- Share This Post
- 0
- submit
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
I have had many requests to write about my IVF experience. It is hard to put myself back in that place, particularly with two 14-month-olds zooming around, but I will give it a shot. I hope it gives hope to those of you out there trying.
I pressed the tip of the needle against the upper area of my left butt cheek.
“C’mon, Parrott,” I whispered, willing myself to push the needle in. I felt annoyed at myself that this time was no easier than the last two weeks of nightly injections. I took a deep breath and held it, jabbing the needle in only a centimeter or so. I liked to take this process slowly, reasoning with myself that if I pushed the needle in slowly, it would hurt a lot less than that sudden jolt of hot, breathtaking pain I felt when a nurse jabbed it in my butt like it was a Shish Kabob.
Get past the pain…just a little further…it will stop hurt…
“OW!” My fingers yanked the needle out of my ass cheek.
I realized I was still holding my breath and forced myself to intake air in small, shallow increments. I stared at the drop of blood that was forming where the needle had abruptly left my skin. My bathroom door was wide open and I lost my train of thought for the moment, feeling the stinging of the unsuccessful needle attempt. Cows bellowed in the farm fields below our neighborhood. They sounded mournful, annoyed, and alarmed all at once. I thought of the coyotes that wake me in the middle of the night and the large, chewed on animal bones I find in the field where I walk our dogs. The cows’ communication with each other was muffled by the 15 or so landscape waterfalls that pepper everybody’s front yard on our street. They make it sound like we all have charming babbling brooks in our fenced-in yards. Children screamed up and down the streets as usual and cars roared down I-90 in the distance.
Children. My thoughts refocused on my butt. Children were, after all, why I was subjecting myself to this form of self-torture. I took an alcohol swab and carefully wiped the blood from the needle mark and swept it over a new target zone. My backside was littered with needle marks. Between the bruises and marks on my bottom, my stomach- another drug zone, and both arm veins (which now literally spewed my blood like a geyser, the result of overabuse), I placed my index finger and thumb on the plunger in order to easily inject the progesterone through the barrel. I took another stab at it. I always knew when the jab would "take"; it was when I wouldn’t hit a nerve or too sore a spot. This was a go. I winced as I pushed the needle to my personal comfort depth. It was not the depth the nurses would go, but since my bloodwork always came back A-ok, I figured it was sufficient. As slowly as I put it in did I pull it out, quickly swabbing the stinging area of my butt with alcohol and putting a bandage over my pinprick wound. The needle canister was overflowing but I managed to squeeze this needle in with its buddies.
Children. My husband and I had struggled for years to wrap our minds 100% around the thought of becoming parents. Most of the time, we enjoyed the DINKS with dogs lifestyle we led. We ate out more often than we ate in, enjoyed expensive bottles of wine whenever we felt like it, and took little weekend trips in the outlying areas of wherever we lived. We would ask each other “Do you want kids or should we just….?” Leaving it open to interpretation or not, fantasizing about what we would do without kids. It always came back to the fact that we felt God wanted us to try one more time.
The first time had not worked out in our favor. The first time we only had one lonely little blastocyst left in its petri dish and our doctor decided to wait until day 6 to transfer it. Grrrrr. The first time was devastating for me. I cried for months after it didn’t work, although I tried and most of the time succeeded in pretending I didn’t care. I even received the call while I was getting my hair cut. My former stylist (a male with his own kid) knew I was waiting for
