Instant Mom by Nia Vardalos Read Free Book Online

three-times-daily needles have left on my stomach and thighs. Vogue . Me. Me in Vogue . And I had to say no.
    I just declined yet another acting job because it would require I be out of the country. I cannot be away from the clinic and the daily lab work and the monthly surgeries where they repeatedly remove my eggs, fertilize them, and implant the embryos to create a baby. I feel powerless. The doctors explain it’s the drugs. I’ll bet it’s the glaring fact that this is not working.
    IVF #9. How did I get here? I wonder if this will be my last. I wonder if this time will create a baby. I wonder how many treatments I will do.
    The Eastern medicine doctor comes in, removes the needles, pats me on the back, and tells me to avoid stress.
    I walk out of the clinic and find a parking ticket on my car.
    A few days later, I have the surgery to remove the eggs. Then days later, as the fertilized embryos are being implanted into the surrogate, I look at her beautiful, kind face and sob with appreciation. I am very hopeful this one will work. Today after I leave the clinic, I buy green and yellow baby blankets. I bring them home, bury my face in them, and pray for an embryo to implant. I hide the blankets in my closet and wait.
    Weeks later, I find out the embryos didn’t “take.” No pregnancy. Again.
     
    A month goes by and I’m about to begin IVF #10. As I drive to the acupuncture clinic again I suddenly pull over. I sit here and ask myself how on earth I can start this next round and begin to do press for my second movie, Connie and Carla . But it’s a small-release movie without a decent ad campaign, without even a billboard, opening against the juggernaut Kill Bill . Even though I am bloated and queasy from the drugs, I’m “old school” and feel I have to honor my commitment to do press. Without advertising, there is no other way for people to know about the movie. I’m proud of the script because of its small message of acceptance. Plus I got to sing in it. I love musical theater so much, I may actually be a gay man.
    I look out my car window now and remind myself about all the good things that happened . . . from getting to host SNL to meeting people I admire, like Ellen DeGeneres, Nora Ephron, Katie Couric, Anne Bancroft, Callie Khouri, Elton John, Quentin Tarantino, and Steven Spielberg. Publicly, I’ve continued to fake it, plastering on a smile and pretending everything is fine. It’s not. I feel sick and I have to start the press tour now, which means being on TV talk shows again. I don’t feel well, I don’t fit in clothes. I have to start the next IVF treatment now because it’s timed to my cycle.
    I’ve been under pressure before. As I’ve described, when I was in the cast at Second City, there was tension and conflict, and actors were fired if their material wasn’t up to par. But I flaunted a carefree insouciance that got me through it. I handled it. What’s the alternative?
    My attitude might be the grace my mom taught me to carry myself with; it might be that I’m so immature I never face reality. But I can’t deny this situation; this is very real.
    I tell myself, I just have to get through this next round plus do press. There is no other choice. I assure myself in time this fertility stuff will be behind me.
    A few minutes later, I walk into the acupuncture clinic and the first thing I hear is purgatory’s bogus waterfall. I’m sitting in the lobby sipping tepid cucumber water when I spy the culprit—a wall-mounted tape deck.
    I ponder if one of the lit incense sticks on this side table could ignite that tape deck.
    A grown-up would never pick one up and try it.
    But I do.
    No one is looking, I fling a stick of lit incense up. It lands on the tape deck and I wait for it to catch fire and explode, thus terminating fake waterfalls forever.
    The incense stick rolls off the tape deck, lands on my shoulder, and burns a pinhole in my shirt.
     
    During the fertility treatments , I get the