Work — Just Relax - Infertility Sucks

A perfect muumuu specimen; I would prefer a bit more color though.

As we geared up for our first egg retrieval I was taking up to four injections a day. These meds caused my ovaries to go into overdrive, making 10+ eggs each, instead of the usual one total. With that came a ginormous buddha belly that had me contemplating the purchase of maternity pants for work. I’ve heard that maternity pants are made of unicorn tears and threads from Beyoncé’s favorite outfit; in other words they are stupid comfortable. With that and knowing I value comfort over all else, if I put a pair of these magical pants on there would be no turning back… with or without a baby on board. So living in yoga pants and stretchy work skirts would have to do. I also contemplated moving to Hawaii so I could wear a muumuu for all of eternity, as it’s acceptable there (at least I picture it to be).

Fat pants aside, I was a freaking emotional mess. I’m still not quite sure if I scream cried a lot because of the meds, the stress, or both. Either way I blamed it on the meds.

If memory serves me well, I was on all the stimulation meds for about 3 weeks, and the closer we got to the egg retrieval surgery the more often I required to be in for labs and Wanda time (the transvaginal uktrasound) so we could count the follicles (egg sacs) and make sure I wasn’t overstimulated. Overstimulation results in about 2-10lbs of fluid ending up in your abdomen, a nice trip to the hospital, and sometimes a drainage or surgery. Thanks, but no thanks.

“So you’ll need to come in three days this week”, says Dr. Babymaker. Ok, cool. Sure. No problem. If you recall, I travel to clients all over the country each week and working remote is frowned upon. Of course I didn’t tell my boss or coworkers about our treatment, so I had to juggle the work, the meetings, my schedule, and the lies. I truly hate lying, and I’m pretty effing terrible at it. Stress atop of stress, heavily caked on stress. Sure I was a treat to deal with home.

It wasn't until my second round of IVF that I told my boss, and I only told him because he assigned me to a project in Miami during the Zika frenzy. Essentially I was forced into telling him, and let me tell you… that shit wasn’t remotely as hard I thought. He said, “in the grand scheme of things, this project doesn’t matter”. From then on I was able to let them know I had appointments, surgeries, and some time alone with Wanda. A weight was lifted and I was able to focus on work and pissing on pregnancy tests in airport bathrooms.