One Enchanted Evening

Timed intercourse. About as romantic as it sounds. But that's the reality of baby-making when it becomes a job. When the unwritten rule between the couple is that there are no comments to be made about performance, no snickers from the peanut gallery about lack of enthusiasm. Just get to business. Sort of takes all the fun out of it. By this time though, we were well past that.

After no luck with ancestral potions nor the first step in pharmacotherapy, and a couple months of conflicting schedules, we decided that we would move to the next stage. This being Clomid therapy, bloodwork, monitoring, ultrasounds and when the time was right, a booster injection of HCG just to crank up the torpedoes and release those eggs with a vengeance. And THEN see if those stars would align.

Monitoring again; oh how I was hating those daily visits to the labs. And even being more depressed when I sometimes saw mothers in there with a child accompanying them. Why couldn't they be happy with that child, at least they had that. I wanted just one baby; I didn't get it (although several years later I would certainly "get" it. If anything I was even more determined/ psychotically driven to have baby #2. That'll be another chapter).

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Work was going well; I had been promoted at the beginning of the year and had a few more responsibilities. But I was enjoying it; and had a couple of trips planned later in the year to head office in Paris. And amazingly, for the first time since we were married, our schedules were such that Ian would be able to accompany me. Finally. Paris in the fall, complete with husband, sounded like paradise.

School was a lot of hard work, but the learning and collaboration with my fellow students was invigorating and at least a productive distraction from the lack of success on the fertility front.

With things slowing down a bit in the summer, we decided to try a cycle with the extra HCG boost. Which of course entailed another trip back to the clinic after the usual bloodwork, ultrasounds; and then we had to do our business after 24 hours, the ETA of the grand eggs (yes plural, remember I was on Clomid).

This first attempt failed.

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August 1999, the month of our 6th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, I had to attend an important conference in Montreal on our anniversary weekend. It also happened to land on a very important couple of days in our cycle. So it was a given that the spouse would accompany me. He was also travelling and would meet me the Friday evening.

I was lucky to have the excuse to "go home and pack" - in other words, stop by my doctor's to get the HCG shot just before my flight. Hopped on the plane, attended a dinner meeting with my boss and some other colleagues. It came up in conversation that it was my anniversary weekend.

My boss felt badly that I was working on my anniversary. Being a more-than decent fellow, he insisted that I take Ian out for a nice dinner on the company, and even suggested a restaurant.

So that evening, I decided that we would celebrate, really celebrate our anniversary. It was a gorgeous evening, we were in Montreal, a very romantic city, and we deserved to have some fun. We went to Bice, had a couple of cocktails and a lovely bottle of wine, (which I actually drank), let loose and just enjoyed ourselves. As a couple. For the first time in the last four years of TTC, we pretty much put all of that out of our minds and just focused on being a couple again. It was really magical.

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Two weeks later, I went in for a blood test, not expecting much. Ian was away again at a sales meeting. I called the clinic for the results, and instead of a soft-spoken "So sorry, my dear" at the other end, I was told it was a "Weak positive".

What?!!! I almost flipped. I was too scared to be too excited. They asked me to come back for another test. And the second result: POSITIVELY POSITIVE.

I was pregnant. Almost too much to bear. When I told Ian over the phone that night, he just hollered, didn't even bother containing himself.

You see, the stars had indeed aligned. Both Ian and I were born in, and presumably conceived in Montreal. And it had been our anniversary.

So the trips to Paris in the fall? I had to cancel. Paris would still be there.

I had to meet someone very important in the spring, a meeting that we could just not afford to jeopardize:

(Here's the happy dance for the day )