You'll Grow Out of It (19 page)

I
have always hated the phrase
We're trying
, which couples generally use to describe their attempts at conceiving a child. I used to think it was because of the slightly prissy euphemistic quality of it, the substitution of the wan
trying
for
fucking
; but when I thought harder about it, I realized maybe it's because
trying
evokes so much struggle; in a way, it's the opposite of a euphemism. Maybe it's all too accurate, and what I don't like about it is how graphically it paints a portrait of two people joylessly having intercourse in an attempt to breed.

Trying.

I'd made up my mind long ago that I would never be one of those ladies who was
trying
.
It sounded so sad and desperate, and I wasn't sad and desperate. I'd never wanted a baby. In my mid-thirties, I thought this primal urge might kick in, but it didn't, and I was glad it didn't, because then I would become someone who talked about trying. Or even worse, blogged about it.

By my late thirties, I still didn't want a baby. At most, as forty approached and became an increasingly realer number that was probably going to happen to me at some point in the terrifyingly near future, I had a dim feeling that it might be nice to have a kid when I was old. More specifically, I would think about being on my deathbed (I'm fun), and how if there was no kid, it would be sad and lonely (for me—I didn't think about how the kid would feel).

So basically, when I imagined having a kid, I projected forty years into the future, in which I visualized a fully grown adult spoon-feeding me pudding on my way out of this earthly door. I wasn't worried about feeling a kid void before this life moment.

Then I got married.

Before we got engaged, Mike and I had a few vague, hypothetical conversations about whether we would have a kid. I very clearly remember that in all of these conversations, we were both on the same page, which is to say we agreed we were completely ambivalent. Then, about a month after our wedding, it came up again, and magically, Mike had a different memory of our conversations. Somehow, he remembered us both saying we would definitely have kids. As you might imagine, this led to a rather large fight, in which I tried to remind him that our favorite activities were going to restaurants and drinking, two things that most certainly would be curtailed by the presence of a child. I challenged his recall of how I'd phrased my interest in us having a baby. I'd always said I loved our life, that it was hard for me to picture the disruption of our rambling routines. He ended up storming out of the house and I retreated to our bedroom to look at pictures of corgis on Pinterest.

I knew it was inevitable, with Mike feeling so strongly about it, that we were going to have a kid. But we'd just gotten married. I didn't want to try yet. I was thirty-eight. I thought I probably had some time left. Halle Berry had just gotten pregnant again and she was like a million years old. I was scared of how everything would change once we had a kid. I thought maybe we could at least wait till the summer. I kept thinking to myself,
This is the last year of my life
. I repeated that phrase in my head—
last year of my life, last year of my life
. I better enjoy it, it's the last real year of my life. And I would say to Mike, This could all be moot you know, maybe I'm already too old, maybe I'm
barren
. Barren is a fun word to toss around with your husband when you're being a real fucking jerk. But I was just making excuses; I knew I wasn't barren, because my mom had three kids, and she had my little sister when she was thirty-six, which is basically the same as thirty-eight.

Still, the next time I went to see my ob-gyn, I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to ask her, in her professional opinion, how long I had to wait before I had a kid (instantly, with no trying). Again, I wasn't worried because at that moment Halle Berry was expecting and she's sixty-four I think? I knew I wouldn't be able to wait quite that long but I thought maybe I could wait as long as some other celebrities I'd read about in my trash magazines.

A quick word about my doctor, Dr. Sani. She's incredibly hip. I know she must be older than me, but she looks about five years younger. She grew up in New York, went to the same high school as me, and used to do a little deejaying in college. She's compassionate, she never rushes you, and she's delightfully down to earth. She's also gorgeous. This can be a problem since I always miss a small portion of her advice while I am entranced by her curtain of perfectly shiny thick black hair.

At the appointment we spent the usual time gabbing about my job and the weather and vacations, and I stared at her hair a bit. When we got up to babies, as expected, she didn't seem overly concerned. “Most thirty-eight-year-olds can get pregnant without too much trouble. The problem is usually more with staying pregnant.” I ignored the second sentence.

It was December at the time. She thought if I wanted I could wait till the end of the following year. That felt like enough time to live the last year of my life. She went on to suggest that if we wanted some peace of mind, I could do a relatively new but simple blood test that would measure a hormone called AMH. She explained that it measured the quality of your egg reserve, or maybe it was the quantity, I was never totally sure (again, staring at her hair). We'd done other blood tests and she felt optimistic I was in good health and had nothing to worry about. She left the room and the nurse came in to take my blood and I went home and stopped thinking about babies entirely. I had the slightly smug feeling you have when you know you will be fine because you've always been fine.

A couple of weeks later, she called to tell me that I needed to redo the test. “The number that came back didn't really make any sense,” she said, “and then I found out that they didn't freeze your sample in transit. Let's not worry about it. I'm sure it's fine, just redo it.” For about sixty seconds after we got off the phone, I replayed the sound of her voice, trying to discern if she was genuinely unconcerned or was hiding something. I used the same filter I use when I'm flying and I need to look at a flight attendant to assess whether turbulence is going to kill me or not. I decided to believe her.

A few days later, I go to a lab to have my blood taken again. I make calm casual conversation with the woman who will be taking my blood so she will know I'm not a puss about having my blood drawn (I'm a giant puss about having blood drawn). I walk out of there feeling very confident that this version of the test will confirm that I am totally healthy and can probably wait as long as, if not Halle Berry, then maybe Salma Hayek (first child at forty-one).

A couple of weeks later, I am at an edit facility, watching cuts of the show I write for. It is near the end of the day. My phone rings. It is my doctor. This time, even though she is, as always, professional and calm, her voice does not completely pass the flight attendant test; at best the cabin is out of white wine. At worst an engine is sputtering.

“Your numbers did not come back exactly where we'd want them to be,” she began to explain.

My cell reception was not good and I did not have privacy. I kept moving from one dark exit stairwell to another, trying to hear her as she explained, in so many words, that I would become a woman who would not only have to try, but would have to try very, very hard. She had wanted my number to be at least a 2. Instead, my number came back as <.16, which is the lowest the test can measure before your ovaries are emitting a life signal so weak it can no longer be quantified.

As she spoke, for the first time in my life, I felt as if a ghost were passing through me; that someone else, some infertile, trying and failing sad person, had mistakenly crossed their fate with mine.
This can't be my life
, I kept thinking, even though it now most definitely was.

And the other thing I suddenly couldn't stop thinking was,
I want a baby
.

Dr. Sani recommends a fertility practice. She says there are several doctors there who are all very good, but the one whose name she remembers off the top of her head is a Dr. Bander. Sani says she will call her and tell her about me.

I make an appointment with Dr. Bander. I go to the practice's website and look at pictures of her. I like to know what my doctors are going to look like before I go to them. She looks pretty in her photo. I notice that she, too, has very beautiful hair that is styled into a sweeping shoulder-length coif, like the kind you see on home hair dye boxes.

When Mike and I arrive at her office on the Upper East Side, I see the walls are covered with “Best Doctor” awards and accolades. This is comforting until I look closely and realize they are for the two other doctors who work with the one I am seeing.

The waiting room is small, but lots of women, with husbands and boyfriends and partners in tow, are coming in and out with some frequency. I have the same unsettling feeling I used to get when I would occasionally go to auditions and would notice that all the other girls and I were vague facsimiles of each other. In that situation, it was amusingly depressing. Here, even though the women around me are of all shapes, sizes, and colors, our common thread is just regular depressing. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be with all these women who are
trying
.

Dr. Bander calls us into her office. We've been sitting for two seconds when she begins our appointment my least favorite way doctors begin appointments:

“How can I help you?”

This always feels so abrupt. I'd prefer we start with some small talk so we can get to know each other. Maybe one of us could make a little joke. And it seems silly to ask “How can I help you” when you are a fertility doctor. No der, we want to have a fucking baby.

“I think my doctor, Sani, told you about me?” I say.

She is blank. “Um…maybe…how can I help you?”

This is already not going super great. Apparently she did not get the memo that I am very special and should be treated accordingly.

I explain that even though we have not yet started
trying
, I have received a bummer number on a blood test. I assume she will give us a cheerful overview of the trying process. Because we don't know anything. Instead, she starts detailing all the tests I will need to have, all the drugs I should start taking, and all the drugs I will most likely have to take after the initial drugs fail. I will apparently have to come in every week for blood tests for “monitoring,” although she does not make clear to me what I will be monitored for. She also tells me that a week after my next period I have to schedule a test called a hysnerfohysteragram (not what it's actually called, but what it sounds like in that moment). She puts a sonogram picture of a uterus on a light box on her wall and explains that this test is to see if one of my fallopian tubes is blocked. I recognize the basic female reproductive system diagram that my high school bio teacher drew on the board, the one that looked like a longhorn cow's head.

“How do you do that test?” I ask.

No big deal, she explains. A catheter is just inserted through your cervix and then a dye—or something like a dye? maybe Diet Coke—is slowly pumped into your uterus and if it flows into your tubes, you're fine. If one or both tubes don't show the dye, that means there's a clog and maybe they have to put Drano in it or something?

She hands me one of those blurry, over-Xeroxed pieces of paper that often go along with medical tests, listing the instructions. No eating for four hours before, but I am to take six hundred milligrams of Motrin to “reduce cramping.”

“Is the test really painful?” I ask Bander.

“It's not bad if you take the Motrin,” she says, shuffling other papers on her desk.

I already know this test is going to be horrendous. I have never liked instruments poking around my cervix. The very idea of my cervix, or any cervix, fills me with dread. There's something about the existence of this very tiny hole at the back of my vagina that leads to my insides that makes me shudder. I don't like the idea of anything going IN there, which I realize makes no sense seeing as I am doing all this to get something rather enormous to come out of there.

Dr. Bander writes me a prescription for some hormone pill and tells me that once I've taken it for five days I will come in for an injection that will make me ovulate. Then it will be time to have sex.

“And you don't have to have sex every day. Every other day is fine,” she says.

“But it should be vaginal, right?” I say.

No one laughs at my hilarious joke.

For the next three months, I take a forty-five-minute subway ride from Brooklyn to the Upper East Side to get my weekly blood test. I have to confess to a variety of nurses that I have a tendency to faint when dealing with needles. I tell them I have to look away, and they have to make small talk with me while I'm being pricked. No one enjoys this. I'm desperate for the nurses to like me, so I always pick something about their appearance to compliment—their clothes or hair or jewelry. I know it's not necessary and even I don't like that I do it, but I can't stop.

When they finish drawing my blood, they put a little balled-up piece of gauze on the prick and tell me to hold it while they open a Band-Aid. The Band-Aid goes over the gauze but the gauze always spills out from under it a bit, like a marshmallow oozing out from a s'more. Then I walk to the front desk and give my credit card to one of the grumpy ladies at the desk, who charges $200 to my credit card. As I sign the slip, I think about all the other things I would have loved to spend $200 on.

I walk two blocks back to the subway and ride another forty-five minutes back home. A few hours later, a nurse calls to tell me what my estrogen and progesterone levels are. These numbers are always meaningless to me.