The subject of fertility is often one people get bored of hearing, or reading, so it's not something I am going to wear across my shoulders lightly. I didn't conjure the idea of writing down our experiences without realizing that people might find it dull, and monotonous. Realistically, this is my method of putting one piece of information in line, right after the other. No expectations, and hopefully less horseshit.
Here's to hoping.
I knew right from the start that the husband (at the time, he was just "the boyfriend") that we were going to need some proceedure in order to conceive. Having been in an LTR of his own until November 2010 with a person he DIDN'T want to risk having a child with, he'd had a vasectomy in October 2010.
So Fast forward until April 2011. I'm in the middle of a break-up and move-out when I put myself "out there" on a whim. Queue future-husband (insert trumpeting fanfare), and fast forward again after months of emails, phone calls and countless text messages. November 2010 is when we had the conversation concerning his physical imparement, and my desire for more seedlings. Thus, where our journey was borne.
The following sping, April 2011, I had my IUD removed as it was no longer a needed form of BC, and we wanted my body to get into a place where if we wanted to start preparing to have a child together, the fields would be ready and I wouldn't have to deal with appointments and exams (more than you'd have normally, anyway). I confess that, with the removal of my IUD, I was SURE that the universe would gracious and lovingly impart some kind of a miracle child in my body, and we could laugh for the rest of our lives that we'd be giggling over the 1/1,000 statistic about how we'd been able to beat the odds and hassles of the hurdles of non-traditional conception. Har har.
So fast forward some more; July 2013. Husband and I have jobs we can work for many, many years to come. Stability, health insurance, retirement and the ability to cross one more important thing we need to cover off our list before really cruising down the baby track.
The question has always lingered to my husband about where our baby will come from, and as our first option was always to explore a reconnection of his vasectomy. This was something that proved MORE disconserting than you could possibly imagine. Only 24 months after this was performed, a highly qualified local Urologist and his team deemed our case at only a 90% chance of success, depending on how motile and healthy husband's sperm were. This leaves a grizzly 10% chance of failure for us to masticate upon. On top of that, the surgery cost (without any "unexepected surprises") would start around $7,000. Payment plans are not accepted, unless they're done in forward (money first, delivery of goods following payment). No financing, and also no insurance coverage; this is an "elective proceedure".
Getting the vasectomy cost under $1,000.
So knowing that, if we had a surgery to reconnect the tubes and try for a natural child, we'd be looking at a heap of medical costs, an uncomfortably high percentage that it WOULDN'T be successfull (and unlike Wal-Mart, you can't get your money back when it doesn't work correctly!), and no way to pay in comfortable incriments.
A visit to a busy OB in Loveland helped us to know what "extraction" could do for us! Extraction involves a physical removal through the testicle wall via syringe and would allow sperm matter to be extracted and delivered into my uterus through a process of IUI, after a washing process. The OB explained during this meeting that even after a few years of being pent up inside the testes, sperm lost a great deal of their swimming capabilities; in order to make an effective exchange, he wanted to deliver those lazy little tadpoles to one of my pre-retrieved eggs and, upon fertilization, send it back along the canal and into my womb.
This, my friends, is what is refered to as IVF. $12k-$20k per deposit. Holy shitballs!!
All this, and every month my poor lonely uterus dumps another egg and weeps blood, and curses my name.
This is how we came to the lovely land of "Donated Sperm"! Ropey jets of flying tadpoles for anyone who wants to have a baby! Yippie! Of course, this also has it's cornucopia of pros and cons. The read a lot like that contract that the children signed in the original make of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. If you don't remember that movie, you need to go watch it, and then come back and re-read that paragraph; I promise you won't regret it.
So with this, we have a litany of flipping proceedures we're going to need to be put through: blood draws to confirm progesterone production (which signals that my body is in fact shooting out tiny little eggs), 2 to 3 boxes of ovulation predictors, and a calendar to write down every single stage of ovulation and menses.
So, we are armed, organized, terrified, broke, and still crossing our fingers that for some reason, one of those damn testical tubes finds its way to reconnect itself from the urethra to the testicle and shoot some lazy, happy, bumbling little sperm so they can manage to clutz their way into some random egg my uterus left laying around the womb.
