My husband and I have never been a couple to raise our voices at each other, but there I was, bent over our bed with my jeans and underwear bunched round my ankles yelling at him to give it to me. My husband protested, worried it would be too painful for me.
?JUST STICK IT IN MY ASS!!!? I screamed.
He finally thrust forward, injecting me with the hormones that would start our first round of in vitro fertilization. As the needle punctured my skin, we both screamed in unison: he for having given me an intramuscular injection with no prior medical training, and me for having just been injected by a non-medically trained person who still has difficulty swallowing pills. Also, I noticed our window was open.
?Oh my God,? I said, rubbing my butt in horror. ?We have to do infertility treatments AND we have to move.? I quickly drew the curtains, ashamed that my husband and I needed to go through these physical, emotional, and financial, machinations to get pregnant, when it seemed so easy for everyone else. Of course we didn?t move; though, I did immediately order blackout curtains. Instead, I faced my neighbours and the world by creating a comedy series about a couple struggling to conceive called How to Buy a Baby. People have asked me why I decided to write a comedy about something that causes so much pain and relationship turmoil and is often shrouded in stigma. The answer is easy: because while being unable to have a much-wanted baby is heartbreaking, the process of infertility...