How I Stayed in America (Part 24)

I came to see my primary care physician in Utah. I said that I developed   a tendency to drink a lot, because I couldn’t get pregnant. He asked me   a question: “Why is it so important for you to get pregnant now? Does your husband pressure you and ask you to give birth as soon as possible?” Of course, no one pressured me. The thing is, in Utah this is a very common scenario: women give birth to many children, ideally six. They do not work and only deal with their offspring. Women in Utah usually don’t get higher education, because what the f*ck? Life is going  to be only taking care of their children anyways. Females are dominated by church, community, family, and husbands.

“Anyhow, do you ever think about death?” “No,” I lied to him, although I often thought about death. Not that I wanted to give up my life, no. I  just thought about death as I would think about some other topics, like love or justice.

The doctor wrote me a referral to the reproduction center at the Utah Institute to begin the IVF process. He knew that I did not have one pipe, and I automatically fell into the pool of infertile women. Ultimately, he said: “Try not to drink for two weeks. If you start feeling like you want to climb the wall, call me, I will tell you what to do.”

I was able to not drink for two weeks. I can’t say that I was climbing the wall, but I felt uncomfortable. To be frank, I waited for these two weeks to end. During this time, my husband and I went to see a reproductive specialist, where all the analyses and tests were done. We were generally healthy, except for my one tube and his amount of sperm.

Surprisingly, the exhausting physical activity of the NBA did not have    the best effect on the quality of Udmurt spermatozoa. “As our practice shows,” the doctor claimed, “pregnancy comes easier during an off season. In the meantime, let’s try artificial insemination.” It is a simple procedure. You  wait for ovulation, come with your husband to the  office, collect sperm, and you receive a dose of the catheter directly into the cervix. We repeated this procedure three times, and nothing  worked. The doctor was not surprised. “Yes, usually this procedure does not work,” she stated, “But we must try all the options before proceeding with artificial insemination. Those are the rules.”

IVF in Utah has proven to be very expensive. Approximately $40,000!!! I mean, my husband and I did not consider ourselves poor, but the new contract was not enough to cover such expenses. So, we decided to do IVF in Moscow. We had about five months of off-season. I scheduled a visit with my beloved Doctor Lebedeva, and we started the process. I don’t know if it’s just me, or everyone’s like that, but during the IVF process, I thought that I would go nuts and never return to being my previous self. The stimulation hormones were  just making me some   kind of goblin. I laughed then cried, cried then laughed — it was an emotional sinusoid filled with nervousness and irritability. In my   opinion, it was absolutely impossible to live with me. Furthermore, I got hyperstimulation. I was admitted to the hospital on a drip, where I almost died from the amount of fluids in me, which was affecting my lungs. Indeed, you can die from hyperstimulation. The good news came later when I had 47 follicles, of which 20 were fertilized. Thus, we had about 20 embryos for replanting. By the way, as a practical person, I started the IVF process together with my surrogate mother. I really wanted it to work somewhere. And yes, I was not at all puzzled that it could have worked for both. This means that there would be a lot of children at once! My husband and I wanted a lot of children.

After embryo transfer and agonizing waiting for two weeks, no hCG grew. The implantation did not take place. I packed some bags, and together with my son we left on vacation to Marbella. Maybe it would get better there, I thought. My head was completely out of place. Upon returning to Moscow 10 days later, I woke up early in the morning, and found my husband’s phone, which was vibrating from incoming SMS. There was a message on the screen: “Are you gonna take me to the airport???” For some reason, my legs felt shaky.

I took the phone and went with it to another room, while my husband was sleeping. In just a matter of minutes, using a simple deduction method, I figured EVERYTHING out. What, where, when, and most importantly, with whom. I knew to the nearest minute what hotel he was in, while I was not at home. This is how I faced cheating for the first time in my life.

For about a month I tortured him, yet he did not confess. He denied everything, pretending like nothing happened, and I cried every day. In fact, my day began with tears. I went to the shower and sobbed there under the water. Now I think, how did I not lose my mind after all this? Although, most likely I did for a bit, I just disguised myself well. At some point, I was tired. By tired I imply complete despair and determination in one bottle. Late at night, I went into his office, where his beloved computer stood, on which he was playing some kind of endless game, and demanded the truth in a very serious tone. Last time. I said that it is important to me like nothing else, that I am trying to get pregnant, and that I need to understand why I am doing this. I needed to know the truth. And I knew that I could survive it.

Andrei confessed. He told me everything sincerely with tears in his eyes, and this was, perhaps, the only time in our entire seventeen-year-old life together, when I heard many amazing, sincere, and honest words from him. We talked all night, left the house, got into the car and drove off somewhere. No idea why. And we talked and talked… On that day, I realized that I was his only woman. For life.