It's a Hard Egg

Whenever I hear the song It’s a Heartache by Abba, I think of my dad. We both really liked that song, and so, many aeons ago when I was wee, he decided he was going to go get the single record with that song, and he asked me: "Is it ‘It’s a Heartache' or ‘It’s a Hard Egg’?" I had no fucking clue. I guessed wrong, and when he came home later that day, I still remember his annoyance, because the salesperson at Ye Old Record Shoppe didn’t know what he was talking about. But they figured it out, and I think I still have the 45 floating around somewhere among all my piles of crap.

My dad would have LOVED the internet.

I thought of that song this morning, both going to and from my doctor’s appointment; to, for no reason at all having it pop into my head, maybe because it was my dad’s birthday this past Wednesday, and from, realizing that it was highly unlikely that I’d ever have a child with my dad’s dry and smartass sense of humor and his brilliance. Kind of like me – I was definitely my father’s child. Sure, my mom is a rock$tar as well of course, but even she would say that my dad and I were like two peas in a pod, two Geminis..

And now it looks like the Huebner genes are coming to an end. Because I went to my appointment this morning with a foolish sense of optimism – according to my AMH test, I should have had plenty of antral follicles. Tons. Tons of potential eggs and babies.

I had 4.

For the uninitiated, 4 is a shitty number. 18 would be good. 4 is not hopeful. 4 is the death spiral of fertility treatment, where you throw tons of money at this stuff and get nowhere.

Clearly, my AMH lied. Science lied to me. I’m a little bitter about that.

To add insult to injury, I then had my blood drawn, and yes, I’m a hard stick and I’m used to that, but this time attempt #2 hit a nerve or something, because my left hand and then arm got painful and numb. Attempt #3 wasn’t much better. I drove home bawling.

One reason I sold my house in Chicago – the main reason – was so that I’d have the money for fertility stuff and kids and so on. What a fucking waste that was, all that cleaning and packing and sorting and boxing up and sheer hell, all purely motivated by the thought of: think of MiracleBaby, it’ll all be worth it. I might as well have stayed in Chicago in my house with my friends and family and my bike rides to Wisconsin and my hockey playing and my railing against the idiot yuppie neighbors putting up their 6-ft privacy fences and blocking out all my sun.

Now I’m here with none of that, and likely no baby. Some great fucking plan.

And I have to say something here about all the Judgy McJudgersons out there who come up with something along the lines of “why did she wait so long” or “if she really wanted kids she would have had them by now.” My new cohort of childless-but-trying, we hear that shit a LOT. Or we see it written a lot, everywhere. Whereas we don’t see it for guys who wait until they get their shit together before having a family, do we? I don’t recall anyone ever saying about some guy having kids at 55+ or whatever, what the hell was HE thinking. It’s more along the lines of hey, congratulations you stud. Wtf is up with that?

The thing is, life gets in the way, and no, not all of us wanted to start churning out kids at 18 or 21. In fact, I’ll admit it, when I was younger I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids. Gasp. But then I’ve never made the case that that was my life’s only goal. Then when I was in my 30s, I figured I’d get married and then have kids, even thinking it through to the point of saying of course we’d wait a while before having kids, so that we’d have time together as a couple before the craziness of kids. Ha ha.

Then once I thought oh shit, that doesn’t look like it’s happening, (still in my 30s here), I didn’t have the savings to pursue fertility or childcare or actually raising a kid, PLUS my insurance didn’t cover any kind of maternity at all. Nada. That would be downright stupid, to take that kind of risk of not having any of that stuff covered. Then cancer happened, and that’s kept me occupied for the past 5 years or so. Gee, my bad.

So my point, if there is one, is to say this: we all take different paths to get to where we are, and some of those roads can be pretty bumpy. I’m sorry I didn’t follow the same fucking lifeplan as the rest of you, but let’s lighten up on each other, shall we? Can we just do that at least?

It’s lonely enough doing this all on my own as it is.