Rigging the Lottery

Pregnancy is a miraculous thing.  So many things have to go the right way at the right time to make it possible, and even then you have only a 20-30% chance at best each cycle of getting pregnant.  Even less of having it stick and making it through the entire gestation and being born.  Yet people do it all the time, most without even thinking about how they won the biological lottery.

For those of us struggling with infertility, that lottery has become a numbers game.  We're the crazy caffeinated ladies with the bucket of coins at the slot machines at 4am when most normal people have already taken their winnings and gone to bed, while we are convinced just one more coin will get us the jackpot.  So we don't give up.  One coin after another.

At first it was fun and exciting, knowing the next coin might cause the machine to light up, bells to go off, and the jackpot to come pouring out in a stream of joyful coins.  You'd be so happy, and feel so glad that you won!  It was exciting each time you put a coin in, pulled the lever, waited to see if this would be the lucky turn.  And when you lost, it wasn't a big deal as you might win the next one.

After you've been putting coins in the machine for awhile, you might look up the statistics.  Okay, so at this particular Pregnancy Lottery machine, you've got about a 20% chance each time you pull the lever (or rather, each cycle).  So if you pull it a half dozen times or so, you're bound to win!

Except you don't.  And then you start realizing that 80% of people have already won the lottery after this many coins and you haven't.   And then you start calculating how likely it is that you'll ever win the lottery.  And how likely it is that you'll never win no matter how long you play.

You start to wonder if the machine is broken, so you have the staff come check it out.  You might have a defective machine and the mechanic comes to fix it before you can keep playing.  Or you need a special kind of coin that costs a lot of money to keep playing each turn. Or you might find out that the machine isn't the newest model with all the upgrades, and might just take a few extra turns to get your jackpot.

So once the machine is in more or less working condition, you start getting superstitious and strategic.  Maybe you start putting coins in all the machines, hoping one of them is a winner.  Or you commit to one machine, believing it eventually will have to pay out.  Or you start using only newer coins because maybe the machine can tell the difference.  Or you close your eyes and say a mantra every time before you pull the lever.  Perhaps if you pull the lever a little harder, or at exactly two seconds after you put in the coin, it will work this time.  And did last time not work because you forgot to say the mantra, or is the mantra keeping you from winning?

Eventually those losses start to hurt.  It feels like you have lost personally.  That something is wrong with you, that you're pulling the lever wrong, that maybe you just aren't lucky enough to win the lottery.  You've tried so hard, you've invested so much time and money, you deserve to win.  Damn it, you've earned that win.

Except you haven't.  And you might not ever win.  And that starts to weigh on you, like an anchor hanging around your neck, and it's all you can think about.  So you keep putting coins in, sitting there as dawn breaks, fanatically putting coins into the machine.

And of course, there's your friend who just arrived to the casino, who pulls up to the seat next to you at 6am as you're chugging another Red Bull to keep up the energy to continue.  She's fresh faced from a good night sleep, can't figure out how to put the coin in, doesn't realize you have to pull the lever, and yet still - her first tug on that lever - the bells are going off and the coins are spilling out and she's so happy.  How great for her - her first time!  She must just be naturally good at the Lottery.  Or really lucky.  Or both.  But she doesn't care, because she's convinced it was just "meant to be" for her.

And you just want to slug her right in her pretty exuberant face.

It's not that you aren't happy for her - okay, maybe not much.  But you want to be happy for her, so that counts for something, right?  It's not that you're a hateful selfish person, or at least you didn't used to be.  But after pulling an all nighter, plunking coins into the machines, strategizing about how to win, feeling like you've lost your sanity... why isn't it "meant to be" for you, too?!

So the pretty blonde walks off with her bundle of winnings, patting you on the shoulder and telling you that it will happen eventually, and you're still left sitting there, putting coins in the machine, hoping the next one will be your lucky coin.  Hoping the next pull on the lever will make all this obsession and pain and struggle worth it.