Baby Love

Today I'm taking my first dose of Clomid (that's a fertility drug in case the name is unfamiliar to you). And I keep marvelling at finding myself where I am. I used to take pills to KEEP from getting pregnant. Now I take pills TO get pregnant. How did I get HERE?

I never expected to find myself here. Fertility was always my best thing. We got Emily on the first try. Tessa took two trys. That first unsuccessful try felt like such a huge failure but was quickly remedied the next month. Sara-Grace was also a marvel of fertility. We had planned to get pregnant in September for a couple of years preceding. When it came down to September, we decided to hold off a year. We got pregnant that September ANYWAY -- right on schedule (I guess she didn't get the schedule change memo)!

On top of the instant conceptions, I'm pretty good at deliveries too. Tessa was born SIX MINUTES after we got to the hospital! Seriously! Like some scene out of a sit-com. My entire labor with Sara-Grace was one hour and forty-seven minutes. I never even took a Tylenol after any of my deliveries.

Often when I think I know it all is when God gives me a lesson. I'm finding myself in that territory again. I guess I bragged about my effortless fertility too much. I guess I got over-confident. A friend at church always says, "A lesson's what you get when you don't get what you want". A lesson's what I've got.

Mark and I planned to get pregnant on the honeymoon. After all, I was 42 and the biological clock was not only tickling LOUDLY -- the snooze button had been hit a couple of times! I'd be 43 then the baby was born. I'm sure most people just assume we're "done" and that babies aren't even a consideration. Mark and I wanted to have a baby together in high school. NOT having our DNA merged into a child of our own is NOT even a consideration. Life would not be complete...

Well, the honeymoon was 10 cycles ago.

I think I'm supposed to have the full range of fertility experiences in this lifetime. I was young and pregnant once. Now I'm old and battling infertility. And wondering how I got here.

I was the birth control educator at the women's clinic I worked at in Southern California in grad school. I gave the pregnancy test results. Deirdre and I spoke at prospective adoptive parent seminars and to high school health classes in college. I spent five years as an adoption search consultant, immersed in the adoption reform movement, doing searches, fascilitating reunions, and working for legislative change. During all that time, I was the Fertile Myrtle. All that infertility stuff applied to those other people. Not me.

So I took my first Clomid at 8:44 this morning. 8:44 to enlist the superstitious assistance of the power of "our" number "4" and also "8" which is four doubled (that's how we came up with our wedding date: 08-08-08). Now I'm wondering what I'll feel (if anything). Maybe I'll grow a second head or snakes for hair (possibly on BOTH heads). I'm not sure how I could be more irritable than I was yesterday without hormone supplements. It's a really scary thought that I might end up being yesterday's irritable on steroids!

I saw the follicles in my ovaries on ultrasound on Tuesday. So now that know they're there and I've been formally introduced to them I have a message for them, "Get to work guys!". It's looking like I could be 44 when the baby comes. IF the baby comes. I have three friends who had babies at 44. NO ONE has babies at 45 (or older). Anyone who does is not using their own eggs. And I spent enough time in the adoption world to have some strong feelings about not using someone else's eggs.

I was all insulted when I was 34 and pregnant with Sara-Grace and, because I would be 35 when she would be born, they stamped "AMA" on my chart. I knew what that meant! I worked in the OB-GYN and Perinatology departments at UC Irvine Medical Center when I was a twenty-something. AMA means Advanced Maternal Age and is considered a pregnancy complication that puts one at high risk! They were calling me "OLD"! I wonder was age-discriminating insult they would put on my chart now? Probably just a roll of the eyes! I wonder (if I get pregnant) if I'll be my midwife's oldest mom-to-be. And, by the way, if I'm so old, shouldn't I know more by now?

When my midwife was ultrasounding my reporductive machinery on Tuesday I asked her if anything looked excessively elderly. She laughted. But she's also the one who said, "you won't be able to get pregnant" when I told her my plan a year ago. It's very bizarre to feel young and, essentially, BE relatively young, and have some part of me be so old it's about to give out!

I've had a lesson recently in how different things age at different rates. Our Labradors, Zeus and Seraphina, who were puppies when Emily was a baby (they were 7 weeks younger than Emily) both died in the last couple of months. They were 15 -- the oldest Labradors I've ever heard of. And they were lumpy and bumpy and bald and blind and deaf and frail and arthritic. Both died mercifully in their sleep after a short period of rapid decline. Blessedly, my Emily, who is also 15, is still young and youthful and at the very beginning of her life. And they were all the same age. See what we have to look forward to?

Last fall we were at Church in Enid and ran into a friend from high school. She was the one who was pregnant with her first baby at our 20th reunion. A couple of our classmates were grandmothers. Kay was just getting started -- the latest bloomer in our class. At church last fall Kay was carrying her second baby and told us she was expecting a baby girl in December. I told her were were hoping to have one too and she immediately shot back, "I know a great fertility specialist!" As soon as the words came out of her mouth, and even as I sputtered in my fertility pride telling her I had never had a problem before, somewhere in the back of my heart I knew I would need it. I knew someday I'd be seeking Kay out for fertility advice. And I since have.

Speaking of old classmates, my best friend from junior high told me recently to get a puppy and enjoy the time with Mark. I've just whittled my way down from SEVEN dogs to three so I think if dogs were going to fill the void they would have done so by now. Cats don't work either. Nor do ferrets. After the animal parade Emily's brought through my house and life over the past 15 years I know for a fact that animals don't fill the baby void.

I'm lucky and grateful to have my three healthy girls. And Mark has his boys. But I've planned all my life to have FOUR children. When I divorced Matt I literally grieved that fourth baby (already named and everything) that I thought I might never have now. Mark, too, has grieved the children he didn't get to have. Noah was 3 1/2when Mark and Traci divorced and he no longer got to live in the same house with his son. He's told me many times he feels like he got gyped in the parenting department. He as such a love of children. He tells me, if we have one together, that he MIGHT let me hold it every once in awhile!

I guess there is one comforting thought about wanting babies at our "advanced" age: because we're so OLD, grandbabies aren't that far away! I would raise a grandbaby in a minute and have ALWAYS said I would. One of Emily's very troubled friends was pregnant recently and I really wondered if I was suppossed to raise that baby. But she miscarried and got another chance at childhood which was the most benevolent thing God could have done for her.

When I started writing this post I thought I would write a paragraph or MAYBE two. I guess I didn't know how much on the subject I had swirling around inside me! If you have any baby dust laying around, sprinkle some our way!