100 Words Per Mile: Reflections - 6
Babies are made in a lab.
One day, our daughter is going to ask us where babies come from. Our answer, of course, will be they are made in a lab.
This past week’s entry of 100 Words Per Mile covered the extraction and fertilization of the eggs my wife produced while on IVF medication. Rereading it, I was able to put myself back in the driver’s seat of the car while she winced from extreme ovulation pains. Franky, it’s not unlike the drive to the hospital we’d make after her water broke 13 months later.
I still can’t believe they extracted 42 eggs from her in one go.
I remember pacing the parking lot at work when the doctor called us with the update. We were on a conference call, and hearing those numbers drop the way they did was akin to plummeting on a rollercoaster.
42 eggs. Jesus.
27 mature follicles.
20 fertilized.
There were a few days I imagined my wife and I being responsible for 20 embryos. 20 potential children we couldn’t possibly accommodate in this life.
When we were later told only four reached the blastocysts stage, it all settled into something both manageable, but fragile. The drop from 42 to four made the drop from four to zero all the more likely to us.
As of today, one of those four embryos remain in storage and we’re still wrestling with the same questions of responsibility that we were five years ago. Our house, which once felt so empty, is undeniably full. Our finances, which afforded us the opportunity to do IVF in the first place, aren’t nearly as flexible now that daycare is a factor. Each transfer costs between three and four thousand dollars. At one point do we weigh the practicality of it all?
We have what we fought for. We believe each of them is a blessing, however you interpret that word. So, what do we do now? It’s August, which means we it’s time to decide whether or not to pay for another year of storage. I think I know where I land, but I’m never one hundred percent.
When I reread this week’s entry, I’m more certain the final decision should fall to my wife. The shots. The hormones. The cramping. The soft violence of the surgery. The controlled decision to lose her sense of control. She did the work. She made the sacrifices. That last embryo is no souvenir. It’s the continued proof of everything she did to help build our family.
One of the solutions we tend to land on is this: if we didn’t have the embryo, would we try to have a third? The answer is usually no. Sometimes that settles it.
But one of the other solutions is this: if money weren’t an object, would we try to have a third? The answer is usually yes. That keeps the discussion alive.
Not many couples can point to the moments they transitioned to becoming parents. For some, that was the wedding. For others, it was when they stopped using birth control. For us, the road was much longer. The chasm between intent and actualization seemed endless for a while.
We have this, though, which is something. But to be honest, the fertilization is not the moment I consider the start. That comes a few months later.