A Hydrosonogram and a Prepoo

     What a difference a day makes/made. 24 little hours pass and you can come together like green pineapple and coconut jello mold. I had always wondered when in the world I would experience my rite of passage.  Menarche did not quite feel like it. Nope.  Partly because I did not tell my mother the news & hid it (for like a year) because I did not want my personal business broadcast to Aunts V & S & X,Y,Z (love you) and every other snickering bystander/brother/dad in my little world. And the news always seemed so catastrophic in my neighborhood.  A girl getting her very first period marked guerilla parent/community counterfertility action and stern tension. 
     Counterfertility. Like getting dragged back home caveman style by your brothers because it is now too risky to permit you to play with your once-upon-a-time cribmates. Further proof?  I was not permitted to have phone calls from the opposite sex until I was nineteen.  Yeah. Like those Black community evidence based mantras, "No babies until you've got the degree and the house."  Counterfertility.  Now from just whence would me rites of passage arise! A cottillion? High school graduation? Hot August nights in a Cleveland swamp listening to "For Lovers Only" while my parents' trained dog refused to let any suitors to come within 2 feet of our white picket fence (hee! yes 'Ma, I do exaggerate).  Is it any wonder I ever got married?
     Letting that and so much else go in the past twenty-four grueling hours has done me well. But let me tell you, my yesterday brought me to a rare precipitation: real tears.  Naw. Stereotypically, I tend not to cry. On day 7, full moon-leaving, at 10pm I wept. Then and again at 5am, I cried in the dark. Quiet, hot tears.  The kind that even smell salty, in such a showing that they humidified our bedroom and insantaneously roused a man who often asks me, "Why don't you ever cry?" 
     Tears like insulin must come in relatively finite amounts I guess.  My entire adolescence, lifegoals and future converged on my yesterday.  After: the hardest interview for the only job I have ever wanted in my life concluded with the "you really don't have the experience we're looking for", an F (74%) on a resubmit in grad school,  news that I need two more crowns; and a man who must have never heard O'Bryan's version of Still Waters Run Deep on a sweltering, August night in Cleveland. 
     My early morning prayers saved me.  Up.Up.Up I got and called my breakfast friends.  As I drove to my friends in the beauty of the misted Carolina pines this "what-a-beautiful" November morning, it all came together. What I'm gon' do, that is.  Don't know the details, but I just chose gratitude again, gave my big ole chocolate guy some credit and just drove.  As I did I got a little spunk and decided to get some resolution about my multicomplex of ironies.  Underemployed. Overeducated. Underexperienced. Undermarried (did I say that?). Demotivated to pay for the academic hazing with little return. Childless.  And the equillibruim shifted to favor my effervescent personality, my kind, ethical, gentle, humanistic way with its threatening undercurrent of fire.  I could see clearly now. 
     After breakfast, I drove to get my water ultrasound at my brandnew testtube babydoctor (RE).  Emotio-logically  (that's a word I think I just made up) I could hardly justify doing it--for the aformentioned reasons. But something just carried me.
     Something about the feeling of the morning was a flowing beautiful though.  One of my long seen friends just so happened to be at the testtube baby store orienting with my fave nurse and I didn't mind. At all. In fact I took it as a blessing, one of a few I have not bored you with, that has cushioned the harsh past 24.  This woman is one of the most sincere people that I know.  Oh what a beautiful morning.   Dr. K. wheeled really close and said to me "So, I looked at that MRI you had last year.  It looked fine, better than I thought it could. You virtually have no fibroids, the ones in question are really,really small. I got your labs back.  Your FSH is under ten--6! Your AMH? Aah... could be better if it were above 1, but its workable at 0.5.  Lets do this ultrasound so I can see if that lil fibroid you do have is in your uterine cavity."  (Flashes of sharp cervical pain and minor cramping enter the room.)
    I needed to know, "Well  Dr. K? What do you see?" He then turned the monitor for me to see it too, while uttering words no one has ever said about my uterus...  "It looks beautiful,..."  No polyps, no fibroids, nada, nunca, nein! "....let's do IVF, now." And he smiled at me, renewing my faith in humanity.  He then said "It kinda depends on what your yearly deductible  is, I'm afraid though. You'd have to pay it again in January. Do you know if its huge? Make that appointment to sign consents ....Find out about that deductible."
     My uterus did look good.  Even to me. A I checked out, the clerk said, "Goodbye Mrs H. See you next visit.  And you have no copay no deductible. Have a good day."
     Recently I wondered where my creativity had gone.  Like my groove--where was it?   Not my motivation, my free flowing creativity that comes from being up up up off your backside. (When you dance so you can feel better, thing).  As I sit pampering myself, with the dregs of my raw honey, Palma Christi Castor Oil & EVO prepoo and facial, I flow.  Just for me.  Anticipating in vitro fertilization not as  a guarantee of sorts, but a rite of passage.  This welcome emotional paradigm ("feel like" versus "gon' do") I rarely have indulged in you see.     
     So imagine how easy it was when I told my chocolate guy this afternoon, "The new doctor said that I'm all good and we can start taking the meds next month after we sign the papers next week..."  And he looked at me, nodded and said, "Okay."  (This my friends is a big deal.  This thing right here.)
    Don't care if anyone every hires me.  Care if I get kicked outta school, but not today. Looking for a good (read benevolent & free) cosmetic dentist or the Extreme Makeover folks to knock on my door.  But other than that?  Everything's going my way.

Stay tuned,

The Chocolate Cyster

The Test Tube Baby Shop is Better than the Mausoleum

I need to speak to a few people who may need for me to make it plain about what I am doing. Please forgive the fact that I will have multiple voices; don't let this confuse you.  Its still me, The Chocolate Cyster.

(This is Boo, y'all.)

If you have heard of "test tube babies", I am trying to make one.  There is a place down the street from where I work that does it and well, I stop in there like every day or so and we're working on it.  We are on the first stages where they just look to see if you qualify for the project.  It does cost quite a bit and good insurance makes it possible for people like me.  They have the process down pretty good now.

I stopped yesterday on the way home from work.  I just wanted to know my very first lab results, but they did not have them yet.  I don't know if I can do it yet.  But I am on the case.

Why would I want to do this?

Because when I come home from work and even when my man is there, the house is like a mausoleum.  That's like a crypt or where they buried Michael Jackson.  Cold and silent and still and smelling like nothing.

Any yes I do cry because I "don't have no babies." Not having children is not really a blessing for all my baby-mama peeps out there.  You should be where I am.  It gets tired after about ten years of it.

That's why.  Any questions?

I am off to the dentist.  Gotta keep the oral hygiene together....to keep the inflammation out of my body and to keep the miscarriages away.....We can talk about that more if you want to know.

Will let you know as soon as I know,
The Chocolate Cyster