Howdy gang,
This
post has been a long time in the making. I had kind of been avoiding it to be
honest. In my fervor to get my blog up and running I had kind of skimmed over a
rather important part of I and my wife’s story and ultimately, Elizabeth’s
story. I will quit being so clandestine about this post’s topic very shortly, I
promise, so just stay with me. I really wanted to make sure this whole thing
was cool with my wife before I put it out on the world wide web and shared a
very intimate detail of our personal life. After a rather short discussion, it
was decided that any embarrassment (for lack of a better term) would be far
outweighed by the potential good that it could do. So…here I go.
It took
my wife and I quite a long time to actually conceive. I can’t really speak for
my wife on this one, but I was kind of embarrassed at the time and now I am
totally over that. We had a few health obstacles to overcome in order to have
our little Elizabeth. My wife was convinced that she needed to lose weight
before we would even start trying. She had put on a few pounds while she was in
college, but I will say that I would have still thought she was drop dead sexy
even if she could take on Jabba The Hutt in a sumo match. And no, I am not just
saying that because she is more than likely reading this right now. We were in
our early 20’s, she had just finished school, we had just moved in together,
had just gotten married, and we were establishing our careers. For many reasons
it would have been poor timing at that time.
I myself
was also dead-set that people only have a tiny window to be young, dumb, and stupid
and you should soak up every second of that time that you can. I still hold by
that stand by the way, but once we got to be in our mid-twenties, I realized
that we were already starting to settle down. I had let that window close. Not
that particularly upset about that, but it is what it is I guess. I also have
battled depression had was diagnosed with what my doc refers to as “high
functioning social anxiety disorder”. For anyone that knows me, and even of
those that don’t, I am sure that seems strange just given the very nature of
this blog, let alone if you have ever had the misfortune of being at a party
with me. I won’t get in to all of that as it is actually rather boring and had
nothing really to do with this topic, but it was an obstacle. I would have good
days and bad days. On a good day, I would be like “Hell yes let’s have a baby!”
and then promptly drop my pants, sometimes in public. On my bad days, I wouldn’t
want to get off the couch and baby making was quite literally the last thing on
my mind. I won’t lie, I am still a wee bit concerned if I will be passing on
this “genetic gift” to Elizabeth, but time will tell on that one.
Once we
got our ducks in a row and we decided to start trying. My wife went to the
doctor and we found out that she has a tilt back uterus. Doc said that it wasn’t
something that would prevent us from having children, but that it may make it a
little harder (no pun intended…get it?). He told us to go at it the old
fashioned way for at least a year. No pressure, just sex each other up and see
what happens. Well a full year went by with plenty of sexing. I would even go
so far as to say too much sexing. We weren’t trying to stress about it at all.
We weren’t really checking cycles, or temperatures, or sperm counts. We said
that we were just “not trying to NOT have kids”. Like I said, a full year went
by and we still had nothing to show for it other than a lot of chaffing.
We went
to the doc again and this time my wife started taking a fertility medication.
This whole deal terrified the hell out of me because these drugs increase your
chances of having twins. I had only recently been okay with the idea of having
1 child and now there was a greater chance of having 2. Now I know what you are
thinking. “But the chances are so slim”. And that’s true, but one of our
friends went on the same drug and BOOM! Twins. So statistically it was a
bullshit fear, but I did have that looming over my head. Once she went on the fertility medication it
was apparently game time. My wife tried to make it still chill for me, but now
she was checking cycles and temps and she brought me home…the cup. I never did
get my sperm count checked, obviously I must have swimmers, but I was really
terrified at the time that I would have been the one responsible for not giving
my wife a baby. In hindsight, I probably should have just done it. We had
another full year of all of that. We were getting to the point where we were
just getting stressed about it and we decided to give it one more month and
then we would take a break from it for a while. But then…
We were
in Iowa for a friend’s wedding. We had a pretty damn good time, but I am not
sure if you have ever been in Iowa, there really isn’t anything to do. I know
Iowa is the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk, but even he took a look
around and said “Screw this!” and then shot himself in to space to sex up green
women. At this point, not to get too graphic for anyone, but it was kind of just
the fun stuff again. I was moving in to hangover mode and we just went for it
before I passed out on the couch at home. A while later my wife suspected that
she was pregnant and that is where we are pretty much caught up from the very
first Fatterhood post.
I write
this because we had been on the verge of giving up. Not for ever, but for a
while. It kind of shows that when you just kind of give up and go with the flow
that stuff does actually tend to work out. My previous posts had given the
impression that conceiving was a cakewalk for us. It had been a very private
struggle during the whole process so many of our close friends had no idea. We
had spoken with many friends and they would comment “Man, I just look at her
and she gets pregnant. Am I right?”. I would nervously laugh and shoot my wife
a look and we would always just drop it. We didn’t get mad because our friends
didn’t know. But it was a strange mental state to be in while we were trying.
We would be very happy for our friends and family having friends, but we were
also incredibly jealous. I think I have done a very good job of letting you all
know that I am an asshole by this point in my blog posts. I won’t lie, I have
some people on Facebook only because I don’t have cable. They are total hot
mess, shit shows and they are my entertainment.
It would eat at us though, that we waited until the time was right and
we had our ducks in a row, and these damn mouth breathers were popping out kids
left and right. Seriously, it was like watching a human t-shirt cannon shooting
out kids. These are people that I don’t think should be able to legally drive a
car and hear they are reproducing like Genghis Fucking Khan! (Fun fact, Genghis
Khan had so many children that it is estimated that 16 million people alive
today are his direct descendants. What a deadbeat dad.) It was like watching the movie Idiocracy come
to life! Again, you can put down your pitchforks; I know I am a dick.
In
short, this subject is somehow deemed as taboo. We were extremely lucky in the
fact that we didn’t have to experience any miscarriages, which many of our
friends have not been so lucky. It blows my mind that in 2016, speaking about
reproductive health and related issues is still taboo. If you and or your
partner are reading this and you are having trouble conceiving, I just want to
say if you really want it then keep at it. Don’t be afraid to look at your
options though. We were getting to the point of looking at the adoption process
since we had kind of ruled out I.F. just with our own personal taste. Just
promise me that if you are reading this and you a fucking moron that you will
do the world a favor and put your genitals in the microwave and turn it on for
about 5 minutes. Seriously, you are bumming the rest of us out.
I hope
that someone out there might have found this at least a little helpful or even
inspirational. I hope it takes the stigma out of it. Just remember, if you are
having trouble conceiving, just visit Iowa. As always, thank you for reading,
don’t forget to stop by and like Fatterhood on Facebook, and PROST!
No comments:
Post a Comment