The Wrong Information, Choosing a Path, Looking Forward
Month three of our window came and went. No baby.
"Here's your referral. These are the two clinics we recommend you call."
I went home in a daze. We'd failed. We weren't even parents yet and already we were drowning in our failure.
April came and went. I didn't call.
May came, and we talked. We had a lot going on, work to do at the house, jobs, life. It was time for a break. I was done tracking, timing, stressing. I'd call the clinic. Eventually.
We decided it was time to stop putting everything else on hold. If I wanted to do something, we were no longer not scheduling things "in case I was 8 months pregnant" or "in case we have a newborn" if those events were months in the future. We were done being in this constant, painful waiting. This stasis was crap, and we were OVER IT!
We adopted two dogs. Yes, two. Because we're insane, and anything worth doing is worth overdoing. And yeah, we knew if I got pregnant right after that, things would get complicated, and fast. But we didn't care. We were done waiting. The house was too quiet, too empty, too barren.
So, we decided to focus on the dogs, on our lives, on what we were doing on a daily basis. And we decided we couldn't just keep a mostly-empty room in the house waiting for a baby in it. It had been a year since we started trying, and two years in the house. It was time to put some other furniture and stuff in the room. And if we had to redecorate again in a few months, well, so be it. I couldn't keep walking past that empty room every day. It was just too painful.
The summer came and went, and when September rolled around, I knew it was time. I knew I had to get off my ass and move forward. To go on to the next steps. We did our best to enjoy not tracking, not constantly scheduling our entire lives around my potential ovulation window. But it was still hard. I still thought about it constantly, even while I was busy, even while the rest of our lives moved on, even while focusing on taking care of our new fur babies. I still played the what if game every damned day. It was still exhausting. It was better. But it still wasn't awesome. Not being at the doctor's office every couple of weeks was nice. I felt like my body was maybe my own again. At least for a little while. Relax, everyone had said, just stop trying. Have fun!
We tried. We really tried. And it didn't work. For almost four months, we had sex whenever and however we wanted. We didn't worry about having it too much or too little or at the right time. We didn't worry about lying flat in bed afterward for a minimum of ten minutes. We just... were. And it didn't do us any good.
"You know," my honey said to me one September evening, "If December hadn't been an almost, we'd be holding our baby right now."
I broke.
I know I'd probably had the same thought. But hearing him say it... It was like I couldn't breathe. He was right. If I hadn't taken the pregnancy test exactly when I did, we never would have known that I might be pregnant. But we did know. We knew, and now we also knew that if we hadn't lost the little zygote, we would be parents already.
I called the clinic the next day.
The staff at the clinic was phenomenal. Kind. Patient. They called the insurance company for me. They went through every ICD-10 code they had on the lists of tests, of prescriptions, of treatments. 90% of things were covered (after deductible) - which of course was the OPPOSITE of what the insurance company told me. They swore up and down that the employer did not participate in this type of coverage. Not at all. Nothing. Not the office visits, not the tests, NOTHING that was coded for infertility.
Turns out that wasn't the case. I was... livid.
Four months. It took me four months to work up the courage for the next steps, to open ourselves up to what was going to be a hell of a financial burden. Four months that we didn't have to go things alone. Sure, four months I would have been poked and prodded. Four months of more agonizing trying. But... what if we'd missed our opportunity? What if I'd been on extra meds those four months? What if I could have already been two or three or even four months pregnant? What if... what if... what if...
We'd taken the time off. We'd needed it. I know we did. But I was still plagued by what-ifs? Had we taken the wrong path? The guilt gnawed at me.
The new doctor sent my body through another round of invasive testings. The internal sonograms, the post-coital exam, a dozen vials of blood. And the drug cocktail - more vitamins, more supplements, Clomid instead of Letrozole. Four appointments in as many weeks. Time off from work. More time from work. Back to a schedule, but at least no more of those expensive useless predictor kits.
The doctor's reassurances that we're good, we've got healthy stuff, we're young (ish) - we should be able to be relatively conservative, and get a successful pregnancy.
The first month of the new regimen flies by. There's indicators on tests that I ovulated. WOOHOOO! The sperm is getting where it needs to be WOOHOO!
Oh, we want to put a camera in your uterus and take a look around... Woooooo. NOPE.
The room spins, the queasy slide of my stomach makes me cringe. You want to put a what in WHERE?
"Next month, if you're not pregnant this cycle, we'll have to go have a look around."
Great. Another time clock. Another "if you don't get pregnant RIGHT NOW, we're going to do more horrible things to you."
And back on the Merry-Go-Round of Horror we go.
"Here's your referral. These are the two clinics we recommend you call."
I went home in a daze. We'd failed. We weren't even parents yet and already we were drowning in our failure.
April came and went. I didn't call.
May came, and we talked. We had a lot going on, work to do at the house, jobs, life. It was time for a break. I was done tracking, timing, stressing. I'd call the clinic. Eventually.
We decided it was time to stop putting everything else on hold. If I wanted to do something, we were no longer not scheduling things "in case I was 8 months pregnant" or "in case we have a newborn" if those events were months in the future. We were done being in this constant, painful waiting. This stasis was crap, and we were OVER IT!
We adopted two dogs. Yes, two. Because we're insane, and anything worth doing is worth overdoing. And yeah, we knew if I got pregnant right after that, things would get complicated, and fast. But we didn't care. We were done waiting. The house was too quiet, too empty, too barren.
So, we decided to focus on the dogs, on our lives, on what we were doing on a daily basis. And we decided we couldn't just keep a mostly-empty room in the house waiting for a baby in it. It had been a year since we started trying, and two years in the house. It was time to put some other furniture and stuff in the room. And if we had to redecorate again in a few months, well, so be it. I couldn't keep walking past that empty room every day. It was just too painful.
The summer came and went, and when September rolled around, I knew it was time. I knew I had to get off my ass and move forward. To go on to the next steps. We did our best to enjoy not tracking, not constantly scheduling our entire lives around my potential ovulation window. But it was still hard. I still thought about it constantly, even while I was busy, even while the rest of our lives moved on, even while focusing on taking care of our new fur babies. I still played the what if game every damned day. It was still exhausting. It was better. But it still wasn't awesome. Not being at the doctor's office every couple of weeks was nice. I felt like my body was maybe my own again. At least for a little while. Relax, everyone had said, just stop trying. Have fun!
We tried. We really tried. And it didn't work. For almost four months, we had sex whenever and however we wanted. We didn't worry about having it too much or too little or at the right time. We didn't worry about lying flat in bed afterward for a minimum of ten minutes. We just... were. And it didn't do us any good.
"You know," my honey said to me one September evening, "If December hadn't been an almost, we'd be holding our baby right now."
I broke.
I know I'd probably had the same thought. But hearing him say it... It was like I couldn't breathe. He was right. If I hadn't taken the pregnancy test exactly when I did, we never would have known that I might be pregnant. But we did know. We knew, and now we also knew that if we hadn't lost the little zygote, we would be parents already.
I called the clinic the next day.
The staff at the clinic was phenomenal. Kind. Patient. They called the insurance company for me. They went through every ICD-10 code they had on the lists of tests, of prescriptions, of treatments. 90% of things were covered (after deductible) - which of course was the OPPOSITE of what the insurance company told me. They swore up and down that the employer did not participate in this type of coverage. Not at all. Nothing. Not the office visits, not the tests, NOTHING that was coded for infertility.
Turns out that wasn't the case. I was... livid.
Four months. It took me four months to work up the courage for the next steps, to open ourselves up to what was going to be a hell of a financial burden. Four months that we didn't have to go things alone. Sure, four months I would have been poked and prodded. Four months of more agonizing trying. But... what if we'd missed our opportunity? What if I'd been on extra meds those four months? What if I could have already been two or three or even four months pregnant? What if... what if... what if...
We'd taken the time off. We'd needed it. I know we did. But I was still plagued by what-ifs? Had we taken the wrong path? The guilt gnawed at me.
The new doctor sent my body through another round of invasive testings. The internal sonograms, the post-coital exam, a dozen vials of blood. And the drug cocktail - more vitamins, more supplements, Clomid instead of Letrozole. Four appointments in as many weeks. Time off from work. More time from work. Back to a schedule, but at least no more of those expensive useless predictor kits.
The doctor's reassurances that we're good, we've got healthy stuff, we're young (ish) - we should be able to be relatively conservative, and get a successful pregnancy.
The first month of the new regimen flies by. There's indicators on tests that I ovulated. WOOHOOO! The sperm is getting where it needs to be WOOHOO!
Oh, we want to put a camera in your uterus and take a look around... Woooooo. NOPE.
The room spins, the queasy slide of my stomach makes me cringe. You want to put a what in WHERE?
"Next month, if you're not pregnant this cycle, we'll have to go have a look around."
Great. Another time clock. Another "if you don't get pregnant RIGHT NOW, we're going to do more horrible things to you."
And back on the Merry-Go-Round of Horror we go.
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