The Pagan Heart
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April 2005 Issue
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Voila! You're Pregnant...
By Catherine M.
Fertility treatments are an intriguing process. I worked my way through contraceptive pills, vitamins, nutrition, and needles. Needles to make me grow lots of eggs. Needles to stop me ovulating. Needles to give me progesterone. A BIG needle to make me ovulate. Another BIG needle to harvest the eggs. Oh, and more needles to give me more progesterone. Meanwhile, hubby dearest does his bit - aside from needing to stick needles in my butt twice daily, that is. Oh, and cope with the mood swings and emotional outbursts from all the hormones being pumped into my body. Still, I think I'd rather that job than the one I had of lying there getting needles shoved into me. Once they've harvested the eggs, fertilised them, and put back a couple - a catheter this time, not another needle - we waited. Seems so simple, doesn't it? The wave of a catheter and "Voila! You're pregnant." It's not, of course. There's the three days of bedrest while the embryos hopefully "take", and the week and a half of waiting for the blood test - another needle. If you're not pregnant, you get to try again - assuming you are interested in spending great wads of cash to have needles shoved in your butt again for months on end... Did I mention the progesterone? Injections continued nightly as I waited. The progesterone comes loaded in sesame oil. A very odd concept, really. Cameron discovered that if he pushed the injection site gently, the oil leaked out. Some details I really did not need. If I was pregnant, the injections would continue until about the twelfth week - maybe even suppositories as well. And blood tests - two a week. Yes, the infertility treatment route is indeed interesting. Mentally, I found that my mind seemed to divide - half was focused upon this sterile science, the other upon my body. Habitual Aborter, infertile, and now a science experiment, still it was my body. Hopefully soon to be carrying our child. I found no animosity within me, no anger about my body. Indeed, during that time I came to love it more than before. Flawed, nonetheless, it was mine. It was not incomplete - no amount of children can make a body "complete" after all - but in a way it waited, almost dormant. Months later I came to realise that my cycle, artificially induced as it was, matched that of the earth. The earth that nurtured me in my childhood. Despite being on the other side of the world, in a different hemisphere, with mixed up seasons, here I was leaving winter dormancy for spring's fecundity. "In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer." (Albert Camus) I knew I was pregnant. |
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