The first six months, it was fun. Honestly. We’d joke about it. Thomas would text me at work: Ovulation tonight? Should I buy candles? And I’d text back: Buy pizza. Candles are for amateurs.
After a year, it wasn’t funny anymore.
After two, there were tests. Blood work. An ultrasound where a woman with cold hands pressed a wand against my stomach and didn’t say anything for a very long time. Then a doctor’s office with a fake ficus in the corner and a word I had to look up when I got home.Then there were the injections.
If you’ve never done IVF, I don’t know how to explain it except like this: every night for weeks, Thomas stood in our bathroom with a needle, and I sat on the edge of the tub with my shirt pulled up, and he’d say, “Ready?” and I’d say, “No,” and he’d do it anyway, because we had to.
He never got used to it. His hands shook every single time.
“I hate hurting you,” he said once, capping the needle.
“You’re not hurting me,” I said. “The universe is hurting me. You’re just the delivery guy.”
He laughed. Then he sat down on the bathroom floor and put his head against my knee and didn’t say anything for a long time.
The first round failed. We got the phone call on a Tuesday while I was in the grocery store, standing in front of the cereal. The nurse was very kind. I thanked her. I hung up. I bought the cereal. I drove home. I didn’t cry until I was putting the groceries away and saw that I’d bought the wrong kind.
The second round, we got further. Two weeks further. Long enough to see two pink lines. Long enough for Thomas to buy a tiny knit hat at a craft fair and hide it in his sock drawer, where I found it later.
