It was time for my appointment at the fertility specialist to see what they could do about my blocked fallopian tubes. I was nervous, but excited because I read a lot about this specialist and how he does non-surgical clearing of the tubes. Plus, I was going to a concert in Hoboken that night, so I was feeling pretty good. At the appointment they did more tests, blood work, ultrasounds, and he said that when my time of the month came (which was due in a week), I had to come in to get another Hysterosalpingogram (HSG). As I was leaving he said I was sitting in the “lucky chair,” aka the pregnancy chair, so that made me smile. I went to the concert that night and felt awesome. I had good vibes about this doctor, the vocals at the show were amazing, and I had my two best friends with me which put me in even a better mood.

And then the waiting game began. Why is it that when you’re trying to get pregnant you always hope that your time of the month never comes, and when you’re anxiously awaiting for it to come, it takes its sweet old time? I was hoping for it to show up quickly because I wanted to get this HSG and start the process of fixing me. (If this were a movie, I’d totally put in Coldplay’s “Fix You” right here.) I was now 2 weeks overdue, but that didn’t concern me because for the past year my cycle was totally messed up. You see, from using ovulation tests the past 6 months, I discovered that I ovulate late (around Day 20 instead of Day 14) and I even totally skipped a period 2 months before this time.  So I’m thinking, “Great..I’m anxious to try to get pregnant, and my cycle decides to skip another month NOW. Right when I’m trying to get this HSG done. Just wonderful.”  Some of my coworkers were planning on going out for Happy Hour one Friday after work, and I couldn’t wait to go and get hammered because I was so stressed from all the stuff going on. That Friday morning when I was getting ready for work, I thought that since I was planning on drinking a lot, maybe I’ll just take a quick pregnancy test so that I didn’t feel the slightest bit hesitant or guilty for getting wasted (nice, right?). Besides, I had plenty of tests laying around, so I might as well waste one for peace of mind.  So I took the test, jumped into the shower, totally forgot about the test (this happens when you’re used to taking tests just about every month for almost a year), got dressed, and then remembered about the test. I glanced at the test quickly, about to throw it out, and literally gasped out loud, because it was positive!  What the??? I remember thinking HOW is this possible?? I have TWO blocked fallopian tubes!! I was excited and happy, yet also doubtful and wary because the last time I had a positive test telling me I was pregnant, I soon had a miscarriage.

A week later, the specialist confirmed I was pregnant and everything looked good, and said that I could go back to my regular OBGYN because I didn’t need him since he didn’t do anything. I had later found out that the HSG itself can sometimes clear blockages, even if it doesn’t clear during the procedure. I guess for me the tubes cleared a few days later on their own. Or I like to think it was a combo of the HSG, my massages, my music, and my positive thinking. I was ecstatic to find out that I really was pregnant, and one of my first thoughts was how my unborn baby already went to its first concert, even if it was only 3 weeks old at the time.  Hey, they say you’re never too young for music.

So how did I go from being Ms. Independent to becoming a mom? Well, at 28 I got married to my long-term boyfriend, who is a musician of course, and people in our circle of friends were beginning to have kids. Also, I’m an only child, and now that my parents are aging, I think I’d be very lonely if my husband died before me. Even though I enjoyed being selfish by doing what I wanted when I wanted, somehow my opinion changed and I started to think that maybe I did want a child or 2, although I guess you can say that my reasons for wanting a kid were selfish also, now that I think about it. I’ll also blame that on being an only child.

As things tend to go in this crazy place we call life, nature had a different plan for me. I did get pregnant soon after “trying,” but had a miscarriage almost immediately after finding out I was pregnant. I was devestated and learned a lot about myself. Specifically, I was shocked about how destraught I was over it for someone who “didn’t really care if she had kids or not.” That experience made me realize that I DID want children, even if it meant I may have to curb my concert road trips a little bit once I had a child. (I was averaging about 30-40 concerts a year.) During that time I went to quite a few shows to help me get some enjoyment back mentally. It’s crazy how songs you’ve known for years suddenly take on new meanings when something powerful happens in your life. Songs that you used to think were about love & loss of some guy/girl you dated, now were about death. The lyric, “how come we hurt the ones we need” got transformed into some kind of song about the body’s natural way of screwing you over by taking what you wanted and putting you into a depression.

I totally respect artists who don’t like to share their own personal meaning of what their songs are about because they don’t want it to take away from someone else’s interpretation of what it means to them. Besides, half the fun of listening to a musician’s mysteriously dark lyrics is trying to figure out what happened to him and what influenced those lines.