Babymaking

New York is quiet at 7:00 on a Saturday morning. I notice a few people bundled in hats and scarves walking their dogs, a guy in a baseball hat and sweatpants out buying coffee, the cleanup crews in their John Doe Fund overalls as the taxi takes me from the west to the east side.

The buzz of activity at the Cornell Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility comes as a shock after the calm of the still-sleeping city streets. The door opens into a room full of chairs and sofas, the 50 or 60 seats mostly occupied by couples and women in their 30s and 40s, well-groomed despite the early hour. With a coffee machine in the corner, magazines in wall-mounted racks, and people reading the newspaper, it feels like a business class airline lounge with fewer suits and more women carrying a different kind of baggage.

There is a protocol. Arrive between 7 and 8:30 in the morning. Sign the pink sheet if it is your first visit. The green sheet if you are here for hormones. The white sheet is for the regulars going through IVF. You sign your name, you sit and wait. They call you in and draw your blood. You go back and wait some more.

But the rules don’t apply to me. “I was told to ask for Kathy,” I say quietly, trying not to draw attention to myself. I feel the eyes of several women nearby on me as I ask to jump the line. I wonder if they are asking “who the hell is she?” as I am processed swiftly – I barely have time to take off my coat before the nurse who works closely with the doctor who focuses on preserving fertility in cancer patients calls me back for my bloodwork. “Don’t envy me” flashes through my mind as I pick my way through the sea of crossed legs wearing saddle-colored driving loafers or tall boots with jeans tucked in.

The special treatment continues after my blood is drawn. My chart goes to the front of the queue. I do have to sit and wait for an room to open up before I am called back again. Eventually I am guided back to the warren of examination rooms and told to get undressed from the waist down. I am relieved that Katherine and Emily arranged for us to have a pedicure at Jinsoon last Monday before dinner at Snack in the Village. Once again, I have neglected to wear socks.

They don’t bother with hospital gowns – with all the women they process during the ninety minute period every morning, 365 days a year, they have probably studied the time required to change in and out of gowns and determined they could increase efficiency by 25% by eliminating sleeves and ties. Instead, you sit on the paper cover of the exam table, a sheet protecting your modesty.

Of which there is very little left. I counted – in the past few weeks, 14 strangers have had their hands on my breasts or have been eye-to-eye with my ovaries, and there are more to come. If this were high school, my name would be in three-foot-high letters on the bathroom wall.

When the doctor finally enters, the exam is swift. Feet in the stirrups, ultrasound wand, follicles observed and measured. Later that night, after my blood count and photos are reviewed, I get my marching orders. Take two of these pills, inject yourself with this much of that shot, inject yourself again the next morning to make sure it doesn’t kick off too soon. This will go on until sometime the middle of this week, when we are ready to harvest, fertilize and freeze.

As I walk back through the waiting room, the sea of faces makes me slightly relieved that I am in the special treatment category. For Michael and me, this is still just an insurance policy – only 30% of women under 40 who go through chemotherapy go into early menopause permanently. Although it may take as long as 18 months for my cycle to return to normal, there is still a fighting chance I will be able to get pregnant naturally. And if not, I will come back to these offices, surrounded by a new group of young and not-so-young women, all of us hoping that the wonders of science will step in where nature has faltered.