Is this funny? It’s funny, right?
I just spent half an hour snorting like a pig at it, then texted it to J, who replied “that is sad”.
It should be noted he is currently helping to make Sharknado 5, which suggests he lacks a refined sense of humour. I’m confident it’s funny.
(It’s by Creating While Waiting)
When I was 10 years old I had a tummy ache. I told my mum, a nurse, who in the grand tradition of medical parents told me to stop being such a drama queen and go to school.
Two months later, after a series of doctorly balls-ups, my appendix ruptured in spectacular style and I spent two weeks in hospital with full-blown peritonitis, vomiting through a Mos Def-style nose tube (though it should be noted I didn’t wail like a little girl when it was being put in. Well, not every time).
Fast forward two decades and it seems that ruptured appendix not only gave me a wicked cool scar (which got me off PE for like two years), but the two surgeries also caused scarring to my fallopian tubes such that they are now both blocked. This is what we discovered after my HSG last week.
Knowing this feels… kind of a relief, actually. I’m glad we know what it is. I’m glad it’s not some vague unexplained infertility, which in my head means endless rounds of unsuccessful IVF.
“Ah,” my mother-in-law nodded when I told her. “Dynorod.” Well, yes. I am going to have a laparoscopy. Which is not, as I thought, a minor procedure, but a full-blown lights, camera, general anaesthetic jobbie.
(I know this because while I was busy digesting the fact I may never have to use contraceptives again – there are some advantages to this infertility malarkey – J had Googled the entire procedure.
“Did you know they puff air into you to separate your skin from your organs?” he asked, glancing over casually).
The procedure, which requires you to take five days off work, is a kind of multi-tool procedure, which will a) make sure the blockages are not the product of the radiologist’s fevered imagination; b) attempt to clear them; c) if they can’t, seal off or remove my tubes to make sure no gross stagnant water (I’m paraphrasing) escapes from them into my uterus, which could be dangerous for any embryo that goes in there.
(I asked the doctor if that was the same as tying my tubes. She looked as though I had deeply offended her. Pretty sure it is though babes.)
After that? IVF, probably. Coupled with PGD, genetic screening of the embryos. I was so determined to do this naturally – but the longer we’ve been trying, the more upset I know I will be if we finally get pregnant, only to lose the baby because of J’s translocation.
Everyone has told me how marvellous all this is. “You can relax! You won’t have take your temperature every morning! You can have normal, non-baby-making sex!”
Yes. But if you don’t know when you’re ovulating, how do you know when to have sex?
I’ve been up since 6am, stress-eating cheese left over from last night’s dinner party, for today is my godson Max’s third birthday party.
This means not only must I endure a room full of three-year-olds (and quite possibly their younger siblings) – but I have to face his other godmother, who Max’s mum awkwardly informed me last week has just had her 12 week scan. Ooof.
My babied-up friends were quick with the quips about how infertility will feel like a blessing once I’ve spent an afternoon in a room full of screaming toddlers jacked up on sugar and boshing e-numbers like they’re, uh, smarties.
But going to events like this and not being part of The Mum Club is hard. Telling self-deprecating stories about little Ottilie’s latest adventures in bed-wetting is how parents bond at these things. It’s all they talk about.
If you tell them you don’t have kids, they laugh and shake their heads and start to reminisce about late nights and being able to be spontaneous. I don’t know how to respond to that, other than suggesting that, if it’s so galling, they just need to say the word and I will whisk little Ottilie home with me, never to be seen again… No, I thought not.
With impeccable timing, this morning my best friend, who lives in Bristol, texted me to ask whether she, her other half and her 18-month-old can stay in a couple of weeks’ time.
I said no.
Turning my oldest and dearest friend down makes me feel deeply, deeply selfish. I can tell she is annoyed at me. But the prospect of a baby (especially one as cute as Ava) sleeping in our spare room, the room in which our baby should be sleeping? That is too painful to bear.
This part of infertility – the social side, if you will – is one of the toughest parts of the whole, horrible fiasco. Babies are everywhere and the older I get, the more of my friends announce their little bundles of joy. I know I have to suck it up – but being faced on a daily basis with the one thing I can’t have makes the pain worse.
In other news, I have my HSG – injecting my uterus with dye and then x-raying it to see if my fallopian tubes are, er, tubular – tomorrow. I am trying my best not to think about it – particularly as, despite it being day 10 of my cycle, I am still spotting slightly. If it’s still going tomorrow, they might not be able to do the test.
So, yeah. Trying not to think about it…
The tired girl's guide to infertility 