What to expect when you’re not expecting XVI: Where have ya been Dave?
Two and a half months ago I had a shitty birthday when our most recent IVF round got called off. I wrote about that already. But the part I left out of the story was going to the vege market immediately after the IVF clinic. While we were there I ran into James Shaw, leader of the Greens. Now I used to work for James.
“How are you David?” he asked.
“Not great” I said. “It’s my birthday and we’ve just come from the IVF clinic where our latest round has been called off so it’s a pretty shitty day.
“We’ve actually come down to ask if maybe you’d consider giving up a sample?”
Poor James took me seriously. Lucky for James, Kim is a nice person and she let him off the hook pretty quickly by clarifying that we didn’t really. But there were a couple of minutes of massive awkwardness where James physically walked backwards from me. Ha.
Anyway we went on holiday. It was a good time. I can recommend. When we got on our plane, we were sitting in economy class. I took advantage of the chat feature to send a message to the fancy pants people in business class. They never responded.
We landed in LA and had hired a convertible Mustang. But we got a convertible BMW instead. Oh well. It was the convertible part we really wanted. We drove from LA to Vegas across a desert of not fucking much. We had the top down. It was about 40 degrees. I was driving on the wrong side of the road. It was a pretty unpleasant time. But I didn’t want to suggest closing the roof of the car because it was supposed to be this great big fun adventure.
Eventually, with hot wind blowing into my eyes I said to Kim “can we please close the roof and put some air con?”
“Oh thank god” she said. “I’ve been suffering but didn’t want to say anything”.
Communication people. It’ll help keep your marriage alive, and also save you from burning up in the Californian/Nevadan desert.
Vegas is amazing. It’s a big playground. But also it was fucking hot. To be fair we were there in August. Which is pretty hot. But man you walk outside at like midnight and it’s still like walking into a furnace. We gambled. We lost. We gambled more. We lost more. Kim made friends with a rich guy who tipped her $100 for nothing. We gambled that. We saw Penn and Teller. We went to Tournament of Kings and watched dudes joust and sword fight while we ate a whole chicken with our bare hands because they don’t give you cutlery but fuck me if the first course wasn’t soup.
And we saw Britney Spears. Who is amazing. Don’t even care if she was lip synching. Don’t know if she was. Suspect she might have been. But the show was amazing. It looked like they spent more on that show than our government spends on housing for the poor (POLITICAL/TOPICAL HUMOUR).
We then went back to LA and did the Disney thing. Disneyland is fantastic. You cannot help but be caught up in the magic of it all. The parade with all the characters is so good. Aladdin waved at me.
We also ended up with a spare day, I posted on Facebook “Hey, have a spare day in LA, anyone got any ideas of what to do?”. One of my friends is a magician, he said we should go to the Magic Castle. I had heard of it, I looked it up. It looked amazing. It’s a venue where there is magic. Everywhere. But you either have to be a member or be invited in by a member. My friend who suggested it then went to work seeing if he could get us invited in. And he bloody did. In fact he got us several invitations in. I had to go drop US$100 on a suit/shirt/tie because I hadn’t brought one with me (btw that’s a fucking cheap outfit)(and it looked it) but wow, it was such a cool night. The ‘Castle’ is built into the side of a hill so when you walk in it looks small but it goes into the hill. There are three theatres where magicians put on shows, ranging from close-up hand magic to full on illusions. But the really cool stuff is between the theatres which are a number of bars. There you’ll see magicians just hanging out and doing tricks for each other.
The magician who had invited us in – Steve Valentine – was there. We talked to him for ages. We met LA types who are all screenwriters, or actors, or rappers, or they know screenwriters, or actors, or rappers. Steve did card tricks. It was a pretty amazing night.
We flew home. 24 hours after landing we had an appointment at the fertility clinic to check if Kim’s cyst was gone. There’s nothing like having an appointment for the thing you ran away from the day after getting back to really make the holiday feel like it didn’t happen.
Then yesterday we got the nod that our next round is happening. And it’s been a great three months without thinking about it, or mixing injections, or worrying whether this scan will be another failure. But it’s happening again. And we’re both super nervous about it. I don’t know why. It’s the same shit. But we’re nervous. We hope it’s not the same shitty ending, but we’ve had so many shitty endings that we’re conditioned to expect another shitty ending now. And despite getting the nod, it’s still 3 weeks away. So we’re all nervous and excited but still more waiting.
In the meantime, people in my family are having kids, or they’re pregnant. Our friends are having more kids. We’re still not. We’re still the couple who can’t have kids. And people still talk to us with their heads at a 45 degree angle still.
But we’ll go in to the clinic. And we’ll get the cocktail of drugs that Kim has to inject into herself (this time with extra injection to do more things to try and make it work!).
So we had a great holiday. But now we’re back doing the same shit. Different day. Hopefully better result.
Fingers crossed or maybe uncrossed would be more appropriate but really hope it goes well.
Sending you lots of good wishes and positive thoughts! We’re on our own IVF journey at the moment so we can sympathise with what you’re going through and how hard it is. Following your updates and hoping this round will be the one for you.