It was a long hard road that ended in IVF. Being a geek was the easy part, that just came naturally. It was the baby part I had a hard time with. Becoming a mom for me took a lot of effort, a lot of shots, a lot of drugs and a lot of hope.

After being married for 12 years, one miscarriage followed by seven years of trying off and on, various fertility drugs, IUI procedures, acupuncture and endometriosis surgery, we finally turned to IVF and proceeded to make a baby in the geekiest most scientific way possible. We mixed drugs, measured shots and were eventually presented with the most amazing little egg in a petri dish. They asked me if I wanted to save the dish and I kind of wish I had now.

It was the most intense rollercoaster of sickness, emotion, pain and stress that I have ever put myself through voluntarily. This is me in the middle of three shots in the belly a day, the last week before my egg retrieval, bruised, bloated and with swollen lumps from one of the drugs:

One of the things that got me through all the sucky stuff was my blog. I blogged anonymously, and I blogged often. Sometimes even twice a day. I discovered an amazingly supportive community of bloggers doing the exact same thing. Some of those ladies are still in the trenches, going through one procedure after another. And while IVF success stories have their place and can give hope, the last thing most of them want to see is a million happy baby posts. So I decided to start a new blog all about being a parent and specifically, a geeky one. It’s mostly like being a normal parent but with more Star Wars.

If you’d like to read my uncensored IVF journey, you can find my blog here: Stop Telling Me to Relax (I have unpublished the blog since this post, and am working on turning it into a book) 

*named that because when you are having trouble conceiving the #1 thing people tell you is to relax and it will happen! And then they don’t like it when you punch them. So I blogged and that helped curve those impulses 🙂

In the end it was all worth it. I can’t wait to show him pictures of himself as a 3-day old blastocyst!