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“I see you've begun the hormone treatments,” I said, cutting her off. I was referring to the daily injections she had to perform to ensure maximum egg production and a more predictable ovulation cycle.
"Yes, Doctor,” she said. I could tell she was taken aback by my grumpy demeanor. “Every day at six, right before dinner.”
“We’ve got eggs and even have some embryos ready to go.”
“The first two tries didn’t take, but I’m ready for my third.”
“Mmm-hmm,” I said, continuing to skim the notes for any reason the prior doctor might not have wanted to try a third time. Not finding it, I just asked. “Why aren’t you still with Dr. Edwards?”
“I don’t think he’d be very successful.”
“It’s basically a crapshoot,” I said, “sometimes it takes a few tries to find success.”
“Sure,” she said, “but he’s dead now.”
“Oh,” I said, scribbling that piece of information down. I’d hate to ask that same awkward question again on her next visit.
"So what do we do?” she asked.
"You’re still happy with the donor selection, yes?"
"Yes," she said. "There were a few that I narrowed it down to and told the office to make a random selection from those few."
I nodded. Many parents still wanted at least a little bit of chance and randomness in the outcome of their pregnancy. But I didn’t care. It was a yes or no question, and she was someone who felt like she needed to tell me all of the details.
"One of them was a personal trainer, the other a mechanical engineer, and the third was training to be a concert pianist. So I guess we'll find out which I got when the child grows up."
I shook my head. "The interaction between genes and environment isn't quite that simple," I said. "Smart parents tend to raise smart kids, but there really isn't such thing as ‘smart genes.’”
"There's not?"
I shook my head. “High school genetics is over-simplified. Even something like eye color isn't fully understood by geneticists. Under certain circumstances, blue eyed parents can give birth to a brown eyed child. Punnett squares say it shouldn’t happen, but it does. So we don’t understand how genes work. Not fully, anyway. The one thing that the sperm banks attempt to screen for is known genetic diseases, though there’s only a handful of those that we can predict with perfect accuracy.”
I took a look at the clock in my office. I was running behind schedule and I’d fall even further behind if I stopped to give her a genetics lesson like I was doing.
“Oh,” she said, perhaps slightly disappointed. “I was hoping to end up with a prodigy.”
I ignored her. I didn’t care. “What’s important is that we begin the in vitro process ASAP to ensure that you didn’t waste your time with the injections.”
“Uh huh,” she said.
“I’m sure Dr. Edwards went through some of this with you before, but it doesn’t hurt to repeat. There’s a possibility none of this works and, even with all the time and energy you’re putting into this, you don’t end up with a child.” And, although I didn’t say it, with each failed attempt, there’s an increased probability that it won’t happen at all.
She nodded. “I’m aware. I’ve been through it several times.”
“You’ve been through in vitro before?”
“This is my third attempt.”
Her file hadn’t mentioned that, and it was the second time she’d mentioned it, so I added it to my notes as I sat down on my stool. If the previous doctor’s office had forwarded better notes, this wouldn’t be an issue, but now I was about to be even more behind schedule.
“I have a few questions,” I said.
The questions would take time, but they were important and if I went through them quickly, I’d get a better idea of whether it was even worth her time to try and have the baby herself.
“Okay, but I need to ask you one first,” she said.
“What?” I asked. It came out harsher than I intended, but I didn’t want to waste any more time than I had to.
