Serial Killer

All this hoopla over the royal baby has made me remember how strange it felt as we waited for our own much-anticipated arrival, the Red Menace. It should go without saying that we also very much looked forward to AD's birth, but since she was our first child we were incredibly naive about the reality of it all. We were also incredibly naive in that we figured we could just have another kid anytime we wanted one. Getting pregnant with AD was a piece of cake and cost to the penny the price of a nice dinner at Floataway Cafe, whereas the RM turned out to be more of a college tuition. One of them fancy ones, too, not that two year baloney. After a year of trying to get pregnant again, my doctor put me through a really fun battery of tests (please note: when someone as clinical and detached as an endocrinologist advises you to take a painkiller before a procedure, you're better off shoving a bottle of Advil up your ass than actually swallowing it because that shit is going to HURT. Your best bet is to head downtown at midnight with a fat roll of twenties or make friends with someone who has a back injury; you'll want the good stuff.) and a heavy dose of Clomid. Clomid is a medical irony - it's supposed to chemically increase your chances of getting pregnant while at the same time turning you into such an irrational heifer that no one you want getting you there can actually stand to be around you. I say "supposed" to, because neither happened to me. I didn't get pregnant, and I experienced zero mood swings, which we might owe to the fact that I'm kind of a hormonal bitch already.

So. We moved on to IUI, commonly known as artificial insemination. JHP came with me to a few of those, but I went on my own for the last several tries simply because I liked the idea of saying "oh, I got pregnant while my husband was in New York on business..." We tried that move seven times before our doctor said we either needed to get a store-bought kid or bring out the big guns and go in vitro. We've always planned on adopting at some point, but we figured at this point let's dance with who brung ya and see how this plays out, no big deal. Are you laughing at how dumb we are? Because you should be. Here is what most people who have gone through in vitro will share with you about what it's really like: nothing. You will just see the beautiful end result and not realize that getting there was a full-time job of suckiness. I would rather be dipped in gasoline and work at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory than to have that job again. For one thing: there are shots. Lots of them, and I don't mean the fun kind off of a rando 18 year old's abs in St. Barths. Furthermore if you have the kind of husband who, during your injection training class, breaks the needle off inside the orange that is serving as your body's stunt double, you have to give them to yourself. A couple of times in the beginning I drank so much before I could inject myself that it did cross my mind that any baby resulting from this venture would come out looking like a hammerhead shark. Because I can rationalize anything - especially whilst working up enough liquid courage to pummel my stomach and ass with needles on a thrice-daily basis - I figured FAS, schmeffAS, at least my kid will be all the better able to detect predators who approach from the periphery.

Another thing was the wand. Dear God, the wand! Once you start producing the 8 million extra eggs that in vitro requires, they check you daily with this thing. It's aptly named because just like magic it will have you feeling like you're a gym bag that someone's rummaging through for their lost sneaker. I felt that since we were so intimately acquainted that it deserved a more personal name, so I called it Santonio Holmes. Santonio rogered me so roundly, so often, that I still gag a little bit every time I see a Terrible Towel.

 

 

Don't even try to act like you didn't see those shower pictures on the internet. And no, it helped not at all that he's hot.

Ooooff. It was around this point in the process that JHP told me that providing sperm samples made him "uncomfortable!"; it was also around this point that I decided that I will one day write a book called Fools I Have Known And Been Married To. And sneak up on him and Santonio the shit out of him.

Oh and let's not forget the cost. I won't get into specifics, but go out and buy a new Ford Fiesta, drive it off a cliff and see how financially responsible you feel. Then do it over and over. At the end of the day we had 30 embryos down the (faulty fallopian) tubes and one last gasp of a batch on ice, and that's our little Red Menace. By the time I finally managed to get pregnant with her, JHP and I had almost completely lost sight of the fact that the end result of all this was an actual tiny person. I kept thinking that maybe I'd have a puppy, or one of those giant cardboard golf tournament checks - I knew I was going to get a neat prize at the end, but I just kind of forgot what that entailed. You can definitely tell from the pictures in the days following her birth that we were both a little confused by what the hell kind of bait and switch we'd just fallen prey to. It was a Nigerian royalty internet baby scam, I guess.

 

Look what we found in the couch cushions. I was actually looking for a Cartier watch.

 

Fortunately for us, we had time to get our sea legs back because that baby slept a LOT. We were kind of concerned (in a happy, rested way) until we realized she was probably just exhausted from killing all those other babies. There's no doubt that kid clawed her way to the top of the petri dish to get here. That hypothesis always amused me a bit until her personality began to develop to the point that we now realize we might seriously be on to something; she is psychotic. Just today we were at Moe's enjoying a nice Moo Moo Mr. Cow meal when I accidentally dropped her juice box; her response was to slap me on the boob and scream at the top of her lungs "DAMMIT WOMAN!" I don't know how Kate Middleton would react to her kid doing something like that, but you can be sure that I'm pretty freaking jealous of her staff right about now, not to mention the family and friends rate that kid will get at the Tower of London cells. I wish nothing but the best of luck to them and to all new parents, as well as those trying to get there. I may have a critter you can borrow in the meantime; just keep a tight grip on the juice box.