Don’t Stop Believin’

OK, so first things first, I’m a dude. And, as said dude, I build shit, ride motorcycles, fix things myself when they break (and I have time), etc…it will be important to remember that as you read this blog. What does this also mean? I really know nothing about the process of birthing a child. When you are in middle school, you are lead to believe that if you even look at a woman funny, you will, without question, impregnate her. So, due to this knowledge that I was armed with in 6th grade, I made sure to be exceptionally careful throughout the years! Even after marriage, Mellissa and I took every precaution just short of abstinence, to make sure that we didn’t have kids until we hit that 5 years of marriage mark.

So, about 4 years in we start talking kids. We start trying, but there was not a lot of success. What?!? Getting someone pregnant is mad easy right? Just shy of our 5 year anniversary, we lost my dad at 58 to a massive heart attack that no one saw coming and the desire to start a family so that our children know their grandparents kicks into overdrive.

We went and saw an infertility specialist. Huh? There are doctors that specialize in that? Someone needs to submit this fact to the authors or Lies My Teacher Told Me (sex-ed edition)! Turns out that Missy has something called Poly Cystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS for short). What does this mean? A lot of things, but what it boils down to is that her body does not produce and egg and drop it every month. So, in order to fix this, we had to go through a number of things that are both time consuming, painful and costs a ton of money.

If I type this in paragraph form, it will take forever, and, for those that know me in real life, I’m a bullet list person:

• It begins.
• First the Michelob Ultra version of fertility pills, no luck.
• Then, the Guinness version of fertility pill…success! Egg produces. We trigger. We gets busy. No luck again.
• We take a break in order to try and enjoy the holidays.
• We try the Guinness version again, no luck.
• Next, injections. First round, shots every night for WEEKS while we try to get the dose right. Finally, success! 2 Eggs produce. We were supposed to do an inner uterine insemination, BUT, Kaiser failed to tell us that I need a blood test in order to do that. When did they tell us this? Two days before we were supposed to do it. It takes 2 weeks to get the blood results, ugh. We trigger (at Sara’s wedding in her bridal room). We gets busy (NOT in the bridal room, at home). But, no luck again.
• Please believe, hell was raised, west coast department heads were called, CA state laws were criticized, people were very firmly spoken too…
• I get blood work done.
• We run out of money.
• We get more money.
• This whole process has taken over a year at this point. We have one more round of injections in which we ACTUALLY get to do the IUI. Mellissa and I talked about it at length. This was it. We do it. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, then we talk about how to save up the 15K it will cost us to do In Vitro. So, here goes:
• Injections for weeks
• Up it, down it, no luck getting an egg
• We have a serious talk about not going forward with this round even though we are a few thousand deep in it.
• We decide, one more week.
• The dose is right!
• The blood test was done!
• Bring on the Turkey Baster.
• Note of pride: the nurse needed 1milion sperm per CC in order to do the procedure. Your boy came through with 8 million! (refer to early statement of manhood).
• Procedure done.
• Now, wait 14 days. Serious? 14 days?
• Ugh, so, we wait. We camp. We go boating. We live life. 14 days goes by and Mellissa hits the Kaiser blood lab after work. An hour later the blood work comes in. Now I should say, at this point, we are no stranger to the negative pregnancy test. We sat on the couch together and Mellissa opens the Kaiser app.
• HGC Pregnancy Test: Positive.
• Missy: What?…What?
• 60 seconds or so of silence and shock. That may not sound like much, but sit with someone on a couch for 60 seconds in silence. It gets real awkward up in there.
• Hans: Well, that just happened.

The journey begins.