17w6d - World's best husband

So, it's 3 am and I'm wide awake. I'm feeling cranky, tossing and turning, rolling over a million times in bed without being able to find a comfortable position. I adjust the pregnancy body pillow, sigh, and try again.

My husband wakes up from the commotion, gently strokes my back, and asks if I'm okay. I whine about my swollen hands and feet, the heartburn, the uterine pain and how restless I'm feeling. He says, "I wish I could do something to help you. I'll call NASA first thing in the morning and we can go live on the International Space Station." Aaah, weightlessness.

He cracks me up and always seems to know just what to say or do to make me feel better in an instant. I love him. His comment makes me think of the selfless, considerate man that I married. So I get up to write it down instead of staring at the wall. Someday, when the triplets are old enough to understand, I hope I can remember all of this:

I came home from work one day - during the first few weeks of the pregnancy - to find that he had spent his day off redesigning and raising our low platform bed to make it easier for me to get in and out as the pregnancy progresses. At the time, it didn't seem necessary, but now I'm incredibly thankful that I can just swing my feet over the edge of the bed to get up and not have to lift myself and three babies off the floor three times a night as I head to the bathroom.

Without any prompting from me, he replaced our missing stair railing to ensure that I could get down to the basement and back safely.

My husband bought a night light so I wouldn't bump into our bedroom furniture (or the wall!) during my nightly bathroom escapades.

He installed a new threshold over an uneven part where our hallway meets our bathroom floor, "because soon you won't be able to see your feet anymore and I don't want you stubbing your toes."

He is frantically working to finish renovating our 2nd bathroom, nursery, and guest room before the triplets arrive.

Ever since we heard that I'm pregnant and expecting triplets, he has taken over all of the cleaning duties in the house. Vacuuming, cleaning with chemicals, and basically anything I don't feel up to doing. He has never made me feel guilty, and although I often feel like I'm not contributing, he'd just say, "No, you're doing the most important thing. Growing our babies."

He helps to make dinner when I'm wiped out. When I was so nauseous somewhere between week 7 and 10 that I suddenly couldn't stand the smell of the dinner we were preparing, he retrieved a fan from our basement, opened the windows, and solved the problem.

There's much much more, but suffice it to say that he gets it. All of it. And more importantly, he gets me. Our kids are so fortunate to have him as a father.

Va.ginal suppository hunt, courtesy of Murphy

Sil said... "I once dropped my last dose of Clomid in the toilet. I scooped it out, stared at it, wiped it a bit, and popped it in my mouth. The things we do!"

I can so relate. It reminded me of another Murphy-at-his-best episode in the life of me. As if there haven't been enough amusing anecdotes courtesy of the ever-present Murphy already! I graduated from supression and stim needles to v.ag.inal progesterone suppositories last week. Much lovelyness, these little yellow egg-shaped Pro.metrium bullets. All 60 of them. I know how many, not because I read the label. Oh noooo, that would be too easy.

When I picked the pill bottle up by its childsafe lid, the entire contents hopped off the bathroom counter and onto the tile floor like popping corn. They were scattered about with the random intent of a Jackson Pollock. The dog sniffed around eagerly for "bonbons" before I was able to shoo him out safely, close the bathroom door, and proceed with my va.ginal suppository hunt. The floor was a little... uhm... dusty, because I hadn't vacuumed in recent days (hey, I was resting between retrieval and transfer, and then after transfer, okay?!). So there I was on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor (ick!), with even my double jointed arms unable to reach all the places they had rolled into.

I grabbed the closest thing I could find - an empty Ovidrel box! - and raked in what I could reach. After about 10 minutes, the search-and-rescue mission eventually yielded 59, minus the ones I had used. The last one had rolled into a spot underneath our elevated vanity where it was beyond impossible to retrieve. The one that got away. Oh well.

Now my only problem is to... ahem... de-fluff the little buggers prior to... ahem... insertion. It's not like I can rinse them off, so I've been wiping them as best I can and hoping the 2-minute rule applies to them too.

To quote Sil, "The things we do!"

More Funny Business

Infertiles know there's nothing sacred about conceiving with ART. I've had to expose myself to so many u/s techs, doctors, REs and nurses over the past few months that I don't even worry about what I wear to the doctor's office anymore. I mean, I'm going to be naked half the time anyway, so who cares. There is no room for privacy, let alone bashfulness.

I thought I had been doing a stellar job of relaxing while exposing myself in more ways than one, and talking about the most intimate details of my life. But the universe had a surprise in store: I discovered this process can also be... funny. Now I know "humor" is not generally a concept associated with visiting any medical professional, but trust me. When you're infertile, you take humor wherever you can find it.

I haven't found much to laugh about lately, and the last place I anticipated cracking up was accompanying hubby to an urology consult. I mean, can you say, "a-w-k-w-a-r-d."

In search of a second opinion, hubby and I visited a remarkable, intelligent, wonderful board-certified, Harvard-trained, specialist who - with all the compassion and warmth in the world - also found ways to sneak the funniest punch lines into the conversation. But this doc, as amazing as he is medically, surely missed his calling as a standup comedian.

So, while hubby is in the other room still fastening his belt, the doc comes back into his office where I was waiting and says to me gently and compassionately, "The men have it so easy when it comes to IVF." He paused, and with impeccable comedic timing, says, "So, you should really bug him about going for a prostate exam soon." I about died laughing, and all I could get out was, "There is justice in the universe after all."

This doc may be a man, but he sure as hell gets it, all of it: the stress, the injections, the violation of the female body. And he may be focused on guys all day long, but he has the ability to see the world from a woman's perspective. The world sure needs more specialists like him.