RITES OF PASSAGE FOR THE FERTILE, PART 2: THE CUTESY PREGNANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

So had an idea for a Part 2 after all.

I find out that new people are pregnant every day. Every. Single. Day. Of my life. I pass my neighbor on the sidewalk, and there's a bump. I receive apologetic emails from my tenderhearted friends who have no idea how to tell me (I don't know the best way either, I'm afraid). But mostly I see announcements on Facebook, often issued with some amount of cutesiness.

Had I turned out to be fertile, I probably would have done something like this. But now I just don't see it ever happening, even if we someday manage to force the miracle of conception. For one, it feels like doing so would put me in a club where I have never belonged, and second, I know the pain and displeasure these announcements have caused me as a psychopathic infertile woman.

However, the other day my friend shared the below pregnancy announcement with me, and even though I barely know the girl who wrote it, tears were streaming down my face -- it was so honest, beautiful and modest:

It's FB official: We Are Pregnant! Baby X is due March 21.

On a personal note, I want to share that our journey would not be possible without God's miracle of modern medicine. We went through IVF and the ups and downs that come with it. For the 3 ladies who have shared this fertility journey at the same time, thank you for your support. Without being able to share with you, I can't how I would have gotten through. For my family and friends that have listened to our fears, wiped our tears and celebrated our success, thank you. The depth of your support continues to amaze us. We are so blessed, God is so good.

I share the personal for a reason: if you are going through fertility issues, please feel free to call me anytime. A support system makes all the difference between feeling alone/crazy/frustrated and a finding a little bit of joy/peace.

Someday I can see myself making an announcement like that. Somehow, I continue to be very hopeful that I will.

P.S. I don't know the people in the above photo. I think the girl's shoes are really cute, and the guy's pants are strangely baggy.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING ...

1. We didn't attend the gender-reveal party. We went for a run instead. I saw on Facebook they are having a girl.

2. We were able to start our first treatment cycle last month. I took Letrozole orally, and Philip administered an injection of hamster hormones in my stomach. He was very nervous, but did just fine.

3. We didn't get pregnant. I cried bitterly and panicked that I will never be a mother. Then I went back to the doctor to get another $150 ultrasound, as well as new prescriptions for Letrozole and hamster hormones. Maybe I should just call them Ovidrel; it sounds less horrifying that way.

STEP AWAY FROM THE IPAD

Don't let my husband leave town for a business trip. I skip dinner, don't make the bed for days and stay up till 1 a.m. sobbing over strangers' infertility blogs. Yeesh.

AN APOLOGY

Dear front-desk person at the fertility clinic,

I’m sorry I was rude toward you on Sunday morning. You see, it was 9 a.m., and already a transvaginal wand had been probing around my desolate uterus. And now, you won’t allow me to make an appointment for a follicular scan on Monday, because Monday is a holiday, and I am frustrated because certain steps need to be taken on certain days, and my ovaries don’t celebrate Labor Day.

I tried to tell you in a nice way that when I was on the phone with the nurse a few days ago, she specifically instructed me to make an appointment for the morning of Labor Day, because I will be out of town the day before. But then you looked at me with a withering stare that said, “Your travel plans are not my problem,” and I may have lost my temper with you a bit. Or went totally berserk, it’s hard to say.

I must admit, your attitude was less than stellar, but going into work to deal with sad, desperate infertiles is probably not your favorite thing to do on a Sunday morning. And you are not alone. The rest of your staff, for the most part, is equally brusque, checked out or clueless.

I’ve been called the wrong name by a doctor I’ve never seen before while laying on my back in a surgical suite, bare vag to the sky, in order to have dye pumped through my fallopian tubes. I’ve had a plebotomist complain to me about her kids while drawing my blood. I’ve been confused by the patient coordinator, barked at by your finance department, overwhelmed by handouts, and forced to ask the nurse exactly when to have “timed relations” while sitting in my office cubicle on the phone.

For all this, I’m paying your clinic hundreds of dollars. And we’re only just beginning.

We were hoping for answers, but instead I got a prescription for a breast-cancer drug that’s being prescribed off-label, because your employer can’t really figure out what’s wrong with us. And standing before you, begging you to schedule me an appointment to have my follicles checked, is not something I ever, in a million years, imagined myself doing. Yet there I was.

So you’ll have to forgive me that I lost my temper. If you had let me schedule the appointment, I could rest assured that everything would be on track for Philip to shoot me up with a syringe full of hormones in 11 days. That is all I want in life right now. ALL. I. WANT. And you were standing in my way. So I got upset.

But I recognize that you were just trying to do your job, and my infertility is not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. There’s no one to be mad at, so I got mad at you, which isn’t fair. I apologize. I promise it won’t happen again. At least not as long as someone else is manning the front desk the next time I come in.

Sincerely,

Erika