A Dad's Adoption Story - Part Two
By Robert Reed

[NOTE: At the end of Part One, the author was about to learn how to inject his wife with fertility drugs. Please bear in mind that some of the following descriptions may be uncomfortable to read, but not nearly as uncomfortable as it was for the author and his wife.]

As I became hypnotized by the enormity of the needle sitting in front of me, my eyes frantically searched right, left, up, and down for my friend the half-inch needle. Alas, I quickly realized that the half-inch needle had forsaken me! Then, the nurse casually sauntered into the room.

“I, uh – I’m going to have to use the two-inch needle?” I tried to sound as relaxed as my blue jeans.

She nodded in the affirmative as she gave me the laundry list of instructions that I needed to remember for the new nightly ritual of sticking a huge syringe into my wife’s behind.

I had to be quick. I would alternate between right and left butt cheek each night, and I would focus on the upper quadrant of each cheek, close to the hip. I would pinch that area firmly, lifting up the muscle and skin, before injecting the needle.

“That’s it?” I asked the nurse, masking my fear.

“No,” she said curtly. “Immediately after needle insertion, you must lift up on the needle. If any blood enters the syringe, you need to quickly lift the needle up – but not all of the way out – and push the needle through an alternate location, through the same piercing.”

My God. Did she say blood?

Yes, she said blood.

“No problem,” I casually stated. Then, I took my first breath of the last minute and a half. I was sure that I carried off an Academy Award performance. Me. Man. Strong like bull. Me not afraid!

Who Wants to Play with Needles?

That first evening, the real me cowered on the couch as I watched Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? What better program to use as a soundtrack when you are preparing to assault and batter your wife with a large needle, and she wants you to do it?

Marie and I mixed the extremely expensive materials that were to go into the syringe, as we had been instructed. This concoction that we had made was supposed to increase the number of egg follicles that Marie produced -- from the normal one per month to as many as the ovaries would allow.

Then, per another nurse’s suggestion, Marie spent the next fifteen minutes icing the upper quadrant of her right butt cheek while we pretended to be paying attention to Regis.

As I listened to the ticks of the clock on our mantle, Regis suddenly announced that someone had just hit the $1,000 mark. Marie -- who was now lying on the couch face-down -- called to me. “I’m ready,” she said.

(Insert your favorite, loud, booming, horror-movie heartbeat sound here.)

“Is that your final answer?” I asked. Marie, through her obvious fear, smiled.

I reached for the syringe and squeezed the butt-cheek-du-jour. Marie pulled away the ice pack. I hiked my body over hers. I hovered the needle above the middle of the area that I was squeezing.

Some thirty seconds later, Regis announced that someone had won $16,000. Another thirty seconds, and I told Marie that I wasn’t ready.

“I think I need to ice up again,” she said with a smile. I was so happy to see that smile, as I felt like a complete buffoon. If she seemed angry or frustrated, I would have just hidden in the nearest available closet.

As Marie placed the ice pack again, I started thinking that whoever invented the syringe should have only made two-inch needles. Just think of the heroin abusers that the inventor could have saved because they would have been too afraid to go near this beast!

Five minutes later, I was mounting the couch again.

I focused only on the insertion point. I was Nolan Ryan, going for my seventh no hitter. Two outs. Bottom of the ninth. For a brief moment, the upper quadrant of Marie’s tush was Mike Stanley’s catcher’s mitt, and the needle was the fastball that was to strikeout Roberto Alomar.

Stee-rike three!

At first, the pain was milder than Marie expected. As she felt the medications entering her body, the pain increased a bit, but it was never absolutely intolerable. Of course, there were days when certain sides of her butt felt like old punching bags. In fact, on a few occasions, she had me inject in the same area as the night before because the other side felt too battered.

After a week of this process, we learned two things: One, we were really getting good at this; and, two, Regis was a pretty good game show host.

Not a Breakfast Condiment

But, like our quick mastery of the Lupron shot only a week before, all feelings of confidence were shattered once again. At our doctor’s appointment the next week, we were informed that we would be switching to a new concoction. Now, I would be injecting progesterone into the same areas.

The only way that I can describe progesterone adequately for those who haven’t dealt with it is that it looks almost perfect enough to pour on your Saturday morning pancakes.

Worse, when I injected these materials into Marie, I really had to use a lot of effort to force the stuff in. Imagine trying to inject maple syrup into someone’s body using a syringe. There were times, in fact, that I almost felt like I had to put my foot on Marie’s other cheek and bring out the hammer.

As you might imagine, this caused Marie unbearable pain -- so much so, that most times, she would sob when I had finished. For me, the process was emotionally draining. Each night was a mental exercise in getting passed the awful feelings I was having for being a direct participant in causing my wife pain.

This brings me to an important point in this story -- important, primarily to those who are considering in vitro for the first time. Please, do not let me scare you off. I have spoken to a number of women who, when I describe my wife’s pain, look at me strangely because they say that it wasn’t that bad.

This may likely be because, as we learned a week later when we told the doctor about the pain Marie was experiencing, those other ladies were using “British” progesterone, which was thinner and less painful going in. In our case, we were informed that -- unfortunately -- the clinic had run out of “British” progesterone and they were only providing us the (thicker and more sadistic) “American” progesterone.

How did you imagine the baby-making process? I’ll give one-thousand-to-one odds that your imagination didn’t bring in syringes that contained thick, syrupy mucky muck that you had to force into your wife’s rear.

Of course, my own discomfort – albeit much less than wife’s – was on tap in the next phase of our in-vitro process ...

Part two of Rob's story will continue in the July issue. In the meantime, if you have questions, please forward them to us at gregory@familymanonline.com.

Rob Reed is a personal injury/worker's comp attorney and web-site designer located in Mission Hills, CA. He and his wife, Marie, are currently in the process of adopting their first baby. The trials and tribulations of their adoption can be followed at www.adoptblog.com.