I recently encountered the blog of someone who is just getting started on her awesome IF journey (by the way, if you know anything about endometriosis, would you mind weighing in on her current question?), and it inspired me to write about something that's been in the back of my mind a lot lately, as I sit here on my ass. Doing nothing.
I'd like to invite you to play The Hindsight Game. To play, you must reflect on your IF journey and fantasize about how it could have gone more smoothly or quickly or whatever. This does not require you to wish that you'd actually done something different. I mean, I trust my RE's logic and am not actually sorry about any of the choices I've made along the road. But sometimes I'm flooded with images of alternate worlds in which I already have a baby because my medical practitioners were just super efficient or something. This game is all about total fantasy and may not work for everyone. And it may just piss some people off--those who have actually been screwed by REs or have had horrible things happen to them. So I hope the idea does not cause anyone pain. Anyways, let me illustrate with my own story.
It's early 2008. (To help with your journey back in time, picture everyone wearing those capri trousers that were trendy waaaaay back then.) Bunny goes into her OB/GYN's office and tells the doctor she's really to get pregnant and wants to know how it works. After explaining what happens when two people really love each other, instead of telling Bunny to come back for a referral to an RE in 8 months, the doctor says, you have fibroids that may interfere with conception. Let's get you a referral to an RE now. Bunny meets with her RE who says she can try naturally for a while, do a few cycles of IUI, or do a laparoscopy. Bunny does the lap. A year of Bunny's life is instantly saved. Bunny has a myomectomy, and six months later, she's pregnant! She goes on to deliver a beautiful girl, who is an amazing prodigy. She solves the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture at age five. Then she writes some comic rock operas. She is very kind to her mother and several younger siblings, and is never a hateful and bitchy teenager. She has an extremely happy life, as does everyone else. In the world. Where war and famine have been eradicated, and animals never, ever get run over.
And as a prize for reading this far, I invite you to check out a song I found via the excellent Misfit Mrs., entitled Pregnant Women are Smug. I'm sure it's done the rounds of IF blogs before, but it really made me laugh, and I needed a laugh.
I have played this game before - with infinite variations.
ReplyDeleteI could go back to 2004, where I had a 90 day cycle and high FSH test. The doctor told me it was probably nothing, and I let it go. Then, I had extreme pain and ended up in the ER. Tested negative for passing a kidney stone, but since I had a couple showing up on scan, dr. thought that must be it. Both of those things scream endo (as well as all of my other symptoms), and if I had gotten a diagnosis in 2004 instead of 2007? Hmmm.
Or how about starting WITH my actual diagnosis in 2007. If only my doctor had known what the hell she was doing with my first surgery, I may not have lost my rt. ovary the next year. If only I had gone straight to the CEC, maybe I'd have two ovaries and a baby right now. Who knows?
If I had gotten a diagnosis and had an excision surgery in 2004, I could have 3 kids by now! Maybe endo wouldn't have mangled my insides so badly. But who knows?
Bunny-- this is perfect for me today. I am sitting on my fat ass doing nothing!!! Not even trying that hard to get pregnant (o-3 intercourse pattern last month, anyone?)!! I am an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAnd a light is slowly dawning in the slow ooze of my brain. "Maybe you need to figure out what is wrong?", the light is whispering.
But now that I am thinking this, I feel helpless/retarded/paralyzed. Who do I call? and when???
Basically, right now I just want some capable person in a white coat to shove 8 or 9 embryos into my uterus. Sure, I can be the next octomom. Anything is better than slow death by stagnation!
I will be quietly humming BITCH, I DON'T REALLY CARE... for the rest of the afternoon. :)
ReplyDeleteI prefer to play the Fairy Tale Edition of the Hingsight Game. In it, the husband goes to the urologist, who gives him three magic beans. The husband plants the three beans, which grow into a fabulous beanstalk. The husband climbs the sky-high beanstalk and there he finds a magic goose who is being held in captivity by an evil giant. The husband liberates the magic goose, who then lays two golden testicals for the husband. The husband comes home, promptly knocks his wife up with super golden sperm, and the wife delivers a stunnging, gorgeous baby of unknown sex (I don't care, as long as it's healthy, har har) immediately after walking across the stage for her MSW diploma.
And they all lived happily ever after.
I think we've all played this game. What if I didn't go to my OB/GYN and went straight to an RE after 11 months of trying? What if I went straight into clomid and IUIs? What if it worked on the very first shot, but actually stuck. Maybe I'd already have a baby in my arms. Maybe I would have saved myself from so much heartache. Or maybe I'd be exactly where I am still. :-(
ReplyDeleteThank you for the shout out, bunny! Here's my what-if.
ReplyDeleteIt's 2004. I'm writing my dissertation. Instead of telling ourselves we're still young, there's plenty of time, etc., we decide that there's no time like the present!
In the fairy tale version, 9 months later I defend my dissertation, heavily pregnant, then deliver a beautiful baby. The timing is impeccable, of course, and there are no worries about anything like going into labor while facing my committee. My child is brilliant yet well-adjusted, gives all of his/her allowance to Amnesty International, and can throw a perfect spiral. My satay skewers never catch fire (that's another story...), my husband receives lucrative commission after lucrative commission, and our tomato plants don't die.
In the non-fairy-tale version, we don't get pregnant, but we see the RE for the first time in 2005 instead of 2009. We'd probably still have to go through the stage we're in now (which, as you said, is really just the start of the journey), but I wouldn't have wasted four years choosing to wait, when I'm having waiting thrust upon me instead.
In my version (completely impossible, I know, but it's my fantasy land): my first miscarriage ends in a live birth, followed (right about now) by my second live birth. DH and I pat each other on the back, glowing over our two perfect little ones (a boy and a girl, no particular order). We will raise them to be happy, no other requirement than that. And my university would say: "Take two years, like they do in Sweden". And there would be an end to pestilence. And...but I digress.
ReplyDeleteThe short version is that I would find the perfect doctor, early on, who is able to look into my uterus and see therein (not unlike a crystal ball) exactly which direction we should take.
Sigh. Still looking.
All I know is you're going to have some fabuuuulous weather coming your way, GF. Get the bags of shit ready! ;) Thanks for the rootin' on! I look forward to your posts and comments. You rooooooooock!
ReplyDeleteOh I play this game often. Starting out with my first specialist who kept telling me there was nothing wrong with me and then looking at me and my husband like we were wasting his time. 3 years of being told i'm over reacting and that I should just go away and keep trying naturally was fairly freaking damaging to my self esteem... But hey, I've learnt that you've got to stick up for yourself in this game and Drs are not the gods I wish they were.
ReplyDeleteYour hindsight scenario sounded lovely.... and the song was hil-ar-i-ous!