When my partner (finally!) set the date to reverse his vasectomy so we could start trying to have a baby, he immediately began insisting we take an elaborate vacation directly after his procedure—because, as he put it, “our lives are about to end.” Words cannot express how much this framing irked me. I’ve been looking forward to motherhood since I was a child carrying a dozen Cabbage Patch Kids with me everywhere I went, and I felt like my life was just about to begin.
My partner, however, intuited something I didn’t, which was that even though we were about to gain so much, there were things we would lose, too. As much as it pains me to admit he was right, the idea of taking a “last hurrah” trip before we started trying to make a baby was, in retrospect, a stroke of genius. In fairness, there were several reasons for him to be worried the road was about to get rocky.
Not only had we both undergone separate surgeries just to get to the point at which we could try to get pregnant—which was no picnic—but we were anticipating at least one, if not several, rounds of In Vitro Fertilization to follow, and I knew what this would mean for us. Years ago, I experienced a rare, life-threatening complication when freezing my eggs and found the entire fertility treatment process to be a total nightmare. I’d also been watching friends undergo IVF for years and knew that it would be a difficult journey, to say the least—physically, emotionally, and financially—none o.