A…. raptor? As in a dinosaur? Eh??-
Well, we’ll get to that, eventually. First, it’s storytime:
When I was in my early teens I imagined myself being a father at the age of 25. Whatever gave me the idea, I’ll never know, and looking back I don’t see how any of those dreams would, or could, have been realized. Not back then.
They were dreams, though, and deep down, family has always meant a lot to me. For me, family means comfort and calm. Despite the quarrels I’ve had with my mother over the years, I think of nothing but warmth when I think of family.
Through my mid-to-late teens I took on a more cynical view on things, most likely sparked by my depression; what twisted mofo would bring a child into this broken world, with wars, hunger, terrorism, you name it… It would be cruel and selfish to force another helpless being into this shit-hole of a world, right?
Right?
Fast forward half a life.
I was still very cynical when Marie and I met. The thought of family, outside of what I already had, wasn’t really…a thought at all; the dreams of being a parent, long gone. Spending the time with Marie made me slowly change my mind, though. She thawed my frozen heart. Made me see things in a different light. Made me realize that while there is all kinds of awful things in this world, there are a lot (like A LOT) of awesome things as well.
For instance, love. Love does some crazy stuff to a man. Love might lead to family, come full circle.
Marie and I have wanted to start a family of our own for a while. A pretty long while. Almost exactly three years, to be precise. I suppose we “wanted to start a family” for longer than that, in various degrees, but three years ago is when we decided to really try for it.
Weeks and months went by without results. Half a year, still nothing. One whole year..
When the question arose, in a semi-unrelated visit to the doctor,Β if we wanted to have children, we told him our story of how we’d tried for a good long while. Bla bla bla and we’re sent off on a journey for preliminary investigations for IVF.
“I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.”
– Mark Watney, The Martian (2015)
I just love that quote.
So we turned to science. Along the way it’s discovered that Marie is suffering from endometriosis, the likely culprit behind our struggles. Science will deal with you, you bastard!
Marie has been a real champ through all of this. All the tests and examination, poking and prodding, has put her through a rough time, both physically and mentaly. It is so incredibly unfair how 99.99% of the tests are being performed on her, leaving me standing by her side, looking on; holding on. Somehow, though, she has remained strong.
After surgery upon surgery, and months of medicating – and lots and lots of waiting – finally we’re in the clinic, having eggs retrieved. And again, it’s incredibly unfair, because my one job was to jizz in a test tube.. My job’s more fun than hard. Pun intended.
Out of the two eggs retrieved, only one were fertilised. We had hoped for a bunch more of them, but there you go. After two days of incubation, the fertilised egg – now an embryo – was returned. Roughly three weeks later, Marie is testing positive. I guess the picture gave it away. It’s still some ways to go, but if all goes well, we’re having a baby come summer. It’s one of the scariest, wonderfulest, things ever. EVER.
So there’s my little story. I’m not sure I got everything exactly in order of appearance, because my mind doesn’t always play co-operative, and my memory sometimes escapes me after lunch.. But there we go.
Now to clarify the title; Marie and I often jokingly say (between us) that she is a Triceratops, I’m a T-rex, and if we ever got a kid, it’d be a raptor. That made any sense? Good.
See you around!
α( α )α
