Momentum of Joy

She has her father’s eyes.  Disclosure – father’s eyes not represented above. 

Few things capture the magic of aging like the moment when a fertility doctor tells you that your baby making kit is fraught with cobwebs and is so old and creaky that you may want to buy stock in WD-40.  Maybe I’m paraphrasing just a smidge.  Perhaps he said something more along the lines of “your hormonal levels are below the range required to conceive and you are going to probably need a donor egg as well waah waah waah waaaaah” (imagine the voice of Charlie Brown’s teacher).  As science is merely a suggestion and not something one could ever prove (errr yes you can) or quantify (again yes…you absolutely can do this), I scoffed at his trivial little test results and agreed to shell out cash that we didn’t have to burn.

I’m going to tone down the satire momentarily because I want to speak honestly about why an intelligent, analytical, and pragmatic woman would go down an ill-advised path despite the clear medical advice to the contrary.  My reason had absolutely nothing to do with pragmatism.  It’s incredibly hard to articulate (even for a yappy verbose girl like yours truly).  Despite the mountain of clinical evidence from multiple specialists “proving” why we could never conceive another child, I knew with every fiber of my being that there was a beautiful face waiting to appear at my family table.  I wasn’t unhappy with my husband or children.  Don’t get me wrong.  Those people were (are) ushered into MoJo’s Magical Doghouse – a place one cannot leave until the sentencer has calmed down – on a regular basis.  However that’s just day to day reality.  I love them more than life itself.  Truly.  But there was another soul whose small fingers would be holding mine one day.  It wasn’t about hope or wishful  dreaming.  It was set in stone.  I knew it.  I felt it.

And we’re back to hyperbole and sarcasm.  So like any good Uno player, I took out my wallet, reviewed my five card options, and picked the one that would allow me the widest range of moves.  I should have selected the “Skip” card, but where would the lesson be if I had done that?  Fast forward a few months.  We had spent ten of thousands of dollars that we did not have to lose but desperation demanded that I charge.  I had met with the specialist over and over again, and one of those appointments included a conversation I can tell you with zero exaggeration on my part.  Keep in mind that I had already been required to run countless tests and had met with the doctor and techs repeatedly.  I had become inordinately familiar with ultrasounds and the mad science of creating a mini human.  This is literally how our discussion went.

Doc – “Hey how are we doing today?”  (I didn’t know about him, but personally, I was feeling broke, depressed, and packed with hormones to the point that “Fatal Attraction” was jealous of my level of unpredictability.)

Me – “Honestly I’m very concerned.  These injections are so expensive, and I am going through them like water.  How do people pay for these?  I’ve spent so much on the medicine this month, and I’m really worried that it isn’t working.”

Doc – “Hmmmm.”

Me – “When the tech was running my ultrasound a few minutes ago, it didn’t look like I was where I should be.”

Doc – “Let’s check it out.” (Opens ultrasound files on the screen in front of us.  Pauses momentarily.) “Well it looks pretty good to me.”

Me – “Uh yeah, but look at that.”  (Pointing at exact spot on screen.)  “It doesn’t look a follicle is forming.  It looks like a cyst.”  (Quick clarification for the infertility uninitiated:  follicles – good & baby possible, cysts – hormonal thing & no baby for you)

Doc – “No. I think it’s a follicle.”

Me – “But look at the striations and the density.  It looks like a cyst.”

Doc – “I think it’s fine, but it’s up to you.”  (WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?)

Me – “What does that even mean?”

Doc – “It means that you can stop now or we can keep going.”

Me (big fat tears welling up in my eyes) – “But I have spent ten thousand dollars on these medicines over the past two weeks.  Do you really think that I should stop?”

Doc – “These work on 90% of people, and it looks fine to me.”

Me – “…”

Doc – “…”

Me – more “…”

Me – “Well…I’m in this far on the cycle, and this is what you do.  If you think it’s a follicle, then it only makes sense for me to keep going.”

Doc – “Okay great!  I’ll see you next week.”

Another five thousand dollars whooshed out of my credit line to pay for the next round of prescribed injections, and I returned one week later to get that cycle’s final ultrasound.  The second the images appeared on the screen, I already knew the results.  I didn’t need to be told what they displayed, but I had to hear the words.  I wanted him to say them to me.

Doc – “Well.  That was a cyst.  I guess you were right.  That medicine didn’t work on you after all.”

I’m not being facetious.  This was a prominent fertility specialist who had been recommended to me by multiple other providers and Yelp!  If we can’t trust Yelp, what can we trust?  If only we were blessed with something amazing and awesome and inexplicable like intuition.  (Spoiler alert – WE ARE.)  Needless to say, I did not donate any further funds to that guy or his prominent practice.

A year and a half went by, and the test results from my normal hoo-hah-ologist continued to show an increase in uterine cobwebs.  My heartache grew exponentially, and I begged God to take away the heavy homesick feeling I got whenever I caught myself staring at the empty space where a high chair should have been.  I cried enough tears to turn Las Vegas into a rainforest.

And then one day, that darling little soul decided that I had waited long enough.  She made an appearance in a way that was so her style, but that’s a story for another day.

To be clear, she isn’t kissing the frog in search of a prince.  The frog is actually kissing her because he hopes to turn into a rockstar, too.

Ultimately this post is about triumph.  Although I wish that I could take the credit, the truth is that the triumph was not my own.  Despite my prayers, I could never release my sense of knowing that she would be there.  As the years passed and my longing for her grew, my knowing was plagued with questions and doubts.  I listened to the facts and the stats, but the main voice I needed to honor was much much deeper.  The triumph belongs to genuine loving intuition and to forces beyond definition.  It belongs to miracles and joy and the importance of never allowing your fears to defeat you.  Most of all, it belongs to my daughter and her insistence on claiming her seat at my table.

Thank you for always believing in me little soul even when I prayed to release the hurt and longing.  You, my precious darling, are fierce and brave and strong, and I know that you were that way long before I ever held you.  Thank you for your triumph.

And it wasn’t even Halloween.

***MoJo***

This post was inspired by the WordPress daily challenge.  Today’s topic is triumph.  Details are below if you would like to participate as well.  Please let me know if you do.  I would love to read your take on it.

via Daily Prompt: Triumph

These are a few of the sites that also took part in the challenge.  I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.  I’m trying to highlight different writers to spread the love, so please do NOT think that I am skunking you if you wrote one for this challenge, too.  You are amazing!  🙂

https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/93551440/posts/1421
https://northumbrianlight.wordpress.com/2017/06/08/distant-relatives/
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/38054961/posts/23580
https://ferencepoems.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/lightness-of-being/
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/120927887/posts/405