I'd Like to Propose a Toast: To the Meeting of the Gametes!

Today is April 19th, a day which I feel deserves a special commemorative blog.

One year ago today I was standing in front of the sink--I have the vague impression that I was doing dishes, but god knows that doesn't happen often, as my husband can attest, so I was more likely in some stage of the cooking process--when I felt an unmistakable intense pain on one side of my pelvic region. Now, normally this is the type of pain that makes women roll their eyes, reach for their Midol, and bitch to whomever is nearest about the unfairness of being a woman, or perhaps if that person is male, pick a fight with him out of sheer irritation at the fact that men don't have ovaries.

But my reaction was different--it was one of tentative celebration, because if the pain was real-pain and not hope-pain, then I was ovulating. And THAT meant that the Clomid was working.

At that point in time, Mario and I had been trying to conceive for nine months. Granted, this is a LOT less time than many people spend strugging with fertility. We were lucky to already be receiving treatment that early; most doctors require that people try for a year before they will help. But already, I was afraid to hope. I had gone off NINE YEARS of the pill about thirteen months before, only to find out that my regular-as-a-clock cycles were completely birth-controlled; when left to its own devices, my body couldn't really be bothered with reproductive functions. My cycles came sporadically, only about every four months on average, making the possibility of conception rather slim. To make matters worse, while I was undergoing tests my doctor suggested that we have Mario tested too, just to rule out any problems there. Unfortunately, it ruled them in, possibly the result of years spent on a bicycle (he is an avid cyclist).

I was very depressed the day I found this all out. Drugs would possibly help me, my doctor said, but wouldn't address his problem. She didn't seem to have much hope for us but agreed to try Clomid, first 50 miligrams and the 100. However, if those dosages didn't work she would be sending us on to a nationally ranked but prohibitively expensive fertility specialist here in Reno.

So, Mario quit cycling, and I started first Provera to induce a cycle, then Clomid to prod my ovaries into production. Oh, the days of fertility drugs: they are days of montonously charting basal body temperatures, peeing on sticks and in cups, thinking of the calendar in terms of Days 1-28, having sex when you are not in the mood and having to abstain when you are. The first cycle made me hyper hormonal--mood-swingy, temper-tantrummy, hot-flashy, and didn't work for crap. My ovaries laughed in the face of 50 miligrams. "Ha ha," they said; "you'll have to come up with something a leetle more potent than that to get us off the couch. Pansies!" So we turned up the heat: 100 miligrams, the do-or-die-dosage. More accurately, the do-or-be-forced-to-start-thinking-how-far-into-debt-you're-willing-to-go-for-an-ankle-biter dosage.

Which brings us back to that day in front of the dishwasher. There was something about April; warming month, days of new life and cherry blossoms that appear and perservere through the last blusters of winter, it glowed in my mind. Before knowing the extent of our problems, I had confidently predicated to one of my friends that we would get pregnant in April. So when I felt those cramps, those cramps that said my ovaries were surrendering one little hostage ovum, I felt a fearful hope.

I carried that hope in my heart over the next couple of weeks until it was time to test, when it became a knot in my throat. My hands shook as I waited for the test to turn...one blue line...and no more. The test said I was not pregnant.

Devastated, I called my doctor. She said there was nothing more she could do; it was time to go on to the Big Fertility Guy. She made me an appointment several weeks from then, and I spent the interim days scrutinizing our bank account balance and researching IUI and in vitro and calculating how many rounds of each our life savings could afford...um, not many. I consoled myself that at least I could still drink at the party or two we attended over the next couple of weeks, including our friend's 30th birthday blow-out where Mario I actually CLUBBED for the first time in years, and did the requisite drinking...

A move that, of course, I would live to regret. Several weeks later I noticed something odd; I kept feeling like I was going to start (girls, you know what I mean). Hmmm, I thought. Maybe the Clomid DID work, it just worked late or something. Days passed with no sign of Aunt Flo, but I continued to feel that odd feeling, and then one morning, the day before Mother's Day, I woke straight up with one thought in my head: I need to take another test. I hopped out of bed, fished a test out from the jumble of TTC-related items under the bathroom sink, and aimed my first morning's doodle right at that stick. One blue line...and then another across it. Was this real? I dug up another test...that beautiful little cross again. I was pregnant. We told our families the next day, a very special Mother's Day, and on Monday I cancelled our appointment with the fertility specialist.

One year ago today, a reluctant little egg began a journey that would change its life, and mine; it would encounter a determined little guy with a wiggly tail and nine months minus three days later (an endless epoch; how can language even allow me to sum it up in a word, a sentence?) Scarlett Celeste Colombini would arrive in the world. Little cells, I salute you, the memory of you and what lives on now; I salute you and the miracle of meiosis. Thank you for making me a mom.