“Do I Have Time To Play Golf?:” Lessons From IVF Waiting Rooms
Did IVF twice: once in March 2022 and once in April 2023. Missed the mark both times. But, throughout the course of the process, I attended a lot of appointments and sat in a lot of fertility waiting rooms. Two different clinics, in fact. I am just going to give you a couple of bullets to start. None of this is to blow smoke up my own ass, because I can easily be a terrible husband at times. (I am divorced once.)
- These waiting rooms are almost 100% women. Men do not often come to these appointments, even the bigger ones. Men usually come to these places to jerk off or deposit a sample with the clinic.
- A lot of times, you will see women in these places wearing sunglasses because they have been crying — or because they don’t want to be easily identified by social peers. (That may be a Texas thing.)
- The quote in the headline needs some context. Near the end of IVF, there is a relatively-important process called “an egg retrieval,” whereby they essentially vacuum-suck eggs from a female, and those eggs are then paired with petri dish sperm to begin the real work. An egg retrieval, which is somewhat invasive for a woman, takes maybe 40 minutes. On the day my wife had one, there was a different one scheduled, I.e. another…
