Just Breathe...and Notice

The terrain in Maine (or OMG, my egg!!!!!), part deux.

The beginning of this inane tale can be found here.

OK, so there we are, bouncing around the back roads of coastal Maine.  Mr Kish was doing his best to look all concerned and serious about the fate of our last chance, EVER, at reproduction.  I, on the other hand, was spiraling deeper and deeper into a clomid-induced hysteria. 

Plus, I was starting to bloat.  A lot.  Clomid sucked.

In a stroke of genius fueled by a combination of massive hormonal overload and the pain of my bionic ovulation, I screamed:  "PULL OVER. WE NEED TO HAVE SEX RIGHT NOW." 

Now, bear in mind, this was NOT the amorous purring of a loving newlywed.   My request had all the romance of a hostage negotiation.  And, quite frankly, I think Mr Kish was too scared of me and my hormones to do anything but obey.

While we were now a safe distance from The Boss and The Really Small Cabin, we still had some logistical challenges to overcome.  Our car was a flashy, but small, Acura Integra with an almost non-existent backseat.  Under normal circumstances, the backseat might have presented a kinky acrobatic exercise.  I was in no mood for kinky though, and my rapidly expanding abdomen needed the delicate touch one usually reserves for hothouse flowers or neurosurgery.  The backseat was out.

We kept driving and eventually stumbled onto one of those tourist-trap towns that coastal Maine is famous for.  Brimming with seafood restaurants, outlet stores, and motels. 

MOTELS!! 

The next phase of Operation BB was now underway.

Mr Kish pulled a Dukes-of Hazard-worthy u-turn and screeched to a stop in the gravel parking lot of the first motel we passed.  For some reason, the only part of my brain that was not completely hijacked by  thoughts of reproduction was the part the was always trying to save a buck.

"Ask if they have hourly rates", I screamed out the window to Mr Kish as he was walking toward the motel office.

Ed. note:  Mr. Kish just now told me that he never really asked that question.  Chicken!

He emerged a moment later informing me that they did not have hourly rates (stinkin' liar!!), but that the daily rate was $60.  Still thinking we could find a better deal (we only needed 20-minutes for christ's sake.  15 if I didn't take my clothes off) I insisted we try someplace else.  Off we went.  The cycle was repeated at the next 2 motels until Mr Kish finally put his foot down and came out with a room key and a receipt for a full-night's stay.

In we went, leaving everything but my purse locked in the car.  As soon as I set my purse down on the nightstand, I remembered about the egg whites.

Yes.  Egg whites.

I'll spare you the graphic details -- you can click here if you're interested.

For those of you too afraid to click, the long and the short of it is that clomid has some unfortunate side-effects.  One of those side effects is very counter-productive to its stated goal of enhancing one's fertility.  After spending some time trolling around on infertility message boards, I learned that egg whites are an effective substitute for what is frequently, um, dried up, following clomid use. 

Oh dear God.  Yes, I put egg whites in my vagina.  Before sex.  OK?  But I swear, I am not the lone freak to try this.  Everyone on clomid does it.  Really.  Google it. 

As weird as it seemed, I was determined to do anything to get pregnant and avoid another round of clomid.  Fortunately, I remembered about the egg whites before my shoes were even off.  I grabbed my purse and we headed out to find a supermarket.

Thank goodness we weren't paying the hourly rates.

So there we were in the dairy section of a supermarket in Maine.  Trying to decide which brand of eggs was best-suited for our little project.  Now, aside from the sheer weirdness of putting raw eggs in the entirely wrong end of my body, I was also worried about contracting salmonella. Imagine my delight then, when I saw the carton of pasteurized egg whites!!  It was like winning a jackpot:  salmonella-free AND pre-separated. 

It was all the aphrodisiac I needed.

We practically skipped back to our motel, giggling at our good-fortune. Pre-separated, pasteurized egg whites!!  Whoop!  Once we were back at the hotel, Mr Kish got busy pulling back the bed spread and I opened the carton 'o fertile goodness. 

My delight came to a screeching halt as soon as I touched the egg whites.

They were not slimy or gooey the way real egg whites are supposed to be.  They were watery and felt entirely UN-fertile.  I cried, once again panicking about the looming demise of my egg, and sent Mr Kish back to the grocery store for real eggs.  Salmonella be damned.  I was NOT taking clomid again.

I watched the Drew Carey Show while I waited for Mr Kish to come back with the goods.  To this day, I still get a little wistful when someone mentions Cleveland.

Mr Kish arrived back with a dozen eggs and watched,  bemused, as I frantically began separating them into the plastic-wrapped, disposable cups provided by the motel.  It took a few tries, but I got a cup full of egg whites and we finally, you know, did it!!  We weren't paying by the hour (Mr Kish is such a liar!) so we hung out for a while with my legs in the air, hoping to give the little swimmers every possible advantage.  

The rest, as they say, is history.  And, for the record, I only took 12 pregnancy tests that time. 

I will forever wonder what the motel staff thought when they entered that room the next day and saw a carton of pasteurized egg whites, 8 untouched eggs, and a garbage can full of egg shells. 

How do you like your eggs?

I'm trying to get geared up to write about father number two, but my brain is too occupied with obsessive fretting about my looming employment.  I'm too distracted to process anything more complicated than respiration and digestion.  I'm also turning into a raging, short-tempered, stressed-out bitch.  I hope the foul mood passes soon (and is not a portent of my life as a working woman).  Mr Kish and the kids are getting tired of being yelled at...

I figured I'd take a short break from pacing around the house grumbling obscenities and scowling at anything with a pulse to regale ya'll with the story of BB's conception.  Maybe a walk down memory lane will help lighten my mood.  If not, there's always more chardonnay.  

While I promise the story is not particularly graphic, its very nature requires that I mention that Mr Kish and I have to, you know......do it.  So, if your Puritan sensibilities are easily offended I suggest you click away before it's too late.  And here's a little something for your trouble.

And, can I just say?  Poor LG.  Her second child syndrome started with conception.  While BB had an entertaining and somewhat unconventional start to his gestational life, LG can only claim Valentine's Day, Indian food, a bottle of wine, and a roaring fire on a cold New England night.  There was ONE funny story when I was about 8-months pregnant with her and I fell down a flight of stairs.  I was so big that I was propelled down the stairs by a frightening combination of gravity and the sheer mass of my gestating body.  I descended with such force that I actually broke through the metal baby gate at the bottom of the stairs.  And not only did I break through it, I actually RIPPED ALL THE SCREWS OUT OF THE WALL!!  But, yeah, that's about the extent of LG's gestational adventures.  She'll have lots to tell her therapist about.

So, the story of BB's conception really starts many months prior to that fateful afternoon in Maine.  When Mr Kish and I got married, I was 29-years, 11-months, 2-weeks, and 1-day old.  In other words, I was VERY close to 30.  For a long time, I insisted to Mr Kish that we were going to be married for about 5-years before we had kids.  I don't know how or why he kept his mouth shut at this unilateral proclamation of procreation.  Fast-forward to our wedding (which was amazing, BTW) and our honeymoon (where we had what could have easily been a fatal car accident) and pause for a second on my 30th birthday.  I swear to GOD, people.  I honestly don't know what happened.  I turned 30 and my ovaries were suddenly larger than my brain.  Babies were everywhere and all I knew was that I NEEDED one.  I was hallucinating babies -- I saw them in my dreams, in the clouds, and in the foam of my Guinness.  I swear, there was one day I saw them in driver's seat of every car as I commuted to work in the morning. Just what the tri-state area needed -- another lunatic on I-95.

I finally confessed my obsession to Mr Kish and he was all "hey, sure, let's have a baby.  I knew you'd never make it 5-years". I was too strung-out on estrogen to even bristle at his rolled-eyes.  I flushed my birth-control pills and was pregnant within 6-weeks.  I was so astonished that I got pregnant so quickly that I took HPT after HPT after HPT.  By the time I had my first OB appointment I had taken 13 home pregnancy tests. 

Just a note:  don't ever tell your OB that you took 13 pregnancy tests.  It sort of screams mental illness.

I was lucky enough to get an ultrasound during my first appointment and I was thrilled to see that our little "Bud" was looking good and was even measuring a day ahead of schedule. The good news ended there though.  A week later my OB called with the concerning news that my progesterone was quite low and that I needed massive supplementation to maintain the pregnancy.  I tried not to panic as I ran to the pharmacy to fill the prescription.  Unfortunately, supplementation in week 10 was too-little, too-late and the next ultrasound showed that the baby had died in utero.   The fact that the miscarriage happened late in the first trimester prompted my OB to suggest a D&C, which was worked into the schedule the same day as the devastating ultrasound.  Mr Kish and I were crushed.

During my follow-up with my OB, I told him about my menstrual irregularities (frequent spotting) and asked if that might have had anything to do with what caused my miscarriage.  He said it sounded like a luteal-phase defect and ordered some blood-work to confirm it.  The blood work confirmed his suspicions and I was told that I would need fertility drugs in order to maintain a pregnancy.

Boy -- this is turning into a long story....

Anyway -- we sat out the one recommended cycle before we starting trying again, this time with my "defective" womb buttressed by both clomid and progesterone.  Now, I had read a lot about the risks associated with clomid and I was determined to minimize my exposure by getting pregnant on the first cycle. 

Of course, as luck would have it, my body was right on target to spit out its first bionic, clomid-induced egg the weekend that Mr Kish and I were staying with his boss in Maine.  In his bosses' teeny-tiny cabin.  In the bedroom right next to where his boss and his wife were sleeping.

Prior to this trip, The Boss informed Mr Kish that the cabin was really small and that, no matter where you were in the cabin, you could hear absolutely everything that happened.  Mr Kish was informed of these unfortunate acoustics at least a half-dozen times prior to our arrival.  I think The Boss was terrified that he'd have to listen to us, you know, doing it.  In the Really Small Cabin. 

Now, under normal circumstance, even in the honeymoon phase of our courtship, Mr Kish and I were perfectly capable of controlling ourselves and going to sleep with nothing more than a chaste and fleeting kiss.  But that weekend?  I WAS OVULATING.  ON CLOMID.  In the REALLY SMALL CABIN.  

We tried.  Oh dear God, how we tried.  We tried without moving.  We tried on the floor.  We tried during the 15-seconds when they left to take out the dog.  But the Really Small Cabin got the better of us and nary a seed was sown.  

By Sunday morning I was frantic.  I had already experienced enough of the clomid-induced psychosis that I knew that there was no way in hell I was taking it for another cycle.  By 10:00 a.m., we mumbled something about needing to beat the traffic and we peeled away from the Really Small Cabin.  The plan was to make it home in time to "get 'er done" in the comfort of our own marital bed, in our relatively sound-proof apartment.  

About 10-miles later, on some isolated back road, my panic really kicked in.  "What if..." I sobbed.  "What if my poor egg dies during the 6-hour trip back home?"

Oh good grief.....this story is way longer than I expected and I need to get moving on a Yom Kippur eve dinner.  More later.....