I felt her stir before I heard anything. After all, we were in a queen bed at the time, and Elisa had a tendency to curl right next to me...you know, so that I was on the very edge of the bed, holding on for dear life. She had rolled away and I heard her feet hit the floor. It must have been 4:30am. That's right. For the previous year plus of our marriage, my wife had risen from the dead of sleep to go and exercise. I supported her by quietly celebrating that I had about an hour more sleep before I'd have to get up to go to work. This morning was like any other. Elisa got ready, headed downstairs to exercise. I'd blissfully roll over, ready to get a couple more winks of sleep before the inevitable day would begin. When she'd come up after an hour of working out, I would usually be lucky if I even heard her. I had to set a quick alarm when I did so that I could perfectly time my entrance into the bathroom. I'd desperately try to get a few more minutes of sleep in the darkness of the bedroom. These days, however, I didn't return to sleep so quickly. I had a new routine...a waiting routine. First, I'd hear her turn on the sink. I'd always think that I could hear the ripping of plastic. I often wondered if I was just making that part up in my mind. It would get quiet...
Each day, the same thing happened next. Silence, followed by the sounds of Elisa opening the garbage can, turning on the shower, and then entering it. 8 minutes later, I'd be roused from bed to trade her places while she got ready. I didn't need to ask. I already knew the answer. It was a no. It was always a no. I feared it would never happen. This morning, however, I knew it would be different. Well, I certainly was hopeful. I laid in the dark, still listening. Faucet? Check. Ripping plastic? Yep. Silence? About 3 minutes worth. And then...no shower. No garbage. The bathroom door opened, bathing the bedroom and my tired eyes in soft white light.
The prospect of starting a family beyond Elisa and I was a daunting proposal. For me, especially. In fact, early in marriage, I thought I was brilliant. When Elisa inquired as to when we would be starting a family (not that she was rushing...more curious than anything), I made a laundry list of the things that would have to happen before we'd even turn to the baby discussion. First, we needed at least two dogs. I had to be convinced that beyond plants and inanimate objects, I could keep something alive...well, something more substantial than a cactus that needed to be watered once a year. One dog wouldn't be enough, either. We would have two. And we'd get them trained. That would take some time. I then looked to our vehicles. When we were married, Elisa was driving a 1994 Toyota Corolla. I was cruising around Salt Lake in a 1993 Dodge Shadow. I loved that car, and Elisa questioned why every day. It was a stick shift. It didn't have air conditioning. The idea of any "power" features was laughable...it might have had power windows (yet, as I mentioned the old car while writing this, as if knowing what I was saying, she said "no power windows and one of the manual handles was broken"). I lived the dream. But these were not family cars. They were college kid cars. So we'd need to replace the cars. Both of them, in fact. I turned my attention to school. I was still in a Masters program and Elisa was knee deep in her Bachelor's Program. Yeah, we'd have to finish school. No nighttime feedings when we were trying to battle through finals. And just in case these dominoes fell too rapidly, my ace in the hole was my last demand. We had to be in a house. No apartment living. No 2-bedroom apartment where the kid has to go up a flight of stairs to get home.
I had stacked so many "to do" items in front of us, I was convinced it would be a long time before I'd have to face the true reason why I was hesitant. I always tell people that the reason Elisa and I are 3.5 years apart (I'm older) is because this age separation resulted in a matching of maturity levels. On the outside, I wanted to be prepared. On the inside, I was terrified of being a parent and felt I was too immature to take that task on. I have a feeling Elisa wouldn't disagree. We would fight about some of my behaviors while we were newly married. She looked poorly on me coming home from a day of work and school (at 10:00pm), and firing up a video game until 2:00am. Apparently, I was unaware that ignoring my wife for some gaming was an inappropriate choice during the first year of marriage. We also had a tendency to have wars in the apartment. Water fights. Wrestling matches. Me tossing Elisa over my head and into the sliding glass doors. Memories, I tell you. I'm also reminded of the night that I had prepared a full meal of pork chops, macaroni and cheese, and peas. Elisa and I ended up fighting, which caused her to not eat, me to not eat, and me to toss the entire lot of food into the disposal. Boy, was I grown up! But, I told myself as I crashed each night, my immaturity could, well, mature. I had my laundry list, after all. We had time.
Elisa and I were married on May 10, 2003. So our marriage and path to that pivotal moment catalogued above. By the middle of June 2003, we had added our first baby. A little black pug named Maggie. We spent the summer getting her settled and potty trained. Maggie's arrival caused a bit of an inconvenience, though...one that I was unaware would throw a huge wrench into my "long term" delay plans. We were informed by the apartment company that we were in a "no dogs" apartment of the complex. Despite being told the contrary, we were faced with the prospect of moving. So we moved three buildings over (sadly, moving is a similar pain in the rear) just a few months into our marriage. I was quickly tiring of the apartment complex and felt they hadn't been quite honest. And then came the dropping of interest rates. Apartment living was already old, I had just gotten a promotion at work, and Elisa was already thriving at Red Butte (yep, she was working there a year before we got married...that's loyalty!). It was time to get a house. So we went searching and on November 1, 2003, we headed out of our apartment and into our first home in Draper, Utah.
In my mind, I ignored the fact that one of my biggest "baby delay" trump cards was gone. I had so much more in front of me as a protective barrier. School. Cars. Another dog. I was safe. So I thought. That safety lasted a grand total of three months. By February, Elisa and I were realizing that the car situation needed to improve. We sold Elisa's car and upgraded to a 2004 Toyota Corolla. May 2004 brought forth college graduation...for both of us. Suddenly, at our 1st anniversary, we had a home, a new car, a new dog, and had graduated. Uh oh. I didn't help matters that June, when we went to look at another pug on a whim. Elisa was fine going to see, but she didn't want another dog yet. And then I saw little Molly. She had a single white paw on her black body. And she was clearly being abused. She crawled into my lap and wouldn't leave. She crawled onto my shoulder and curled up. I couldn't leave her. I needed to have her. Against Elisa's wishes, we added dog #2 about a year after the first one joined our family. You probably wouldn't be surprised that Elisa made me get rid of the Dodge Shadow later that year - and that was the impetus for the moment I thought I might be getting ready.
After Elisa had gloated that we had sold her Corolla for thousands and I got more "benefit" donating the Shadow to Kidney Kars than I would actually would have through selling it, Elisa and I headed down to get a new car. We found what we wanted and bought a new Toyota Camry. After, we stopped at the Olive Garden downtown to grab some dinner. As we sat, waiting for our food to arrive, I found myself glancing over to a family of four. It wasn't that I was suddenly picturing Elisa and I in a Hallmark card and pleaded with her to start a family. It was that the couple had two cute boys, perfectly behaved. They sat, waiting for their food, with their hands in their laps. I looked at Elisa, and she had seen the boys too. It launched us into a conversation, not of starting the family or how many children we wanted. No, we talked about our commitment to have kids like those two adorable little ones in Olive Garden. Behaved. Well mannered. Not Rosemary's baby.
In the next days leading up to Christmas, Elisa and I were starting to realize that the dominoes had fallen in quicker succession than I had ever planned. But I was out of my protective "requirements". And Elisa was clearly heading into potential baby mode. It was time to start. I settled myself to sleep at night knowing that once we got pregnant, I'd have 9 more months to get more mature. Or, at least I hoped I could buy it on eBay. Someone had to have a surplus of it, and I wasn't going to ask Elisa...I might have been mature, but I wasn't crazy.
I wish I could say that Elisa and decided to start and that we were pregnant within months. But my commitment through Sam's story is to stop from sugarcoating. If anything, the experience with Sam has taught me that glossing over details, and painting a rosy story actually minimizes the experience. It doesn't allow you to understand, learn from, and embrace what you have. No, those lessons are in the hardship. The reality. Life, it seems, is full of reality. And for Elisa and me, trying to have a baby was reality. Lots of hardship, not so much sugarcoating.
Don't get me wrong. I know that so many couples have difficulties that extend far beyond what Elisa and I experienced. Sadly, wonderful couples that would be wonderful parents struggle to the point of giving up. Elisa and I did not have that kind of experience. But we needed help. And we spent many a months going through way too many pregnancy tests to no avail. In fact, Elisa and I spent the greater part of a year trying to get pregnant. Month in and month out, the results were the same. One line on the pregnancy strip. Disappointment. A slight feeling of hopelessness. Interestingly, it took one of Elisa's signature sinus infections to start turning our fortunes. I had gone in with her to a new general practitioner and before the doctor prescribed medication, he asked her if there was a chance she was pregnant. She expressed that we had been trying, he gave her a test, and it was negative. No, we didn't have a miracle in the office. Instead, the GP pointed out some signs that we possibly needed more help, and offered a referral to an OBGYN down the hall.
Since we were already at the point of frustration, we took a chance and made an appointment. We walked into an incredibly supportive doctor's office - someone that seemed focused to help us. We did the regular tests to make sure everything seemed to be in working order (it was), except we realized that we needed more support at regulating the egg release process. So we left the office with a prescription in hand for a drug called Clomid. We also spent way too much money on the internet buying fertility strips and early detection pregnancy tests. The hope was that the Clomid would schedule things to a degree that we could better focus our...ahem...efforts. The results were a bit unexpected.
Clomid may be a wonder drug of the fertility world, but it had two very strange and unpleasant reactions. First, it did the hormone trip of the lifetime for Elisa. Usually, when you start a drug, you're hoping that you avoid the side effects with the reality that you could have one. Elisa, on the other hand, decided to try all of the side effects out. Nausea, vision problems, hot flashes, headaches, blurry vision, irritability, and the mood swing that would make a grown man curl up into the fetal position when in the woman's presence. Trust me on the last one...let's just say I got mighty comfortable pulling my knees into my chest and rocking back and forth, whispering "make the bad girl stop!" Even more fun, Elisa was overjoyed to experience a litany of ovarian cysts, causing trips to the doctor, to get ultrasounds, and offering her the opportunity to try out that fetal position. Yes, we'd lay on the bed next to each other, all wrapped up in fetal position, hoping we'd get pregnant. Enjoy the irony.
The second unexpected result of Clomid is what I like to call the "meat processing" experience. Now, I'm a guy. I happen to enjoy...you know...guy things. My wife would probably say that I excel at the "well, that was fun! *SNORE" approach, but I'd never say no to a good time. But in the world of fertility strips, your wife changes from a loving partner to a drill sergeant. I was honestly fearful of my life if I somehow said no when Elisa commanded me to enter the bedroom and perform. The pressure. The constant schedule. The stage fright! Clomid would be ingested. Elisa would go Incredibly Hulk. I'd go fetal. She'd order me to be a dutiful husband. She's lift her hips. And I'd go back to the fetal position. By the end of the third month, I was ready to be done with the wonder drug. Good grief, Daddy doesn't like being in a meat processor! Now, just step back and take that in. A guy. Fearful of his wife. And wanting a night off. Yes, these were serious times.
And after three more months of firing blanks, another thought had started creeping into my head. Maybe it wouldn't work. Perhaps we'd have to start investing even more money in tests and specialists. Maybe we'd never get pregnant. Yet, every morning, I'd hear Elisa come back into the bedroom after exercising. I'd hear the bathroom door closed. I'd hear the sink. The ripping of plastic. And then would sit in the silence, knowing that the start of the shower signified another negative test. Another sad morning. Another month of the Clomid monster. In late March 2006, I laid in bed, waiting for the shower to turn on. Color me surprised when the bedroom door opened and my tired eyes were bathed in that soft white light from the bathroom.
The test was positive. We were going to have a baby.
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