People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm...and In Vitro Fertilization

Hey Nugget,

Strap in for a long one.

Lots and lots of things have to go right for you to come out ready to drop Blue Steel on everyone. It's a journey and we had a long, expensive one to get where we are today. Nobody knows that more than your mama. She's had to bear the brunt of the duties, carrying you around in her belly, getting wands shoved in what you'd typically prefer to be wand-free zones, countless needle sticks, and the fear that goes along with wondering if all the efforts are ever going to pay off. Or, worse, going through everything and having them not pay off, which has happened a couple times now.

We waited until we were married to try having you. Lots of people wait until they're married to have kids because that's what their religion tells them to do. We didn't have that problem because the Flying Spaghetti Monster just wants you to be a decent human being. Well, that and to eat a lot of pasta. No, ours was more of an Uncle Sam issue. Having a baby is expensive business and I wasn't about to pay out of pocket for $200 Advil or get surprised with an extra $2,000 because the anesthesiologist decided to bring a resident along without asking. We wanted to be insured to help with costs and access to quality health care, ultimately ensuring you'd come out poppin' and lockin' with the best of them. Which is also why I play Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo for you every night once your mama falls asleep. Sometimes I mix in classic clips of Rerun too.






But back to how you came to be...

We got married almost five years ago. We kicked off our efforts during the honeymoon. I won't go into details but maybe this American Medical Association graphic will help explain it.


I know that's a very scientific explanation but some day you'll understand.

So during that first month we got pregnant! It was very exciting. Especially since we waited so long to meet each other and get ourselves into position to start trying. There's this pesky little problem where it becomes harder to have children as you get older. We weren't getting any younger, buddy. It was go time.

As the first trimester comes to a close you can begin telling family and friends with more confidence because the statistics will tell you that your risk for miscarriage drops considerably. Well, during the 11th week we had some concerns that something wasn't right. With a couple trips booked for the coming weeks we decided it was best to lay our concerns to rest with a visit to the doctor. In heartbreaking fashion, because we felt like we were only a week away from locking in that baby, we found out the baby stopped growing around 6 weeks. We just didn't see the symptoms until week 11.

There's nothing that can prepare you for that kind of news. It's a special kind of devastation.

In the coming days, weeks, and months, we learned that maybe there were fibroids causing the problem. That would suck to find out, but in a way it could have given us something to hold on to as a reason for the miscarry. Meaning, next time we'd be fine because we could remove them. Ultimately they proved to be harmless and we left with no reason for our bad pregnancy luck.

After the proper recovery time we were ready to give it another go. In fact, with how quickly we got pregnant the first time we thought for sure it'd be easy.

Then I was laid off work.

A year later I was still looking and we'd cashed out everything we had to stay afloat. Family and friends came to the rescue at necessary times and we just couldn't even think about trying to get pregnant without insurance or income.

Enter your dad's new job and a brand spanking new insurance plan some 16 months after the layoff and 20 months since the miscarry. It was time to start mashing privates with a purpose (OB/GYN term) again. We were confident it would happen quickly.

Over the next 8 months we carefully watched the calendar, trying our best to get our grind on at all the appropriate times. Maximizing our chances for conception was the name of the game and boy did we play alllll the positions. Ughhhhhh.

Sorry, Nugget. Got a little off track there. Where was I?

Oh yeah...

Here are some things that we tried:

• Hoisting legs up in the air. As if gravity was our only problem. GET. DOWN. THERE. YOU. STUPID. SPERMS!
• Pillow under the butt. Another gravity-based adjustment to our typical efforts that did nothing more than look dumb.
• Special Positions. You know, because of the angle of the dangle (common anatomy phrase).
• Lik-m-Stiks. Supposedly you can lick a small lipstick-like tube and then hold it up to your eye, like a jeweler inspecting a diamond, revealing a certain type of go-time crystallization that means start Marvin Gaye on repeat and get to work.
• iPhone apps. Those are basically just calculators for math you can do in your head.
• Yelling at the belly. This was my idea. "You WILL become a baby! I WON'T SAY IT AGAIN MEOW YOU BECOME A GODDAMN BABY!" 
• Acupuncture. In hindsight we should have gone to a professional because I only had small nails available and zero idea where they were supposed to go. 
• Post-Coital Jazzercise. Get up and groove that sperm into the egg! Ultimately we didn't give this one as much of a chance because you want to perform Jazzercise in a leotard, arm bands, and whatnot, but typically you want to perform sex without all those things. Unless you're Jazzercise role-playing, which got old for us a year into our relationship. Too much back and forth into and out of leotards to sustain this method properly.
• Buttsex. They say the closest distance between two points is a straight line and I thought maybe it would provide a clearer shot at our objective. Turns out doctors claim this is impossible. Jenny McCarthy and I disagree, but we moved on to other methods nonetheless.
• Praying. We didn't do this personally but mama's mama made sure to pray for us. I'm sure many others did too. This is a delicate subject because it clearly does not work but many people believe in it. If praying worked we'd all be rich, married to models, living forever, and nobody but those dirty Swedes would ever have a rough go in life ever again.

After none of this worked for eight months we magically found ourselves pregnant again! Buttsex? COULD BE! But we were happy regardless of the method that somehow worked.

Until six weeks later we were back in the ER and pretty much knew we had a problem again. It was confirmed with a blood test that saw hormone levels were going the wrong direction and we again found ourselves on the receiving end of life's cruel backhand.

It was after this attempt that we brought in the big guns. No, not that big gun. I'd been bringing that from the get go. I'm referring to the fertility experts in our area. We sought out the biggest and baddest fertility doctor in our town and I punched him in the face to exert my dominance and show I wasn't a punk. Didn't realize this wasn't applicable outside of a prison and had to apologize profusely before he offered to take us in for a consult.

But that's all for another post. As always, a bit of advice before I go:

Don't go chasing waterfalls. Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to.

~ Your dad