How to Become Patient (or Lose Your Mind) in 18 Days

On New Year’s Eve, I went in for my follow-up ultrasound prepared to leave the office in tears and collapse in a heap of despair over failure to ovulate while the rest of the world (except my husband, who would have to deal with me) rang in the new year. When the doctor said, “We better get you home – you’re about to ovulate,” I had to ask him to repeat himself and say it two different ways before I was able to process it. Because although I respect science and medicine immensely, and I’m seeing a well-regarded expert in this area, I never, never thought this would actually work. I think my nature is to prepare myself for the worst in every situation – and infertility seems to reinforce that tendency with all of its accompanying sadness, disappointment and irony.

But there it was – a 20 mm follicle taking over the ultrasound screen. We were told to go home and do the deed every other day for a week. Suddenly, a different kind of pressure – the pressure of success. I had this budding follicle in there and needed to get the sperm to meet it at the right time. Oh, if I could only see in there and cheer them on from the sidelines – “go spermies!” - or do anything that would lend me a modicum of control when all I’ve been instructed to do is have sex and hope for the best.

Now I know what everyone’s been talking about – this time of trying, of real trying steeped in reality, when it’s actually possible that it could work – is all about “hurry up and wait.” Meanwhile, I must avoid, in the following order: alcohol, sushi, ibuprofen, really any painkiller of any kind, soft cheeses. I tell you, I’ve never wanted a red wine and sushi dinner so badly in my life. And the thing that kills me is this could all be for nothing – a cruel exercise in self-deprivation for another disappointment. But I’m trying to stay positive.

The week is over and now we wait another week and a half to confirm what’s happened. I think I’m going to test on Sunday at home, though even then the results won’t be conclusive. But the waiting is the hardest part, as they say. Perhaps infertility is mother nature’s way of giving parenthood-required patience to those who lack it. Okay – I get it, mother nature. Now give me two pink lines.

-J.