Back in the Saddle, erm, Stirrups, Again...

So perhaps there are some of you out there who've been reading for awhile and know that we've been chasing the dream of 2.5 kids for the past 2 years. If you're a new reader, the short version is that it's been wicked fun looking at negative pregnancy tests for the past 23 months and lots of super fun, and completely UNhumiliating, tests and procedures for both Husband and myself. And nothing to show for it, unless you count an ever-thickening medical chart and about ten pounds of emotional eating baggage on my ass and hips. In short? AWESOMENESS.

Now that we're relatively settled into our new home (happy one month anniversary in NorCal to us!) and since I woke up on Monday a year older, we've decided to get right back up on the Reproductive Endocrinologist horse and put in some phone calls. The result of those phone calls found me sitting in a new fertility clinic, one attached to an institute of learning, which means that I got to tell my entire medical history to a bubbly blond intern who took copious notes (I think she might have dotted her i's with puffy circles) and made small talk about Perez Hilton before heading into to share her findings with the RE.

Don't get me wrong, I make fun, but her "I'm at least 10 years younger than you" banter put me completely at ease and brought my blood pressure down to a reasonable level (I was running late, had to run up the stairs due to a broken down elevator in the building and was just this side of spontaneously combusting when they first took my vitals--I was pretty sure I'd be turned away from the clinic for being a pregnancy death-trap, but my pressure came down talking to Little Miss Intern. So it's all good.

When LMI left the room to go confer with the RE, I got to look around the room, at the standard posters of uteri and fallopian tubes, ovaries busting with follicles and all of that good stuff. Like the ABC charts in Ethan's preschool class, but not, you know? Good times. And of course, there was this:

and really, WHO doesn't love that?

Ah, my old friend the OB/GYN exam table. With your stirrups, paper sheets and sonogram complete with what I affectionately call the dildo-cam. It all adds up to a really good time. So that long thing sticking straight up at the end of the table? Turns out that's NOT a microphone. Yeah, I thought it was. Asked the RE what in the world they needed a microphone for on an exam table. She looked at me, smiled, and said, "Yeah, that's a light. Not a microphone. I won't need it today, but I might another time."

Um. I'm pretty sure she might have then jotted down in her notes "Woman too stupid to procreate. Must check to ask if she's actually been having sex, or just checking her chimney monthly to see if the stork dropped a baby down it." Awesome.

The RE was really nice. Petite little blond lady with a big smile. A world away from my former Israeli, male RE, who was also nice, but in a "I used to be in the Israeli Army--let's bomb the shit out of your infertility, shall we?" kind of way. He was talking IVF before even upping my dose of clomid my 2nd cycle with him. Not necessarily a bad thing, and probably just what a lot of almost-old ladies want to hear when they come to him, but I wasn't willing to consider IVF until other options had been relatively exhausted. And I was only on 50mg of clomid, so...

This RE agreed, after taking a look at my ovaries (read: mashing my lady bits into pudding with her ultrasound), that we should move on to injectable medication "if you're not pregnant this cycle." Of course, in my mind, which is really just on this side of full-on insanity at this point (at least as far as having another baby goes), that meant to me "maybe she saw something on the ultrasound and doens't want to tell me, but maybe she knows I'm already pregnant! SQUEEEEE!" Because of course, it's totally possible to see a fertilized egg on an ultrasound two days after ovulation, right? Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I didn't actually ask. Because you know, I'd already asked about the exam table microphone. I figured one more asinine question would force her to send me packing in the interest of protecting any future children I might bear from having to deal with my stupidity.

It was a good consultation in all, and I have a follow up in a couple of weeks for "injectables training," so I can learn how to give myself the shots that will hopefully trick my body into popping out a plethora of eggs. So get ready, internets, I hope to be making lots of Octomom jokes in the near future (not that I intend to BE the next Octomom--let's remember the cervix and all it's fabulous incompetence, okay? We'll be having, if we are lucky, ONE baby, not a litter--that's not even a consideration, nice new RE lady and I agree on that).

Long story short, hope springs eternal.