Musical Chairs of Monitoring and Marriage

I've put a lot of miles on my car driving to and from appointments at infertility clinics over the past couple of days. On Thursday, I went to my usual clinic in Naperville for a baseline scan. On Sunday, I went to Chicago to monitor the progess of my ovaries after 3 days of meds (about 9 measurable follicles ranging from 5-9 mm). Today, I went to Oak Brook for futher monitoring (still about 9 measurable follicles, and now the largest is 14 mm but most are 10-12 mm). On Thursday, it's back to Naperville. And then probably back to the city this weekend. Wheeee! I miss seeing dear old Wendy regularly, but she is on maternity leave and so I end up seeing different ultrasound techs at different locations. None of them know me and none of them are nearly as forthcoming as Wendy was with me. Oh well. At least I still have Nurse Answers and Dr. Peppy (who, by the way, was at the Oak Brook office today and recognized me in the hall and greeted me by name, thereby defying the stereotype of fertility doctors who can't identify patients who are actually wearing pants; another reason to love my clinic!).

Aaron and I had a mini-crisis with this IVF when we realized on Sunday night that he mistakenly scheduled a business trip for next week, when retrieval and transfer most likely will happen. My first reaction was completely sinful - although I felt completely justified at the time. I was judging Aaron, mentally accusing him of not caring enough about our infertility treatments to have a clear grasp of what will happen when and then not caring enough to offer to reschedule his travels. I quilted a cozy blanket of self-pity to wrap around my shoulders: "Woe is me, infertility has made conceiving so clinical and detached and now my husband won't even be there to hold my hand while the catheter of embryos is inserted into my uterus! He won't be there to take care of me after the procedures! What friend could drive me into the city for transfer who wouldn't offend everyone in the clinic waiting room by bringing either a child or a pregnant belly? I'll have to find someone to come administer my PIO shots every night. It will be pointless to ask people to bring meals for lonely old me. I'll just have to sit around by myself and do a jigsaw puzzle or something. Woe! Woe!" Pretty fancy how quickly I could stitch that up, huh? Of course, I said none of this to Aaron, so he had no idea. Meanwhile, he was thinking about how special it was to witness the embryo transfer together last time, and he intended to ask a colleague to swap travel plans with him. Which he did. And the colleague was more than happy to trade. So Aaron is currently in New Orleans, and he won't be going to Louisville next week, and we talked it all out, and I confessed, and he forgave me, and he'll hold my hand during transfer next week, and my very own husband will give me injections in my rear, and everything is hunky-dory. Lessons learned - don't sinfully judge your husband, and don't make a marriage (lovely as it may be) into an idol to replace the idol of having a baby. Yes, having several unexpected years just the two of us has helped to make our marriage stronger and closer, but a wonderful marriage is not a compensation package that I am entitled to because I don't have children, and a perfect marriage is not a way to tip the cosmic scales and earn success at IVF, and a fulfilling marriage will still never satisfy the way only God can.