The beginning

A very wise woman once sang: “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.”

Well. So it was Maria von Trapp who sang that and it was probably the film’s producers who came up with that song, not the real person. But for all intents and purposes, that was a very good song. Tea, a drink with jam and bread!

Anyway, off we go!

July 2009
We’ve been living together for four months now, and we’ve been married for almost a year, it’s time, I thought to myself. Bye bye to the Pill, hello to lots of enthusiastic shagging at the right time. Despite the bigger boobs, I wasn’t liking the Pill very much.

So we got a cat and stopped the Pill. Life was good.

February 2010
Hmm. No sign of that baby. Oh where, oh where can my baby be? I decided to seek medical help and made an appointment to see my gynaecologist.

May 2010
After three months of seeing Dr H and having her proclaim that my poor misunderstood ovaries were working perfectly fine, I asked to have husband tested. She waved away my request initially but I insisted. Okay, make that a DEMAND instead. A nice, polite demand.

Mr Thick was such a man, he was perfectly happy to DIY into a tiny plastic cup. And UH OH. Basically, he didn’t have a lot of soldiers (as we had termed his sperm laughingly) and those that he had weren’t exactly swimming fast enough (motility) or Fabulously Gorgeous looking (morphology). Dr H referred him to an endocrinologist and ordered us back into her clinic two months later.

July 2010
Poor Mr Thick had to endure hormonal injections and medications in a bid to spruce up his boys. In the meantime, I went back to Dr H for a date with the vajayjay cam, only to find that the unhappy ovaries were on strike! NO EGG! WTF?!

BAD OVARIES.

At that session, it was decided that we would undergo intrauterine insemination (IUI) in August, aided by good ‘ol Clomid.

August 2010
Our first IUI! Nicely grown follicles, all three of them. Good ovaries! V exciting! It was a painless though mighty uncomfortable procedure that had me lying down with my legs up in the air for a good 20 minutes. Tap, tap, tap. Let me out already.

Result: FAIL.

September 2010
Our second IUI! This time, IT HURT. BAD. Midway through, my cervix decided she didn’t like the IUI very much and Dr H had problems threading the catheter through. She decided to DILATE me. It was the most excruciating thing I have ever had to endure. Towards the end, I was bleeding and in tears. Fuck fuckity fuck! No wonder that cycle was a FAIL!

October 2010
Our third IUI. Yawns. Cervix really didn’t like Dr H, and so guess what the doctor did? SHE DILATED ME AGAIN. Oh MOTHER! If last month was most excruciating, this time it was BLOODY EXCRUCIATING. No surprises, tears and blood followed.

When the tell-tale sign that the cycle was a fail, I called up the clinic and asked the harried nurse what to do. She said she would consult the doctor and call me back. A few hours later, I got the call. The apologetic nurse explained that the good doctor felt that I would be better off doing IVF and even offered to give me a referral letter to NUH.

WTF! Dr H had never spent time discussing protocols with me. She never explained anything to me. And each time I went for an appointment, I had to wait for an hour in a room full of happy, glowy pregnant women just for a quickie five-minute consult. And now she doesn’t even bother to spend time talking to me personally about IVF. Balls to her! I’m moving on to greener pastures.

November 2010
I sent out a SOS text to Cousin Wan. And just as expected, she came back with a name and a number. And that was how I found out about Dr Y. We went in for a first consult, he very nicely and patiently explained everything to us and gave us a look of polite horror when I described my experiences with Dr H. I felt vindicated. Evil, EVIL Dr H!

We did IUI #4, a natural one since the fickle ovaries were humming and working again. Well, with Clomid, Mr Thick’s sperm had three targets to aim for but they still missed. I certainly didn’t have much hope with just one little eggnoid and I was right. It was a FAIL.

December 2010
We decided to go for a Clomid IUI#5. On December 22, we dashed off from dinner with the friends to get ourselves to a 24-hour clinic for the trigger shot. The young doctor looked a tad confused when I presented him with the vial, and promptly Googled for the instructions on how to administer it. And guess what? It was a nurse who jabbed my ass! And then the clinic had the cheek to charge me $40 for a Google Doctor. WTF! I could have done that myself as have PhD in Googling!

Christmas Eve came and I found myself lying on the examination table again. But Santa that fat sucker never came, all I had for Christmas was a Big Fat Negative.

January 2011
Happy new year! I also turned 30 and we decided that it was time to take a peek at my insides. Yay! Love having things poke around my womanly bits! The laparoscopy went well and Dr Y zapped away some endometriosis. Left with a tiny scar above my left pelvic bone as a daily reminder of what I have had to go through.

February 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day! Such a romantic day and I spent it…you guessed it…on the doctor’s examination table. Poor me. I started crying towards the end of the IUI#6 and the doc was all I’m sorry! I hate crying in front of people because I hate looking needy and weepy and weak. But I couldn’t help myself, the dam holding back all the tears and the pain was broken.

Not surprising, IUI#6 was a FAIL.

March 2011
Dr Y and I decided that we would do one last IUI before throwing in the towel and getting all the big guns out. This time, I felt empty – no hope, no optimism, no crushing sense of defeat. I was sanguine. If it was meant to be, it would have been a long time ago.

IUI#7: Fail.

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And this is where we are today.