Getting Pregnant

One of the least comfortable things for me about all of the fertility tests is the number of blood tests they need to do. Not because I’m scared or even particularly squeamish about blood tests – although I admit I usually do look away – but because my veins are tiny, slippery, sneaky things that resist all attempts to get a needle into them.

The first blood test was the biggest – a huge number of tests would be done, so they needed to collect something like eight vials of my blood. The same went for my husband. But fortunately the phlebotomist on duty that day was a real pro, and the instant she saw my veins she threw a heat pack in the microwave, then in my arm and by the time she had the needle poised there was actually a sign of a vein there, and she got the required blood okay.

Over the next month, I had six or seven blood tests, some bad and some good. There were so many nurses at the clinic that it was rarely the same one who took my blood, so I got used to going through the whole routine with them and in the end was able to instruct them immediately to use the “baby needle” – literally, a needle so small they usually use it to take blood samples from newborns – and to direct them to the arm most likely to give good blood that day. Luckily it was winter, so my bruised and scarred inner elbows were covered by long sleeves and nobody else could see what must have looked like a junkie’s attempts at getting a hit. But every time I reminded myself that these blood tests were all being taken for a very good reason.

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