Sean Gibson's Blog - Posts Tagged "infertility"
The Sticky-Handed, Unsung Heroes of Infertility Treatment
Every woman who has a baby has superhero-level powers of endurance and an uncanny ability to function through discomfort and pain. That’s doubly true for any woman who first goes through infertility treatment, which is a physically, mentally, and emotionally brutal rollercoaster. I couldn’t endure either of those experiences with half the grace and stamina I’ve seen pretty much every woman I know exhibit—especially my wife, though, given her decision to consent to marrying me, you might reasonably conclude she is a masochist and so therefore better equipped to withstand agony.
Now, I’ve never given birth. And, I’ve only gone through IVF as the dude giving (though by no means calling) the shots, not the one getting stuck a million times with tiny needles filled with hormones until my ovaries turn into giant grapefruits. I’ve also never killed someone during war, saved the life of a gunshot classmate, or made a decision to eliminate thousands of jobs. In other words, there are a lot of things I’ve thankfully never experienced that I assume are insanely difficult and so emotionally scarring that they irrevocably change one forever.
With respect to things I have experienced, however, I feel confident that masturbating into a cup for the purpose of creating children while a nurse impatiently taps her foot because you’re under a time crunch belongs in the same echelon of high-stress activities.
Let’s not discount just how much pressure is heaped onto a would-be dad’s sloping, unimpressively muscled shoulders when your name rings out, like a gunshot in Bambi’s forest, in a crowded waiting room. No matter that everyone in the room can empathize with your situation; it’s still awkward that they know you’re being summoned to tickle your giggleberries and spunk into a cup in a room just down the hall. No one wants to make eye contact or acknowledge the Herculean feat of concentration required under the time-sensitive circumstances. As soon as a nurse calls your name, you cease to exist, a perverted pariah whose hand no one wants to give a comforting squeeze.
The nurse escorts you to a bathroom-cum-love-yourself lounge, one accoutered with a comfy leather chair creased and molded by the asses of a thousand men with ugly, slow, bad-at-swimming sperm. She asks you for identification to confirm that you are who you say you are, as though it’s common practice to send in a pinch hitter to provide half of the clay to make one’s own offspring. To further ensure the legitimacy of the genetic material awaiting release, you have to sign a form attesting that the sample you’ll soon provide is, in fact, yours, and not a friend’s beautiful, Michael Phelps-like sperm that you’ve smuggled into the bathroom in a test tube taped to the inside of your thigh.
Only then do you receive the tools of the trade: a cup (seal unbroken, so you know that no one else has snuck in some swimmers before you), a pen (to write your name on the cup, no consideration being made for the difficult task of holding a pen with sticky fingers), and a walkie-talkie to notify the nurse when you’ve completed your mission (“turn to channel three”). Overwhelmed by the moment, you forget to ask the code word you should use to indicate that you’re finished—Cochise? Kablam? Heck of a job, Brownie?—and so decide you’ll worry about that later, after you’ve determined whether to make use of the other equipment in the room.
To help you take matters in hand, the doctor’s office has kindly provided an array of stimulatory material, from high-class gentlemen’s magazines to a curated selection of provocative videos on both DVD and VHS, which can be played on the first TV/VCR/DVD combo you’ve seen since college. Not wanting to contemplate the amount of genetic material already covering said visual stimulants and unsure of the ethical repercussions of watching girl-on-girl action while contributing to the conception of your children, you elect to rely on your normally fertile imagination, only to have it prove as impotent as your sperm and as fickle as your recalcitrant reproductive rod, which remains unpersuaded that the need for timely and effusive production warrants a stand-up performance in such an unhospitable environment. “I’m not a piece of meat,” it reminds you testily (even if it technically is). “Where’s the romance, brother?”
The rational part of your brain ticks down the seconds, knowing that your unconscious wife is even now having a gaggle of eggs plucked from her softball-sized ovaries, as the emotional side of your brain urges your unresponsive tickle stick to rise to the occasion.
Somehow, against all odds, you manage to rouse it to action, and when you’ve finally produced a sufficient quantity of what the doctor’s office once poetically described as “wheat-colored” baby juice, you considerately wipe and wash your hands before picking up the walkie-talkie, flicking the power on, turning to channel three, and saying, eloquently, definitively, and with your voice in no way cracking, “Uh…I’m done, I think?”
Your part in the undertaking complete, you grit your teeth through the uncomfortable brush of cotton boxers on skin chafed from the urgency and vigor required under such pressing circumstances to rush to your wife’s side as she groggily comes to. Despite your own traumatic experience, you must now lend her your strength, nurse her through her recovery, and, possibly, catch her when she faints in the bathroom after you get home before frantically rushing her back to the doctor’s office so they can say, without apparent concern, “Oh, yeah—that happens sometimes.”
Does any of this make you a hero? Well, yeah—you just made half of a baby in a cup. That’s not easy. Sure, it’s easier than making half of a baby in an overinflated ovary, and it’s probably easier than mixing those two halves in a petri dish and painstakingly placing the resulting embryo inside of a possibly hostile womb. But it’s still harder than, say, taking a nap. It requires intense focus, moral fortitude, manual dexterity, and above-average aim (note to medical equipment manufacturers: the opening of those cups could be bigger).
Going through infertility treatment sucks—there’s no way to pretend otherwise. So, whatever the result of your journey, gentlemen, take heart that you’re not alone, and do not go quietly into that good night. Stride boldly into it with whatever sounds you need to make in order to create your baby. Feel good about your contribution, and look forward to congratulatory handshakes if and when the glorious day arrives that you welcome what will be a life-changing bundle of pure and radiant joy.
Just maybe wash your hands first, eh?
Now, I’ve never given birth. And, I’ve only gone through IVF as the dude giving (though by no means calling) the shots, not the one getting stuck a million times with tiny needles filled with hormones until my ovaries turn into giant grapefruits. I’ve also never killed someone during war, saved the life of a gunshot classmate, or made a decision to eliminate thousands of jobs. In other words, there are a lot of things I’ve thankfully never experienced that I assume are insanely difficult and so emotionally scarring that they irrevocably change one forever.
With respect to things I have experienced, however, I feel confident that masturbating into a cup for the purpose of creating children while a nurse impatiently taps her foot because you’re under a time crunch belongs in the same echelon of high-stress activities.
Let’s not discount just how much pressure is heaped onto a would-be dad’s sloping, unimpressively muscled shoulders when your name rings out, like a gunshot in Bambi’s forest, in a crowded waiting room. No matter that everyone in the room can empathize with your situation; it’s still awkward that they know you’re being summoned to tickle your giggleberries and spunk into a cup in a room just down the hall. No one wants to make eye contact or acknowledge the Herculean feat of concentration required under the time-sensitive circumstances. As soon as a nurse calls your name, you cease to exist, a perverted pariah whose hand no one wants to give a comforting squeeze.
The nurse escorts you to a bathroom-cum-love-yourself lounge, one accoutered with a comfy leather chair creased and molded by the asses of a thousand men with ugly, slow, bad-at-swimming sperm. She asks you for identification to confirm that you are who you say you are, as though it’s common practice to send in a pinch hitter to provide half of the clay to make one’s own offspring. To further ensure the legitimacy of the genetic material awaiting release, you have to sign a form attesting that the sample you’ll soon provide is, in fact, yours, and not a friend’s beautiful, Michael Phelps-like sperm that you’ve smuggled into the bathroom in a test tube taped to the inside of your thigh.
Only then do you receive the tools of the trade: a cup (seal unbroken, so you know that no one else has snuck in some swimmers before you), a pen (to write your name on the cup, no consideration being made for the difficult task of holding a pen with sticky fingers), and a walkie-talkie to notify the nurse when you’ve completed your mission (“turn to channel three”). Overwhelmed by the moment, you forget to ask the code word you should use to indicate that you’re finished—Cochise? Kablam? Heck of a job, Brownie?—and so decide you’ll worry about that later, after you’ve determined whether to make use of the other equipment in the room.
To help you take matters in hand, the doctor’s office has kindly provided an array of stimulatory material, from high-class gentlemen’s magazines to a curated selection of provocative videos on both DVD and VHS, which can be played on the first TV/VCR/DVD combo you’ve seen since college. Not wanting to contemplate the amount of genetic material already covering said visual stimulants and unsure of the ethical repercussions of watching girl-on-girl action while contributing to the conception of your children, you elect to rely on your normally fertile imagination, only to have it prove as impotent as your sperm and as fickle as your recalcitrant reproductive rod, which remains unpersuaded that the need for timely and effusive production warrants a stand-up performance in such an unhospitable environment. “I’m not a piece of meat,” it reminds you testily (even if it technically is). “Where’s the romance, brother?”
The rational part of your brain ticks down the seconds, knowing that your unconscious wife is even now having a gaggle of eggs plucked from her softball-sized ovaries, as the emotional side of your brain urges your unresponsive tickle stick to rise to the occasion.
Somehow, against all odds, you manage to rouse it to action, and when you’ve finally produced a sufficient quantity of what the doctor’s office once poetically described as “wheat-colored” baby juice, you considerately wipe and wash your hands before picking up the walkie-talkie, flicking the power on, turning to channel three, and saying, eloquently, definitively, and with your voice in no way cracking, “Uh…I’m done, I think?”
Your part in the undertaking complete, you grit your teeth through the uncomfortable brush of cotton boxers on skin chafed from the urgency and vigor required under such pressing circumstances to rush to your wife’s side as she groggily comes to. Despite your own traumatic experience, you must now lend her your strength, nurse her through her recovery, and, possibly, catch her when she faints in the bathroom after you get home before frantically rushing her back to the doctor’s office so they can say, without apparent concern, “Oh, yeah—that happens sometimes.”
Does any of this make you a hero? Well, yeah—you just made half of a baby in a cup. That’s not easy. Sure, it’s easier than making half of a baby in an overinflated ovary, and it’s probably easier than mixing those two halves in a petri dish and painstakingly placing the resulting embryo inside of a possibly hostile womb. But it’s still harder than, say, taking a nap. It requires intense focus, moral fortitude, manual dexterity, and above-average aim (note to medical equipment manufacturers: the opening of those cups could be bigger).
Going through infertility treatment sucks—there’s no way to pretend otherwise. So, whatever the result of your journey, gentlemen, take heart that you’re not alone, and do not go quietly into that good night. Stride boldly into it with whatever sounds you need to make in order to create your baby. Feel good about your contribution, and look forward to congratulatory handshakes if and when the glorious day arrives that you welcome what will be a life-changing bundle of pure and radiant joy.
Just maybe wash your hands first, eh?
