…I Am A Tree

I don’t talk a whole bunch about the IVF stuff and how it’s really become the single point of focus in our lives, because Kim does such a great job with it. I feel humbled at times when I see how open she is on her blog about it all. I mean, it’s not as if I’m not involved in this — I do the nightly PIO shots and have been doing a (barely) passable job at keeping the house organized, but beyond the occasional levity, I really haven’t talked about the process from the male’s point of view.

So let’s talk about that, shall we? Ladies, you can pass on by, nothing to see here, move along – this is for the husbands out searching the web at 3 AM, looking for answers on what to expect as they move through the process.

Okay, now that it’s just us men (Ar! Ar! Ar!), let me tell you some facts. Everything, and I mean everything, is about to change, and I don’t mean the whole, “We’re starting a family” vibe. That’s the end result. I’m talking about the rollercoaster of emotions, both for her and for you, that this process brings. From the first discussions about it, to the initial visit to the clinic, to the tests on your baby-making man-gravy (click the link — those are the funniest damned videos on YouTube), to the first (and second…) cycle, it’s a very intense experience.

How do you deal with it all? It’s not easy,  by any stretch of the imagination. For me, I probably tend toward the stoic, silent approach, which I’m sure infuriates her to no end at times. However, I am willing to talk about it at the drop of a hat. How could I not be? We’ve been trying for about…eight?… years to have a family, with the detours of ovarian cancer that cropped up in ‘03 and ‘04, and when we decided last summer to explore ART (Assisted Reproduction Technology), I was both nervous and excited. The excited part should be easy to understand, but the nervous part was two-fold. There was the, “Holy shit, I can be a dad!” part, which is terrifying to the nth degree (and thrilling, so no frets there), but there was also the, “Gods, I don’t want Kim to have her hopes raised and then dashed repeatedly on the rocks. Again.”

At times it feels like we’ve been on a very bad trip, with the universe mocking us repeatedly. And believe me, that does rear its head quite often, especially when watching the news at night and some horrible thing has happened to a child who was neglected by their parent(s). Kim wants nothing more than to be a mom, and having already gone through one aborted cycle and one failed cycle, it’s complicated moving into another full cycle (she had two embryos transferred today, by the way — she hasn’t blogged it as she’s on bed rest. Chastise her if you see her blogging, okay?).

But I digress.

I know I want to be somebody’s dad. I think I’ll do a pretty fine job of warping young minds, but before there are minds to warp, there’s dealing with all the science involved. There’s dealing with the emotions involved. I’ve had a hyped-up-on-Lupron Kim raging at me for simply dropping a cat food bowl, the voice of Satan coming out of her. Lupron? No fun — for her or for you. Not much I recommend doing other than standing there silently while she rages at you. Odds are, she has a little voice in her head narrating for her while she’s going off on you saying something like, “Fascinating. I really can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Really, it’s not her — it’s the drugs. Be teflon. If you rage back at her, you’re just asking for trouble. Not easy, I know, but the drugs will simply kick in further and the next thing you know, you’ll be enjoying the smell of napalm in the morning, but it won’t smell like victory.

Enough of that for now. I do plan on writing more about all of this, so consider this the prologue. Men need to know they’re not alone out there and blogging about it will hopefully help someone out there who is looking for some answers.

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