Greg Bales

Two-Pack

In 2008, after two years of failing to make a child organically, we learned the doom Kathy had already been feeling for more than a year was justified: I was diagnosed with male-factor infertility. Our only real chance to move forward would be in vitro fertilization. We couldn’t afford it; we couldn’t afford not to do it. One way we tried to work through that diagnosis, our anger, and our options was to start a secret infertility blog, “Less Than a Million.” This post and what comments from 2008 that are attached to it come from that blog.—gb

I spent half of Thursday interviewing for a job in Chicago. Professionally, it would be a good step, a bit less influence but more responsibility and chances to network and to learn my profession more thoroughly. Whether the insurance covers infertility treatments I did not discover, but I think if it is offered, I will take the job regardless. Here is haunted by the ghosts of old lives; here we have jobs with uncertain futures; here we have been assaulted by tornadoes and floods—it is time to leave.

But leaving is still shrouded in uncertainty. What is not uncertain are the twins, whose expectant parents we also visited. We learned that their own IF treatments included more than the surgical removal of an ovarian cyst and IF drugs. They also included IUI, and the thought of it, especially of his discomfort in the masturbatorium, makes me laugh. They were fortunate: after two years trying with sex and drugs alone, they were successful the first month. Their twins are identical, and they are excited.

But now that I’ve seen the result in person, I can say without reservation that I would never want to be pregnant with twins, and if K happened to come down with a case of them, I would be a nervous wreck the entire pregnancy, afraid for her as much as for them. That much baby in one body is insanity! Six months in, our friend already looks full term (for a singleton), and she is eating a zillion ounces of protein a day, and they are having to plan to deliver a month early in a hospital 30 miles from their house because it has the closest neonatal intensive care unit. How many ways multiples complicate pregnancy!