A few days after our Initial appointments, our hospital sent us a few instructional modules on the IVF process. It reminded me of the first aid video + quiz modules that I occasionally took as a teacher. After watching the first set of IVF videos, I was drowning in a sea of information.

As someone who regularly drinks from a fun personality cocktail of Type A, perfectionism, and a dash of compulsive obsession, my initial impulse with anything new and important is to try and memorize everything. I'll take color-coded notes, organize them into binders and dividers, and keep all the mental notes as neatly filed as humanly possible. But the sheer volume of IVF-related facts and figures that were coming at me from the screen was bananas.

It wasn't long before I went crazy enough to want to try something like this -

The first thing I realized was that I've been an absolute dummy when it comes to my own body. Really - how did I get this far in life as a female when I know so little about how things work under my skin? After watching video modules about cycles and my internal organs' way of managing a whole freaking chemistry set of hormones each month, I nearly shot off an angry letter to my high school about the appalling inadequacy of their health curriculum.

And that was just the first chapter, which covered how lady parts work when they're operating as nature intended. When they started getting into how IVF works (which, on the one hand, is a medical marvel, but on the other is a staggeringly UNnatural process), my eyes started crossing from all the science gobbledygook.

To be fair, I don't think my doctors and nurses sent me those videos with the expectation that I'd become an IVF expert. After all, no one expect drivers to know everything about an internal combustion engine when they're issued licenses to drive.

...But we also don't typically give drivers a wrench and tell them to go under the hood to mess with the parts. Which is what I'm going to be doing on a daily basis as I press needles of synthetic chemicals into my belly.

My mental cup ranneth over, because it haddeth no space to hold more things.

IVF is a complex choreography. There are tons of moving parts - regular labs, prescriptions that need to be fine-tuned after each lab. On top of it all, everything needs to be so perfectly timed that some of these medications are scheduled into hours and even narrow five-minute windows.

It gets more complicated when you don't have the youth to match. I don't just mean the memory bank to keep track of it all (though my near-forty brain is on the struggle bus with that too), but there are other considerations. When our doctor went over our initial labs with us, she mentioned that my AMH was low and my FSH was high. What that essentially means is that I'm an old hen who might be laying the last of her eggs.

On a normal day, hearing news that that would've kicked me in the gut. Crawl under the covers, snuggle with the pillow, and drown it in tears-kinda sucker punch. Don't get me wrong - I still shed a few tears and spent a few good minutes burying my face into a Squishmallow.

But these are the moments when it's good to have good partners.

For instance, our doctor, who delivered those labs and the hard truth about my prune-like egg sac, is an absolute gem. Dr. B is optimistic, encouraging, and almost superhuman in her patience with our oodles of questions. She's the complete opposite of the first fertility doctor we met back in Houston, who regularly kept us in the waiting room for hours past our appointment times and spent our first meeting stuffing his face with a PowerBar. I'm so glad we found Dr. B instead. Having someone like her partner with us on this journey has made this hard thing feel doable.

My acupuncturist is equally wonderful. When my doctor recommended acupuncture as a way of helping with egg numbers, I found one who has all the warmth and demeanor of a wise grandmother. She is so gentle and mild-mannered that I often end up napping while being turned into a human pincushion.

I'm grateful for pioneers who have walked this path before. Some are near strangers or mere acquaintances, but they've drawn back the curtains to their own IVF process with such generous openness and transparency. These are the only people on the planet who can truly empathize with every painful step of the process, and I've been soaking up all they're willing to share. I especially love the women who have found ways to laugh through it all, like one who talked about the dreaded self-injections.

"The shots weren't so bad," she said. "In fact, it was a bit of an empowerment high after that first day, so much that I thought, 'Uh oh, what if this is my gateway to a heroin addiction?!'"

Hearing her joke around made something click in my head. 'Oh, it's okay to laugh around while doing this.'

And friends. Oh, my friends. I have no idea if any of you know how some of you have kept me buoyed. My initial plan was to do all of this behind closed doors with whisper-quiet secrecy. Issues of fertility, family planning, conception, and miscarriage sometimes feel akin to airing one's dirty laundry in public, and I was reluctant to let anyone know about my messy drawers. But after James and I attended our first appointments, I hit my mental cap and - with some squeamishness and timidity - admitted we were starting IVF with a few choice friends. Those cheers, hugs, and 'You've got this!' texts have been absolutely life-giving. Others have sent quotes, passages, podcasts, and websites that have helped me find trustworthy information instead of getting lost in the rabbithole of Google and Reddit.

The day before my first injection, the door knocked and the postman handed me this CRAZY gift from a dear woman in my life who'd taken her own trip to Reddit - to find things for an IVF care package. That alone gave me an enormous boost of courage that I don't think I could've ever found on my own.

To all you women who are mothers, want to be mothers, or actively trying to become mothers (by whatever means) - you are amazing human beings. The work of trying to create life takes so much heart and mental strength, a fact that I'm only beginning to recognize as I take a few steps into this process. And to the women who clench and white-knuckle it through every Mother's Day - I get it. I'm with you. I know how hard it is to have a mommy's heart without a baby.

I'm only a few days in, but if the body can bear it, I'm hoping to check back soon about how things are going. As always, thanks for being here, friends.