It was a dark and stormy night. No, wait. Once upon a time?

Sigh.

How to begin.

Begin.

In the beginning there was a forty year old woman.

Nyah, how about…

Surprise! It’s an…egg.

Well at least it looks like an egg, a stimulated egg developing in the ovary ready to drop to meet its final purpose. Or not.

As I sat there in the fertility clinic office, with the ultrasound wand between my legs and the oh-so-very familiar grainy black and white photo of my womanly reproductive system on the screen beside me all I could think of was “everyone else has already done this.”

Of course, that shouldn’t have been the thought in my head, but it was. Everyone else has already started their families. Friends are on their 3rd or 4th child.  Friends much younger than I am are the “old” ones at advanced maternal age starting to have babies. And here I am, looking at a screen…at an egg.

Don’t get me wrong it’s a GOOD thing that there’s an egg there in the first place seeing how ancient I am at the age of forty. And it’s even better news that there is a plump one ready to drop at the right time.

But it’s still only an egg. I knew this part of me was fine. Well, not for sure for sure but knew deep down inside, this appointment was only confirmation.

Two weeks later when all my test results came back, I found myself holding back tears. Everything was “normal, for a forty year old woman.”

Tears of joy?

Nope, tears of terror.

For real. This moment. Terror. Not because there was some medical reason why I couldn’t conceive.  But more so, the complete opposite.

It’s all on me.

I have to get healthy.

If I don’t get healthy, there will be no baby. If I even, if WE even want to try to have a baby. I have no choice but to succeed this time in getting my health together, not just for me but for any future child.

The one result that came back from my blood work was the one I’ve been avoiding for years now and suddenly right before my eyes and right before my ears I saw/heard the words prediabetic.

Ok, ok…it could be worse. It could be SO MUCH WORSE I know, but for me this word, this disease was the exact result of my own ineptitude to take care of myself, period.

My primary doctor has been telling me for years that I need to eat better and get at least 30 minutes of exercise in per day.  All my levels, whatever they are…are normal but high normal.

Until now. Now they are high prediabetic abnormal and I needed to do something about it, or else…

The fertility doctor addressed this issue with a slight of hand…and then went on to tell me about my percent chances of conceiving with IVF at the age of forty with normal fertility to be something like 19% each month. And with each year the number goes down. So I’m somewhere at 17% now I suppose.

And instead of encouraging me to get healthy, lose weight and exercise, the doctor told me all about the difference between the two popular fertility drugs Clomid and Femera. He recommends Femera, which has been approved for breast cancer treatment but not specifically for fertility issues (yet.)

I half listen knowing full well that the important thing for me to do in the next few months is to try to get myself back to a level of health where I’m not prediabetic and I’ve lost weight and gained nutrition but that doesn’t bode well for the age/percentage/number game. Every day is another day I’m getting older.

All of this didn’t sit well with me at all. Without even factoring in the zresults from my Husband’s fertility testing the doctor went straight to the solution of a drug which will release more eggs and give me a greater chance each month to conceive. But, don’t these drugs mess with hormone levels? And don’t I have to get other hormone levels in control already?

Time is of the essence.

That’s what the doctor keeps telling me, but isn’t trying to get healthy for a few months of the essence?

My doctor has a very solid reputation in Western New York. I know several, in fact eight women who have gone to this doctor and ended up with a baby. No, I don’t know each and every story, I just know they all went to the doctor for the same reason as I did, fertility counseling.

So why am I turned off by the doctor’s recommendation? Just take a pill, see what happens isn’t what I wanted to hear. My fear, my terror the tears I was holding back was because I realized I honest and truly needed to do the hard work, we needed to do the hard work and make having a baby our number one commitment.

And I’m not sure I’m able to do this successfully. I haven’t yet in the past forty years. I’ve written these words time and time again and nothing changes. Why would I think this time would be different?

Not only that, it’s not just me…it takes two partners in this game of chance. I can’t control another human being and how they choose to live their life anymore than someone can control me.

Are we both really that dedicated? Can we both make the hard lifestyle changes?

Sure, sure…drunks and fat, unhealthy people have babies all the time, it could happen to us. But it hasn’t. And even if it did, would I be able to physically handle it right now when I get winded walking back up the driveway from getting the mail?

For once, truly…I’m terrified of the answers that lie within me.

I hope I’m wrong, but the tears and the gut and that deep inside voice is ferocious.

All these years I’ve said I would be fine not having a biological child and I was all about adoption and fostering children. Which is still true…but as the night went on that first day after receiving the test results, and I examined the tears and the terror, I cried for the fact that I’ve been lying to myself somehow, somewhere deep down inside.

I know I can have a biological child, but I don’t love myself or my future child to know how to motivate myself to make it really happen.

And to me that is sad, pathetic and terrifying.