“What? Huh? Wait. OK. Um, hold on. OK, I’m ready now. Go.”

That was the beginning of my conversation with the nurse today confirming that Monday will be my retrieval day, also known as the great Christmas Egg Hunt. I worried about the shots, and now I’m the subcutaneous injection queen. I worried about the drugs having no effect, and now I have 12 measurable follicles (right — 19, 17, 16, 14, 12, 12; left — 17, 15, 14, 13, 13 and 11). FYI, follicles grow 2 mm per day and are mature, meaning more likely to have mature eggs, around 18. The number of follicles does not necessarily correlate to viable eggs, and not all eggs retrieved will necessarily be fertilized. My awareness of the fact that there’s no guarantee that they’ll find enough quality eggs for fertilization basically gives me another reason to keep the sparkling cider on ice for now.

It’s not that I’m trying to be Debbie Downer; it’s just that at this point of trying to have children, I know all too well how it feels to get my hopes up and then let down with a BFN (big fat negative). After peeing on stick or two every month, you learn to take everything as it comes. I used to search for pregnancy T-shirts with funny sayings in anticipation of a positive test amid imaginary symptoms. I’d always feel dumb afterward for thinking too far ahead. Although by God, I’ve managed to accomplish many things and overcome situations that haunt people for life, my inability to get pregnant up to this point has always made me feel like something of a failure and occasionally like God wasn’t listening on this one. I kept praying but then encouraged other people to pray; though, I didn’t tell them about the struggle.

As for being a childless failure, cognitively, I know otherwise. Emotionally, though, it takes some convincing. Being happily married and struggling to have children feels like being the smart girl who isn’t considered pretty. You do a good job pretending it doesn’t matter, but then something happens as a reminder that you do. Some of my Facebook friends are fertile Myrtles; they’ve had two kids in the time I’ve been trying to have one. Stuff like that can get to you if you let it. I’ve tried not to let it, but I’m human. And maybe that was behind my annoyance with having to endure the entire in-vitro fertilization process to have the children I’ve been psychologically preparing for since 2005.

Now, here I am at the critical point — less than 36 hours from the egg retrieval but beyond the hard part — and I’m only thinking as far ahead as drug No. 6, a pre-emptive antibiotic that I’ll take orally starting in the morning.