Doin’ it and Doin’ it and Doin’ it well.

My husband had his varicocele surgery April 17th. The sperm was supposed to be tested four months later. A week or so ago, my husband went to his pee pee specialist who said it’s too early for the Supersonic Sperm test (not sure why), but…he did a regular one. His count was lower (which, apparently, can vary from sample to sample), but his motility had improved by something like 300%. The doctor said this was a sign that the varicocele surgery MIGHT have been effective. He will officially give him the supersonic test at the end of September.

Meantime, I’ve been tracking my cycles and they have definitely regulated, ranging between 32 and 36 days long. I am taking something called FertilAid, which a friend recommended, in order to get them to continue to be regular and maybe even make them shorter. I’ve been taking it for a month and so far all seems fine. Last month, I ovulated on day 17.  Today is day 13, so I started peeing on sticks.

We have decided to make baby-making our priority. It can be very easy to let jobs and school and other obligations take over one’s mental space, and we’ve decided we can no longer afford to do that. I am starting a new job in a couple weeks and have taken a leave of absence from school so that I can just focus on what matters right now: making a baby and paying the bee-ulls. My husband thinks that if we don’t get pregnant the old-fashioned way by December, that we should consider IVF. Personally, I don’t think that gives us enough time with the good sperm (only four months), but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

Making baby-making our priority, by the way, does not mean that we plan to sit around wishing for something we don’t have. We are very careful right now to appreciate our free time, our ability to be spontaneous, to stay up late and enjoy quiet time.

Sex has been good lately too. Even though friends tell me “getting pregnant” sex is rarely sexy, enjoyment seems to me to be important for conception.

That’s all for now.

Phoebe

Acupuncture, Malaria and Waiting

There hasn’t been much to say lately because we are still in the process of waiting for my  husband’s junk to be tested – we still have a month to go, in fact.  Meantime, we are trying the natural way and I am charting.  Up until this current cycle, my recent cycles have been pretty regular – long (34-36 days), but regular.  However, this cycle’s ovulation was delayed due to some events that occurred this past few weeks.  I:  traveled to and from Rwanda, bought a house and moved, incurred extreme stress at work…and tried fertility acupuncture.

Hmm…I hate to blame the acupuncture.  How could it stand up against all of those life stresses?  The first time I went, the Dr. said she would not only regulate my cycles, but get them closer together.  She also recommended that I drink these nasty herbs (I was later told by an RE that the herbs could actually have an adverse effect), which I never did, mainly because I was too lazy to go get the very specific type of teapot she required (for sale in their office for only $89!).  I went several times – loved how relaxed it made me feel, especially the hot light she pointed at my belly and the pulsating needles placed atop my ovaries.  The only evidence I have as to whether or not it was effective (I only went for a month and the recommended time of treatment is three months, but now I live far from where I was going, blah blah blah…) is that I didn’t ovulate until around day 36 this cycle.  And I never really clicked with that Dr.  Should I find an acupuncturist near my new place and continue or not?

So Rwanda:  the last time I went (December, 2008), I took a prophylactic anti-malarial medication called Malarone.  The thing about Malarone is that you have to continue taking it for a week after you’re back, and then you can’t try for pregnancy for a month after that.  Knowing the other ex-pats there don’t take it (they just slather on fresh smelling mosquito repellent), I opted not to on this trip.  With my cycles as long as they are, we need to take every opportunity possible to try to conceive!  It occurred to me how irrational that is that I was willing to risk contracting malaria for the possibility of getting pregnant.  That makes a lot of sense.  A pregnant woman with malaria?  Anyway, we told my father in law, the infectious disease specialist, and he went through the roof!  He said I could still come down with malaria up until nine weeks after my return.  He said if I get a fever, we must RUSH me to the emergency room – do not pass go, do not collect $200.  It’s only been a month since I got back, so I am not nearly out of the woods yet!  Hee hee.

As far as waiting is concerned…well, we had sex just a day or two before the day I (am pretty sure I) ovulated, so you never know.  I could be pregnant right now.  The only symptoms, though, are extreme irritability and intense anxiety, which pretty much describe me the second half of every cycle.  The likelihood is tiny.  As to the other waiting…for my husband’s test…what else can I say?  We really hope the varicocele repair surgery worked!  Since we just bought a house, we really don’t want to consider IVF.  We just don’t have the discretionary funds right now.

So yes, we’re waiting for my period (or not), my husband’s supersonic sperm test, and for malaria to kick in.

That said, loving the new home and spending my time not waiting, not lacking, but enjoying my life.

Love,

Phoebe

PS. At a birthday party this weekend, yet another couple of friends of ours announced their pregnancy that came after “just stopping preventing.”  I only let it ruin about three hours of my day and then got over it.

Sisters are doin’ it (ovulatin’) for themselves…

For the 2nd cycle in a row since the Clomid, I ovulated on my own. It happened…probably Friday? And we did the nasty just in case, even though my husband’s junk is probably not regenerated just yet. That said, we timed it perfectly. I was so proud of us. And proud of my ov’s for operating correctly, and proud of myself for (cue patriotic music) TAKING CHARGE OF MY FERTILITY, knowing the signs of ovulation and not just letting doctors tell me when and where and how.

I also tried fertility acupuncture for the first time this morning. She put a bunch of needles in me and then turned off the light and I passed out. It was phenomenal. I am on a plan of getting stuck once a week for the next three months to regulate the cycles and even make them shorter. She also said I seemed “pretty clean” in terms of toxins, but to choose organic foods from here on out. And she is going to bill my insurance for shoulder pain. Hollah!!!!!

Phoebe out.

Husband’s Junk Update

How’s my husband’s junk, you’re wondering?  I know you are.  It’s OK.  And I’m here to tell you his junk is healing fine.  He went back to the doctor on May 8 for a follow-up appointment.  The doctor told him everything was coming together just right and that he should come back in 3.5 months for his first semen test.  He was a little surprised at 3.5 months when we had thought he could be tested 3 months from the date of his surgery, which was April 19.  But oh well.  He also told him he can go back to exercising, but has to wear a jock strap.  Sad!

Here’s something odd.  The doctor also sold him a fertility supplement, which is basically an overdose of anti-oxidants.  It’s a supplement that’s like, HIS OWN PRODUCT.  Weird – no likey.  And it was like $110 for the bottle!  WTF?  The doctor said I could take it too.  My husband let him know that I am already taking pre-natal vitamins.  The doctor said that it was OK, that I could also take the supplement.  Yeah, so then we’ll use it up twice as fast and buy another $100 jar of the shit.  I know I sound bitter, but knowing that crackheads are getting pregnant left, right and center, it’s hard for me to believe a supplement is going to make the difference in my situation.

Oh, also – we bought a house in the ‘burbs and I chopped off my hair.  So now I really have the mom-mobile, the mom haircut and the mom house!  Just need to fill it with chillun’s now.  The timing is right.  By the time they come, we’ll be all settled in and ready to party…

Phoebe

Phoebe: Pee Pee Update

Husband was doing great back at work until he forgot he couldn’t run and ran down the hallway and thinks he pulled something.  He says it feels “hernia-ish.”  Again, he was fine until he stepped off of a stair and felt a shooting pain up in his left groin.  Now he describes it more like a ruptured a blood vessel.  I told him to contact his doctor.  The doctor emailed back “it’s probably nothing.”  NICE PERSONAL ATTENTION!

We did the nasty last night for the first time since his surgery, which seemed awfully soon to me (it hadn’t technically even been a week). I was afraid he was going to break something so I just laid there. As if I normally do it any other way. Har har har…

Phoebe

Phoebe: Varicocele Repair Post-Op report

My plan to seduce my husband the night before his surgery went horribly awry. I needed his help putting together a video for school and we didn’t finish it until 3am. He was so tired and done with me and nervous about his surgery after that (we had to be up at 7am to take him), that he was in no mood for sex. The good news though, is that my temperature spiked yesterday, which means that I definitely ovulated ON MY OWN. I am not sure whether that means I don’t have to go back on the Clomid or what, but I guess I have a few months to track it and see if the ovulation continues to happen on its own and in a reasonably timely fashion.  I ovulated around day 19 or 20 this time.

Anyway, this is about the surgery. So I picked up my husband at 11am on Friday and put him into bed. He slept and watched movies all day Friday.  He had to work Saturday and Sunday, and just went in there with an ice pack and worked away. He even went out to dinner with friends both nights and he was fine.

As far as how the surgery went, the doctor said that the veins he found in the left testicle were much bigger than what he’d seen on the ultrasound. The good part about that is that the results we see should be marked. The bad part about that is that there could be veins in the right testicle that did not show up on the ultrasound. However, when the doctor “listened” for the veins in a previous exam (a poor man’s ultrasound, done using a microphone and a pair of earphones), he heard nothing going on in the right testicle. So hopefully there is nothing there.  Let’s hope this is the one and only time the poor guy will have to go under the knife. He’s been up and at ‘em since the surgery, but even so, it was nerve wracking and I believe he has been in more pain than he lets on.

In three months, he gets his first sperm test.

Woo to the hoo,

Phoebe

Phoebe: Ovulating on my own! That’s right. On my own. Woo hoo!

First of all, I got locked out of my blog for days. It was so sad. I visited it, but couldn’t get in. It was like being locked out of my own house, but still being able to look in the window. WordPress wasn’t all that helpful until I figured out myself what the problem was. Anyway, all is well and my three readers must be relieved too. I’M BACK, GUYS!

So even though my husband is having his varicocele repair surgery on Friday and we aren’t really “trying” at the moment, I decided to continue taking my temperature and sort of loosely charting.

Side note: I went back on caffeine, and then acted like a heinous douche to my husband several times – where something triggered me, a small annoyance, and I had to turn it into a HUGE, monumental situation that I couldn’t get over. So despite the fact that we’re not “trying” at the moment, I am back off of caffeine.

Anyway, I started to sense my “fertility signs” picking up a couple of days ago and today I decided to pee on a stick. Sure enough, there was a surge! I am going to do it with my husband tonight.

This is meaningful for a number of reasons:  First of all, I am ovulating on my own. Secondly, I am ovulating around day 17, not day 45 or whatever is typical for me.  Third, wouldn’t it be amazing if we got pregnant au natural the night before his surgery?

I don’t want to get too worked up about it – our chances are nearly nil, but what the hell? I am going to use some Preseed to help his swimmers get through and then leave it up to biology from there… I haven’t told him about this plan. I just intend to seduce him tonight.  Penises  seem to work better that way:  aroused and unsuspecting.

Phoebe

Phoebe: Fat and Impotent OK but not Infertile?

I was just wondering on my way into work:  why are the Lap Band, Gastric Bypass and Viagra covered by insurance but infertility treatments are not?  Where is the line drawn as to what qualifies as a “medical” condition?

Doesn’t funding lap bands and gastric bypass just encourage people to get as fat as possible and then treat it with expensive surgery rather than prevent obesity in the first place, which is much cheaper?  I don’t understand our medical system, other than to say it is straight up jacked.

Phoebe

Phoebe: Fertility Musings/Melatonin for Reproduction?

Now that I have quit the IVF birth control pills (wtf?) mid-cycle, I am starting to feel better.  At around 3pm on Tuesday, all of a sudden something shifted and I suddenly went “oh, right” and just started to feel better.  I think the jet lag from Asia is finally wearing off (this is the worst case of jet lag I have ever had), and the hormone roller coaster is calming down.  Between the Clomid and the birth control pills, I was on a ride I wasn’t even aware of.  Now that we are doing the varicocele repair surgery, I’m not going to lie:  I am glad I don’t have to take any more hormones, at least for a while.  That, plus gnarly jet lag, seriously f**ks one up.  In ways one never expected.  For the past couple of weeks, I have felt despairing, self-pitying, self-flaggelating and melancholy.

Another thing I realized about it all is that once we really decided to embark on this baby-making thing and not just “not try to not try,” something shifted in my identity.  I started changing from hot mama to mom.  Not that moms can’t be hot (MILFs, anyone?), but there’s a shift in mindset that begins when you start thinking about motherhood.  As a superficial example, it just so happened that right around January, my sexy, sporty manual transmission Audi was getting to that point where it was sucking up more dough than it was worth, so we decided I needed a new car.  We figured I may as well get a mom car since we are the type of people to keep cars for a long time (like ten years long).  Certainly within the next ten years, there will be baby seats in the back of that thing!  So I got a Honda CR-V.  OK, so now I am driving around the mom car, which is big and cozy with an automatic transmission.  I have the mom car, but I am not the mom.  Also, when we were in the midst of our IUI cycles, the doctor told me to stop working out so much.  I normally go four days a week; he told me to cut down to three.  So I did.  But I kept eating the same amount (which is a lot, which is why I work out so often), and started to grow a little tummy.  I was OK with it thinking, “I am preparing my body for motherhood.”  But again, mom body and no baby.  I got a “sensible” shoulder-length haircut.  Mom haircut and no baby.  We’re looking at houses and worrying about school districts.  Mom mentality and no baby.  Now that my husband is getting his surgery, we won’t be trying again for around six months.  So now I am back to working out when I want and drinking caffienated coffee and eating sushi and all that – the old me.  I know a baby will come eventually, but in the mean time it’s like I’m between identities and it’s uncomfortable!  Of course the lesson in all of this is to enjoy the present tense, no matter what it is.  A couple of days ago, feeling really down, I went to yoga and the teacher read this quote:  “Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.” It was just what I needed to hear.

In other exciting news, for the past few nights, I have taken Melatonin to fall asleep and I think it’s been making me unable to wake up in the morning and has given me weird dizzy spells.  I was looking up the side effects on the internet when I came across this on the University of Maryland medical website:

Melatonin also helps control the timing and release of female reproductive hormones. It helps determine when menstruation begins, the frequency and duration of menstrual cycles, and when menstruation ends (menopause).

Anyone heard of this before?  Should I continue with it to regulate my irregular cycle while we are waiting out the results of my husband’s varicocele repair?

Also, in all of my research and whatnot and thanks to all of your fabulous comments, I have come to the conclusion one always comes to in a medical situation:  NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOUR DOCTOR IS, YOU MUST TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN MEDICAL CARE.  Our doctor is very competent and a professor in Reproductive Endocrinology at UCLA, meaning he has access to all of the latest information as well as technology.  And still, without us asking the right questions and asking for a referral to a specialist, we may still have been wasting money and time doing IUI after IUI rather than getting the detailed analysis of my husband’s sperm that determined there to be a severe male factor infertility there and the IUI’s to be 100% pointless!

That’s all for now.

Drinking ‘caf and yoga-fying to my heart’s content,

Phoebe

Phoebe: My RE Wrote Back!

While he didn’t answer any of my questions about IVF, he did respond to a few of my queries.

Regarding the CGH test, which is a new DNA test I read about in the Fertility Advocate blog, a test that one clinic feels so confident in that they are offering a refund plan based on it:  CGH is still experimental.  Not of proven benefit yet.

Regarding IVF Refund Programs:  Most “refund programs” have a catch – they profit by charging more up front.

Regarding why the supersonic semen analysis is not done on every patient (ostensibly saving them time and money):  The SCSA test is a newer sperm test.  “How” it is used in reproductive medicine is still being established - which is why it is not ordered initially in all patients.  It does not predict outcome in all patients.

I asked him what we would do next if my husband’s varicocele repair was effective.  He said we’d try a couple more IUI’s.  I assume that if the varicocele repair isn’t effective, we’ll move on to IVF, in which case dude will have to get around to answering my questions.

Emotionally, I am feeling really down.  Don’t know why, other than it all feels very overwhelming, what with other things that we are doing in our lives right now.  Job, school (both of which I am really not into and yet they are a big portion of my life), buying a house, bad economy, etc.  And my poor husband has such a good attitude about the surgery, but we were reading about the aftermath and whatnot and I can tell he is worried about the pain.  Wouldn’t it be nice to just f**k and have a baby like normal people?

Phoebe