We had yet another IUI yesterday – and for anyone keeping track, that’s the 3rd IUI since we stopped doing multiple cycles of IVF…which was only after doing multiple cycles of IUI. I’m Benjamin Buttoning my fertility treatments apparently. Soon I’ll just be tracking my temperature and charting cervical mucus like an innocent 26-year-old. Anyway, the IUI, as always, left me bloated, and tender, and unable to walk without feeling stabbing gas-like pains in my abdomen. And what I truly, truly love about the IUI process is that they then tell you to go home and have sex that night or the following morning. Riiiiiiight. Because that’s exactly what you want to do when your body feels like a medical experiment gone wrong.
And of course, despite doing this fertility song and dance a million times, this time we just flat out forgot to have sex. My husband went out to watch basketball last night, and I fell asleep before he got home, and this morning right as I was about to get in the shower I thought, shit, that’s right.
“We forgot to have sex,” I told him, standing in the bedroom doorway wearing nothing but a towel and thick layer of bitterness mixed with general apathy while he still lay in bed.
“We should do it now,” he replied.
“No fucking way,” I laughed, given that our son was eating breakfast at the dining room table, and we live in a NYC apartment, which means the dining room table is a stone’s throw from everything, and I was already short on time.
“We have to!” he insisted.
“Its not like its even going to MATTER,” I replied irritably.
“We have to give it everything we’ve got and keep the hope alive!” he replied, springing out of bed.
“And where exactly do you even think this is even going to happen?” I asked.
“The bathroom! We’ll lock the door.”
Long story short, after bickering about the stupidity of this suggestion, I finally said, “Fuck it, whatever,” and we locked ourselves in our tiny bathroom. Kneeling on the cold, hard, tile floor with towels underneath our knees, we had quite possibly the least romantic, most perfunctory, definitely most uncomfortable, and fastest sex possible while our son sat innocently eating his greek yogurt and granola mere feet away.
That, my friends, is the glamour and glory of infertility.
Afterwards—and by afterwards I mean, like, two minutes later, if that—I sat naked on the toilet with my legs up on the wall and just cried. Because what the fuck am I doing anymore? And when will this stupidity end? And is this really the life I want? Having bad sex in locked bathrooms post-painful-ovulation for what will undoubtedly be absolutely no reason?
Also, my good luck wishbone necklace broke this weekend, and I am pissed. I bought it 9 months into this current journey (which was a million years ago at this point) to replace the one I had worn when trying to conceive my son, which I had started wearing again to hopefully conceive a second child. The first one was gold plated brass, and ended up looking rather worn, and had also broken, and so I bought a real 14k gold one this time, because the fertility treatments were clearly going to take us longer the second time around, and I felt like I needed something solid that could withstand the endless fertility march of time.
And now it’s fucking broken?!? Are you kidding me? What does that even mean, Universe? Must you rob me of even my delusional good luck charms???
Wild Mood Swings 