Big 'Ole Box of Drugs

Having been raised in the US and being a fan of pop culture, I’ve seen my share of drug movies.  Thanks to Scarface, I’ve seen what a big ole pile of drugs looks like.  In addition, I’ve worked in the Pharma industry for nearly 10 years.  I’ve marketed drugs, measured drug levels in patients, studied how different people metabolize drugs, and I’ve even been in a couple clinical studies myself.  

With this background you would think I wouldn’t bat an eye at the box ‘o dope the fertility folks sent us a couple weeks ago (following us forking over nearly $3200) but I did.  It was impressive.  Looking at my wife and thinking that most or all of this was going to be given to her – the majority via needle injection – was pretty daunting.

I think the shock was worse for Jill – I’ve opened boxes full of needles before.  I did some animal testing in the past and I’ve dosed more than my share of lab rats with god-only-knows-what via injection.  For her, though, it had to be intimidating – all those needles, various solutions – I forget sometimes how foreign and, for the lack of a better word, scary it can be. 

Mostly though, this box of drugs represented all that thought and all that planning becoming reality.  We were starting IVF.  This involved handing over the money we had worked for.  This involved starting the meds and the shots every night.  This involved the potential for a baby 9-10 months down the road.  At the time, we were more focused on the procedure of it all – making sure we got the right amounts at the right time – that kind of stuff.  Now – only two weeks later the big picture has started to set it a bit more. 

From my current understanding, the differences between IVF and a traditional pregnancy start about 3 weeks before her egg and my sperm “do their thing” in a petri dish somewhere and continue until about 2 months after “conception.”  This initial round of drugs is used to generate a whole bunch of eggs (which I’ll get into more in my next post) which are collected and removed.  Obviously, in traditional pregnancies, fertilization happens internally (which is called in utero fertilization or just ‘plain ‘ole gettin’ knocked up’).  Then the petri dish dance party happens and they transfer the fertilized egg back into Jill.  Since this happens outside the body it’s called In Vitro, which in Latin means Within Glass.  Then the next round of drugs is used to get all the “you’re growing a baby” stuff happening – which is needed because since fertilization didn’t happen internally, Jill’s body wouldn’t know that it needed to get going.  After a couple months of jumpstarting, her body catches on and she goes off the meds and we basically transition over to a normal OB/GYN and it’s a “normal” pregnancy from that point on.

Please note I said normal pregnancy – NOT normal baby.  No child of mine will ever be called normal.  I simply won’t have it!