Cats, birds, fertility drugs, and bathrooms

“It’s a lot of fun to give yourself fertility injections in public airport bathrooms,” said no one ever. I am just glad I did it on my layover and not in the airplane lavatory. Now that would have been fun. With all the turbulence, I imagine it would have been a bit like pin the tail on the donkey…except with me as the donkey and using an actual pin.

Oddly enough, while googling that image, I also found this little gem:

I am sure it is great fun at baby showers? Also an interesting metaphor for someone doing IUI.

While facetiming with my husband one night on this business trip, my husband expressed his concern regarding the fertility drugs and what they might be doing to my body. Not one to ever actually read anything about IVF, this is just his general distrust of things unnatural. I assured him it would be fine, but did not add anything more to the conversation. My recent reading has lead me to discover some pretty unsettling things about the lack of longitudinal studies and drug oversight when it comes to fertility treatments. It has reaffirmed my decision that this is the last cycle we will do.

Knowing me as well as he does, my husband read a lot into my silence and began bargaining with me. We got up to two new cats and unlimited amounts of birds in cages if I would stop this cycle now. This is pretty significant considering his firm stance on more cats than adults in a house and birds not belonging in cages. I figure, I already have two cycles of crazy drugs running rampant and creating havoc in my body, what’s one last go?

By the end of the night, I was laying in my hotel bed feeling…relieved? Like a weight had been lifted. As if I had permission I wasn’t looking for to stop this cycle, which I have been dreading. The needles, the surgery, the discomfort, and the horrible, horrible rollercoaster of emotions that feels like it will inevitably end in a smoldering ruin after it flies off the track. None of it has to happen. We could be done. I made up my mind that when I got home last night, we would seriously discuss it.

By the time I went to sleep, I was halfway through “Silent Sorority” by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos. When I woke up I knew that I would always wonder “what if” if I didn’t see this final cycle through. I don’t want to be haunted by that, in addition to the little lost embryos that never made it more than a few weeks.