Letter from Fertility-Land

A few weeks ago I had a Little Fertility Breakdown.  Let me explain.  Once you're 35, you're supposed to go get checked out if you have been trying to get pregnant for 6 months, and haven't yet.  It has something to do with the quality of your eggs decreasing every 6 months, but really, it's designed to frighten you into the fertility specialist's office.  Am I bitter?  A little.

So there I sit, in the Loma Linda Center for Fertility and IVF, filling out paperwork, looking at all the other women around me, who also seem to be having trouble getting pregnant, or carrying a pregnancy.  Weird, how normal they look.  I always imagined people who couldn't conceive would have a sign on their forehead or something, but nope, these women look perfectly nice and healthy.

I get a check up, an ultrasound, and then the doctor orders a bunch of tests to check for things like the follicle stimulating hormone, my ovarian reserves, and other things that make no sense to me.  But here's the thing: my insurance doesn't cover anything fertility-related.  So I go to get the blood work, and find out that it's going to cost nearly $1500, just for blood tests.  My gut was telling me to leave and figure it out later, but the thing is, you're supposed to go on certain days of your cycle, and if you miss it, then you've got to wait for the next cycle, and I was afraid to leave, overcome with the sense of urgency that was instilled in me.

But my gut won, and we left.  It was all a bit traumatic, because I was at the same hospital where I delivered Baby T, and the whole thing was just overly emotional.  I don't want to have to take blood tests to have a baby.  I just want a freaking baby.  Why am I doing all of this, I wondered?  Why are we putting ourselves through all these tests?  There are babies in the world who need parents...why are we putting ourselves through all this mess when we could adopt one of them?  So we decided, after a lot of crying and deep breathing, to chill out about the whole thing.  We'll keep trying, but we'll also check out adoption, and try to just chill about it all.

A few weeks later and the doctors call me telling me that my OB/GYN can order most of the tests, and it will be covered by insurance because they can do it under a recurrent miscarriage workup (never thought I'd be happy for having had recurrent miscarriages).  So on Day 3 of my cycle I go back and get about 8 vials of blood drawn, and the results are starting to trickle in now.  

The best news is that I found out that my ovarian reserves are very good (yay!).  I think this means that I still have a lot of eggs.  So I don't have to freak out about my biological clock so much, and we can continue on the Path of Chillaxation.  That makes me so happy.  I had this feeling that we had to get pregnant like yesterday, or else it wasn't going to happen.  And the feeling would go up into my chest and before you knew it, I'd be hyperventilating in full Panic Attack mode.  So knowing that I still have good eggs left is a serious relief, and will go a long way towards helping me relax about the whole thing.

In fact, maybe we'll even skip trying for a couple of cycles so that I can get rip-roaring drunk in London in a few weeks.  I'm jonesing for a night out at Heaven, the gay bar under Charing Cross station, dancing on tables, losing every one of my inhibitions, and pretending that I'm 24 again.  Ahh, to be throwing up in the alley outside of a club again, house music swirling around inside my brains, peeing my pants and then falling asleep on the ground waiting for a cab.....those were the days....