I have failed at becoming pregnant is a trauma. She told me it was ridiculous to think that I didn't need the drugs. She also told me that she suffered with infertility for years. I was so thankful for that appointment! On top of that, I joined a support community. It is full of amazing, wonderful, inspiring, and best of all, NORMAL, women going through IVF. They took away all the images I had in my mind of a crazy procedure like this. I was filled with real information, not nonsense that you find on the internet. And many were successful. The excitement started sinking in, that I could have a baby after all these failures!

I made my appointment with a new specialist. The last one was not awesome. He frequently asked me what my name was. I know this might be picky, but I have a standard in life that if you are going to be in my vijay, you need to know what my name is and be able to recognize my face. The first time he came in with my hubby's speciman he put it in my face and asked if that looked right. Holy shit, I'm supposed to recognize my husbands sperm? I made a mental note to explain to Mike that if we have a kid that comes out African American or Asian I swear it was a professional mistake and there were no extracurricular activities involved. Turns out the unobservant specialist didn't show me the side of the vial with the label on it. Yeah . . . .

The new specialist is amazing! She hugged me when I walked in and we had a great chat. They spent tons of time explaining everything. We met everyone involved, the IVF coordinator, the nurse, the embryologist, the business manager. It was so bizarre, after all the doubts I had about ever doing something like this, we didn't even have to go home and talk about it. We left smiling and confident and definitely ready to give this a shot!

I feel so full of hope for the first time in a really long time! I am in the very beginning stages, which for me is taking birth control pills. Birth control pills while trying to get pregnant, hmm . . . . What it is doing for me is giving my ovaries a rest before I am pumped full of the aforementioned drugs.

So here we go . . . .