“Infertility Unplugged:” the Outtakes

In case you were wondering, a cheeseburger in paradise is way more fun than a progesterone shot. (My husband and I, pre-IVF days, at Stanley’s on the island of Tortola.)

Last week, in Happy Birthday, Boys: “Infertility Unplugged” by the Numbers I wrote about my husband’s and my infertility experience from a mathematical point-of-view.  This week,  I turn to the lighter side.  It’s hard to believe, even years later, that some aspects of infertility could actually make anyone laugh.  And I wish I could have at the time; laughter is great therapy.   But better late than never, right?  So here are some of the absurd instances in our infertility journey:

~“The Folly of the Pharmacy.”  Pharmacology was the toughest class I took in school.  Anyone who can get a PhD in the topic has my respect…most of the time.  In my 20’s a pharmacy screwed up my birth control prescription twice, as if willing an accidentally pregnancy at a time my husband and I weren’t ready to start a family.  Then we were unable to conceive when we felt emotionally and financial stable.  When my doctor prescribed Clomid to help me ovulate, a different pharmacy decided to mess with us:  my prescription came in a container without a childproof cap.  Oh, it had a lid…of the screw top variety.  Really?  Prescription for clomid=child-free home?  I should have complained.

~“The Poly-Pharmacy.”  At one point this was my drug regiment:

a steroid (taken four times a day, with food)

an antibiotic (also taken four times a day..with the steroid to keep it easy, right?  Wrong.  It had to be taken on an empty stomach.)

prenatal vitamin (you know, in case…), taken, also, on an empty stomach. Not even with other medicines, so I needed a different empty stomach from the one that had dibs on the antibiotic.

Estrogen!  (Need I say more?)

Progesterone shot…scary large-bore needle in the butt.  Every. Day.  And I could not, not, summon the courage to give it to myself. Shove a needle the size of a pencil into my thigh?  No, thanks.  (It became my husband’s job…and once, my mother-in-law’s.)  The silver lining? I could take it with food, with any other medicine and with or without my sanity.

~“What’s That on Your Face???!”  Not lunch. (I could have been so lucky.) Hives.  No one in our infertility specialist’s office could explain why it was, when I subconsciously scratched my face (or arm or any other part of my body), that a raised, fleshy mark was left behind.  I could have scratched my name on my forehead, which, had the circumstances been otherwise, I would have actually tried.  It was terribly embarrassing to enter a patient room when I was on duty, only for the person on the exam table to to ask me what was wrong.  If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me, “OMG, what’s on your FACE?!” I could have paid for another IVF cycle.

~“I Conceived at a Jimmy Buffett Concert.”  Well, not really.  (Not like that.)  After my husband gave me my requisite progesterone shot in the car in the venue’s parking lot, saying weirder things have surely happened at a JB concert, my baby boys likely implanted.  No kidding.  Because three days before, we had our fourth and final embryo transfer.  After the procedure we were told if we were to become pregnant, it would happen in three to five days.  Thus babies first visit to Margaritaville.

And to this day, my boys (and my daughter), love “Fins,” “Jolly Mon,” and my daughter’s namesake song.  An Ex (?) Utero concert is in their future.