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Carol Bradley
14 West 75th Street, NY 10023
anniebody@nyc.rr.com
Did you
press the snooze button on your bio-clock alarm one two many times only
to find yourself over forty and childless? After all those years
of conscientious birth control, you awake to discover that sex as a
means to procreation is a thing of the past. Just when you can afford
the time and expense of having children without sacrificing that
fashionable lifestyle, your chance of becoming pregnant the
old-fashioned way is one in a hundred. With medically assisted
infertility treatments, your chances increase up to five percent, along
with a extremely high probability of losing your savings, second home
mortgage and extending that credit card debt over the rainbow in hopes
of producing a loving reflection of yourself. Having traveled this
path, I have a few simple suggestions that you may want to try before
relinquishing control to the medical/insurance conglomerates.
With a little common sense
and Yankee ingenuity you can Do-It-Yourself.
Keep it
simple. Look around the house to see what you already have on hand, ask
a neighbor or shop the tag sales. Remember that the more complex the
technology, the higher the maintenance cost. Consider that if you enlist
medical specialists to assist in conception and birth, you’re going to
be saddled with an extremely expensive offspring. DO-It-Yourself and
you’ll give your baby all the advantages of a good solid, self-reliant,
back to basics background.
To
begin you’ll need supplemental hormones to jump-start your
pre-menopausal reproductive system. If you go the medical establishment
route, these will run you over $3000.00 a cycle. Ridiculous. Hormones
are organic, freely produced in nature, so take the initiative
and Do-It-Yourself. Think gardening - with an interpersonal
harvest. The hormones required are found in the urine of post-menopausal
women, originally collected from cloistered nuns in Italy. Pure as that
may be, it isn’t necessary to restrict yourself to nuns, unless you’re a
traditionalist with a papal dispensation. Let’s not be fussy, any
post-menopausal urine will do.*
Once you have the urine,
the next step is getting it into your bloodstream. The medical
establishment requires injection, so you’re looking at a lot of needles,
syringes and a bruised butt. My suggestion is to do a sauce reduction,
doctor it up with herbs d’ Provence or hot chili peppers and toss it
into the blender with a lot of garlic, creating the base for a pungent
broth or sauce which you will consume at night before retiring, for
obvious social reasons, over the next seven to ten days. Unlike the
ironical Durian fruit from Southeast Asia that “smells like a
toilet but tastes like heaven,” there’s no contradiction here. Once
digested, the broth will soup up your egg production, allowing your
ovaries to produce more than the customary one egg per cycle, thus
increasing your chances of pregnancy.
*If you think gathering
post-menopausal urine is unpleasant, just wait till menopause commences
and you have to extract estrogen from horse urine!
You
will need to monitor the egg development every few days. The medical
clinic will charge you approximately $300.00 for every ultrasound
procedure and another two hundred for the blood work. Again, ridiculous!
Get your partner involved. If he or she hasn’t already been instrumental
in the urine collection, let them monitor your ovaries. It’s time to
dust off the Waterford, Baccarat or any other fine imported crystal.
Your partner should gently place the hollow side of the glass above your
ovaries and press their ear lightly against the bottom of the glass. If
there is an ultra sound, they’ll hear it. When you feel bloated,
it’s time for the next step.
During this period of hormonal aggression, you should also be
monitoring your body temperature as an indicator of the pre-ovulation
surge. This will correspond with the ultrasound findings to let you know
when you are about to ovulate. If it’s your first try and your plumbing
is in working order, try artificial insemination. Again, look around
your house. You probably have a turkey baster or an enema bag lying
around that will be perfectly fine for transporting the sperm.
Collecting sperm. I doubt that this needs much instruction beyond “wash
your hands.” Infertility clinics provide the man with a discreet
briefcase, containing anything from Hustler Magazine to “Debbie Does
Dallas” videos. You can cut that expense in the privacy of your own
home. By puberty, most males are experts. Then just get it in the baster
and squirt appropriately.
Wait
two weeks, if you get your period, it’s tough but don’t give up. Get
right back in that kitchen, reduce some more urine and move onto the
next procedure: Invitro Fertilization. Now’s the time to bring out the
heavy machinery. I personally prefer a simple Hoover. Avoid models
including the words “Turbo” or “Whirlwind.” Some people have asked me
about the Oreck. In my opinion, it’s just too powerful and you might
inadvertently extract everything. Save the hysterectomy for later.
Use the
attachment designed for getting in cracks. Put the setting on “bare
floor” and apply it to the cervix: five seconds max. It goes
without saying that you should use a clean, preferably sterile vacuum
bag. Next you’ll use the vacuum to collect the sperm. He could retrieve
it manually but for purposes of psychological bonding, your partner
should share the suffering. If you want to reduce potential
trauma, try dressing up as a sexy French maid. When stimulation occurs,
place the Hoover hose (sans attachment) over the penis. Put the setting
on “shag” and let ‘er rip - three seconds max.
Now
that you have both seeds and eggs together, don’t worry about mixing the
elements; sperm inevitably finds it’s own level. Like poaching, the
trick is in the timing. The eggs need to be fertilized by the sperm
within twenty-four hours and body temperature must be maintained at all
times. Don’t even think microwave, or clothes dryer. Keep it simple. Go
straight to your pre-heated conventional oven, put a roasting pan
containing water to prevent dehydration on a low rack and suspend the
vacuum bag above. If you don’t have an oven thermometer, get one. Unlike
the crystal glassware - domestic will do. This part of the process
requires vigilance and since you are planning to go through the
pregnancy - oven duty should be your partner’s job. Monitor the “womb”
for four to five days. When it starts moving like a bag of microwave
popcorn, the embryos are jumping and it’s time for the next step.
Implantation: put the bag back into the Hoover, reverse the hose, apply
to the cervix and fire it up: ten seconds max. If you happen to have
anti-gravity boots, that’s great, however a chinning bar suspended in a
doorway will also do the trick. Either of these items can be found at
suburban yard sales of aging ‘boomers. Hang upside down for as long as
possible, though not so long that the embryo implants in the neck.
Waiting
for the results over the next two weeks is the worst. You’ll ask
yourself, “For this I drank urine?” I find it productive to spend
a lot of time with friends who are already mothers, particularly those
on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Offer to baby sit for their
children. Aside from earning future bonus childcare points, you’ll gain
first hand knowledge of how these poor bedraggled souls got the way they
are. If, on the other hand, menstruation doesn’t begin and you start
throwing up, say ‘goodbye’ to life as you know it.
If the
curse comes - get over it: you’re not menopausal, you’ve saved yourself
a good $12,000.00, not to mention your waistline and sanity! Be
positive; you have more options open to you than if you do if you’re
pregnant. Either quit, or keep trying. If you decide that
you can’t go through the process again, focus on all of the exciting,
reckless behavior you can now engage in with abandon: sex, politics,
hard drugs, esoteric postgraduate studies, sushi… If you feel that
motherhood is essential - before trying again, or going to an
infertility clinic - take a few minutes to consider what you really want
from motherhood because there may be simpler, more immediate ways of
satisfying that desire. For example: if you are looking for
unconditional love, Get-A-Dog,* or craving mass approval -
Adopt-A-Highway.* There are many ways to Skin-A-Cat* and the beauty part
is that you can Do-It-Yourself!
*All up and coming books
by the same author
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