“Peg”
from Steely Dan’s 1977 album, Aja, is one of my favorite Steely Dan numbers. It
doesn’t always conjure up specific memories, but the last time I heard it,
flying back from a customer visit in Phoenix at 11PM at night of a day that began
with a 3:50AM wake-up call for a 7 AM flight. I began to think about Lynn and
my excursion through the fertility system and how we came to adopt Zay and
Alicia.
Married
in 1989, we held off for a little while to start a family, but in 2 years or
so, me being 36, Lynn 32, we began to try to have baby. Fairly quickly Lynn
became pregnant, but within a few months she suffered a miscarriage. We thought
it was a fluke so we began to try again, but nothing happened.
After a
couple years, Lynn saw her first of what would become a plethora of fertility
doctors. I can’t remember all the specifics, but over the next 14-15 years we
did everything short of cloning ourselves.
Artificial
insemination, then in-vitro fertilization with Lynn’s eggs, with donor eggs,
and with donor embryos (three tries for each), nothing took. We even did a
chromosomal analysis to see if there was a compatibility issue between us.
I
specifically recall the several attempts at artificial insemination, because it
was usually done on a Sunday morning. I would first “gather” my sample and then
add a preservative to the vial. Lynn would then place the said vial in her
armpit to maintain the temperature, and we would head off for the one hour
drive to the doc’s office in Winnetka. The nurse would take the sample and
place it in a centrifuge to separate my little guys from the preservative (I
claim my guys were too dizzy from 15 minutes in the centrifuge to find and implant
in the eggs, they probably ended up in Lynn’s appendix, or some other dead end)
and were then placed within the egg (I think, I wasn’t in the lab at the time).
This
same doctor had an office on the Mag Mile in Water Tower Place in Chicago and
one A.I. attempt was made on a weekday. It was 1996, the Democratic national
Convention was in town, and I was on the 20th floor in the doctor’s
office. They handed me a vial and escorted me to a room with “appropriate” (if
you know what I mean, and I think you do) magazines and videos and left me to
coax a sample into it.
However,
I could still hear people talking and laughing in the office area outside the
room and I found it impossible to wring a few cc’s out. I left the room and
went to a bathroom on another floor and locked myself into a stall. I then
realized I had no visual stimulation available, I had left the magazines
behind. I did find a K-Mart newspaper insert and turned to the ladies’ wear and
commenced to persuade.
After
about 20 minutes I produce my sample, but I was a little raw and found myself
walking a little bow-legged. I took the sample cup back up to the office and
turned it over to the nurse. Lynn was in another room, and after the
insemination, rested for an hour or so.
I went
down to ground level and began to cross Michigan Avenue to the Border’s
bookstore across the street when a motorcade came barreling down the street, running
all the red lights, and I had to hurry across the street, in some pain. I later
found out it was Hillary Clinton in that motorcade. Maybe that’s why I’m a
Bernie Sanders guy this election cycle.
Anyway,
none of these attempts ever resulted in a baby, so in the early 2000’s we began
to work with a wonderful agency, Adoption-Link, to see if we could adopt. I was
48 and Lynn was 44, which is kinda old for established adoption agencies, but
Adoption Link had no age limits and, finally, in 2006 they had a 9 month old boy
to adopt.
So it
was on May 9, 2006, on what would have been my father’s 74th
birthday, we drove to Oak Park to pick up Zay, our son. He was already
responding to his birth name, Zayshun, so we named him John (for my dad)
Zayshun.
We
wanted a girl as well, and Adoption Link allowed us to wait until one was
available and on May 25th, 2010, we picked up 3 day old Alicia
Marie.
As I’ve
said before (#11 - To Be What You Must ), I’ve never regretted any part of this.
