no fear

This is a story about the day I walked into my current fertility clinic to begin the journey to IVF. The day I had waited for for months.The fertility clinic in our home town wasn't doing it for me. I felt like a number, I felt like a chore. I didn't feel that my opinions mattered or were even considered - I just needed to shut up and do what the doctor told me.

No thanks.

I approached my husband very carefully about the idea of switching clinics. We'd spent quite a few dolla dolla bills on treatment at our current clinic, and to him, all seemed fine. But in my gut, I knew I wanted to try somewhere else before we moved from IUI to IVF. So being the thorough gal I am, I did my research. I printed out the live birth rates of the clinic in town and the clinic in Colorado I wanted to try. There was a nearly 20% difference in live births between the two. 

That is massive.

In addition, I calculated how much one round of IVF would cost at home, and how much it would cost in Colorado with travel included. It was about a $6,000 difference, which is no small potatoes. But when you're already spending $40k, what's another 6 for a 20% higher chance of success?

My ego loves to think that my research and carefully crafted speech is what convinced Hubs to go for it, but my ego is full of it. Hubs will do whatever it takes to make me happy, and if flying to Colorado is what's going to do it, he'll sign on the dotted line. 

If we get a baby out of it, even better.

The day finally came for our "one day workup" in Colorado. That's just fancy shmancy speak for "we're going to poke a lot of holes in you and look up your hoo ha a lot. Oh, and Hubs gets to make love to a plastic cup."

All new patients at this clinic who are participating in IVF go to a one hour "class" before they begin their work up. This class is meant to give you a bird's eye view of what is coming down the road. The class began at 7:00 AM.

Hubs and I pulled our rental car into the parking lot at 6:40. Because preparedness.

We were the first to arrive, so we had the conference room all to ourselves. We were instructed to go in, relax, and wait for the other couples. I had been nervous/excited the entire night prior when we flew into the airport, but now I was really feeling something new.

Fear.

We pulled open the glass doors to the conference room and stepped inside. It was a large rectangular room, with the requisite wood table in the middle, a projection screen against the wall, and several boxes of tissue boxes perched on the table. Standard stuff.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, I started shaking, unable to catch my breath. Tears streamed down my face. My poor husband. He had no clue what was wrong. Was I getting cold feet? Did I want to go home? After all, this is what I wanted, what I begged us to do!

I stood there, crying, and couldn't take the thoughts floating around in my head and put them into my mouth.

How did we get here?

Four years ago when this all started, I never thought it would go this far. I made jokes after the first year saying, "well, maybe I'll just have to do that thing where they take the egg out and cook it in the microwave!" I joked about it, because I didn't think I'd ever get there.

Four years ago, if you had told me that Hubs and I would be going to go to Colorado for potentially two weeks in 2014, I would have said, "Shit, what contest did we win?" Never would I imagine that it would be for this.

And yet there I was. In a conference room I shouldn't be in. It shouldn't have come to this. It should have been easy to get pregnant, because we're good people. We deserve to be parents to our own biological children. We deserve to have something tangible grow from the love we have for each other.

Why the feck is this happening? Why do we have to do this?

And what if it doesn't work? In that moment, I was completely crippled with fear that IVF wouldn't work...and then where would we be?

Hubs put me in a much needed bear hug and softly reminded me that this is necessary. With infertility, if you're not moving forward, you're standing still. If we want a child, this is what has to happen. We made it this far, and we have to keep pushing on. Past the fear, past the anxiety. Forward.

And so we did. We pushed on and made it through the day. A lot of information went in my ears, but I don't know how much of it stuck in my brain. It didn't matter though, because I left feeling hopeful. I left feeling glad we came, and my husband's thoughts echoed my own.

Forward. Always forward.

Our journey is finally beginning. We just have to have the dedication to see it through.