My friend Sarah asked me today if Heather and I were considering fertility drugs. I started to say what I usually do, which is that I'm concerned about side effects and would like to delay drugs as much as possible, but then it turned into something else.
What I said next was that I didn't want to put chemicals into Heather's body just because we're impatient with what it's doing on its own. I realized what an absurd reaction I was having, since I have never hesitated to accept chemical intervention. I'm on three prescriptions right now and take Excedrin more days than not. I think skipping childhood vaccines is ridiculous.
Then I started on some sort of tirade about women being too ambitious about getting pregnant on demand, that the upward trend of C-sections is indicative of an over-scheduled culture. In both cases, I'm a meanie, because a lot, a lot, of women need fertility drugs to conceive, and a lot of women have solid medical reasons for C-sections. I at least caught myself in that.
The truth is that I don't want lesbian to equal infertile. I don't want to flip to the "infertility" section of the tips-for-getting-pregnant books. Until proven otherwise, Heather is perfectly healthy and fertile. If we're going to pursue drugs and even IVF, I want it to be because we truly can't make a baby without treatment, not because we got impatient. Hence the multiple doctors and multiple appointments for multiple tests.
Still, why is that so important? Why am I clinging to this precious principle? Labor hurts less with an epidural, and you can cut back on that even more with a C-section. I can't expect everyone to get kiddie pools because Ricki Lake says so. And, given how painful each failed insemination has been, what cause am I serving by saying we should refuse drugs? How many negatives does it take to "deserve" Clomid? How many roads must a lesbian walk down before you can call her a mom?
The answer, my friend... depends on what Dr. C says.
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