Oh Baby

I’m kneeling on the bathroom floor, eye level with my wife’s naked butt. In my right hand is a syringe with a needle long enough to inject an elephant.

My wife, standing against the counter, peeks over her shoulder and asks in a thin, fearful voice, “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“Absolutely,” I say, looking down at my trembling right hand. “Believe me, this is not a big deal.” I take a deep breath and focus on the circle drawn upon her right cheek with a felt tip pen. The target was placed there by a nurse this afternoon after a hasty and vague tutorial on how to administer fertility shots.

“Just relax, and we’ll do it on three. OK?”

I remember the nurse saying something about after the needle goes in, to pull the plunger out slightly to see if blood is drawn into the cylinder. If there is, I hit a vein and need to abort the injection immediately.

The clock is approaching six. In order to be most effective, I need to administer the shot as close to the hour as possible. The dog begins to whine and scratch the door wondering what’s going on in here.

It’s now or never.

“OK. Ready? One …” My wife starts hyperventilating. “Oh God, oh God …” she says in the tone of voice you get at the top of a roller coaster that’s about to descend.

“Two …” I visualize the grapefruit that I’ve been practicing injections on for the last half hour.

“Three …” I let it fly like I’m throwing darts. I am surprised at how easily the needle glides through flesh. Much easier than the grapefruit. I’ve hit the target dead center.

OK. I now have a needle deep inside her gluteus maximus. Don’t faint. Be calm. I pull the plunger out slightly. Everything looks good. I finish the injection and withdraw the needle.

My wife turns around amazed. “Are we finished? I hardly felt it. That wasn’t bad at all!”

“See, I told you—not a big deal,” I say, before collapsing to the floor.

After two weeks of my wife’s receiving daily shots in the stomach and the rear from Dr. Yours Truly, it’s my turn to contribute to the cause. Compared to her assignment, my job is a cakewalk. But still.

I’m sitting in the lobby of the place designed especially for this one purpose. There are two other men waiting. Though we are all here for the same very limited, yet essential, function, we are careful to avoid eye contact, much less conversation. The door to the lobby opens: The nurse calls out, “William White?” I cringe inside. Did she have to make a public announcement? I follow her down a hallway into a small examination room. Once inside, she asks me to verify that the name on the sample cup is mine, and just to make sure, she has me initial and date it.

She recites the directions without inflection or pause or any pity for my slightly embarrassed state. She wants me to accomplish the deed in the most dry, sterile manner possible—basically without anything touching anything.

“When you’re finished, put the lid on the cup, and place it in here,” she says, pointing to a box that looks like a small safe. This apparently is a device to keep the sample warm. As she stands to leave, she points at a file on the window sill. “There’s reading material in there,” she says nonchalantly, as if I’ll find copies of Highlights and Good Housekeeping magazines. “And when you’re finished, leave the door open and you can exit down the hall. Questions?”

“Mind if I smoke afterward?”

She shuts the door behind her.

So this is how life is supposed to begin? Here in this cold, fluorescent-lit room, just me and my little cup and the well-worn pages of “the reading material”? Oh, well. To quote Woody Allen: At least it will be with someone I love.

I peek through the blinds at the street below. A parking lot is being built across the street and they’re driving huge piles into the ground; the booming thud, thud, thud adds further romantic ambience to the occasion. All righty, then. I better get started before they come back and check on me. Miss September: Here’s looking at you.

Before I leave the room, I double-check everything. Lid on cup—check. Cup in warmer—check. Door to warmer closed—check. Thankful I don’t have to parade through the lobby all aglow, I tiptoe down the hall and out the back door like a thief.

The next day, Linda—who is teeming with eggs thanks to the shots—and I return to the doctor’s office for the IUI (intrauterine insemination) or, as it was explained to me, the turkey baster treatment. This is a very uncomfortable and trying procedure for both of us. For Linda, it’s because of the metal instruments and stirrups and the tubes. For me, it’s because Linda’s fingernails are dug deep inside my forearm for the entire 15-minute procedure. Nonetheless, we endure and leave the office with the highest of hopes. Perhaps, maybe, a miracle this time?

But it’s all for nothing.

In fact, seven rounds of this and nada, zippo. Heartbreak. Each month is punctuated with a period, instead of an exclamation point. The disappointing news arrives with the dreary regularity of a utility bill.

We sit in the doctor’s office. He explains that there’s no particular reason we can’t conceive. After a series of tests, his official diagnosis: “unexplained infertility,” a conclusion that leaves us in a frustrating, emotional limbo. Now it’s time to get serious, he says. We’re not getting any younger and with each passing day the odds are lowered.

He recommends we move on to in vitro fertilization, which again is explained to me in the simplest terms possible: we’re moving from turkey basters to test tubes. Except now there will be a lot more shots with longer needles, and more time, and much more money, and with each round, the odds of success are about one in five, and Linda will have to be put under. On top of all this, there is the increased risk of multiple births.

Despite the difficulties, we are certain this is the route we want to take. Linda has friends who’ve spent years doing in vitro. They all say it’s worth it in the end.

But something seems to hold us back. Are we pushing nature too far? What about all the babies in the world who need a good home? Maybe, just maybe, we should think about adoption.

But it’s not easy giving up on the dream of having our own children. We think. We pray. We Ben Franklin the pros and cons on a sheet of paper. We sleep on it, and then, finally, the decision is made—adoption it is! And the journey begins.

—WCW