the facts

I talked to my doctor's office yesterday as I have the first appointment coming up with him in 9 days (woot! the waiting is almost over!) and wanted to know what to expect. To recap, this is the doctor in town who does DI. He's an OB/GYN but also does fertility stuff - there's an actual infertility nurse at his office. I talked to her yesterday, and she seemed great - knowledgeable and funny and relaxed. She said the protocols are tailored to each patient, so depending on the results of my bloodwork and what we come up with during the 45 minute consult (I have to say I'm impressed by this - a long appointment should be standard, but it's usually not in my experience), the Dr. will do anything from an unmedicated ICI to a fully medicated IUI. Which is good knowing that he's not limiting things to the more complex interventions. I expect he'll probably grill us a bit on our decision to not try to get sperm from Manny to do IVF/ICSI, but that's ok with me. I know we are kind of unusual in this respect, but I've spent long enough with my decision that I feel like I can explain it if I have to. When I asked her about success rates for ICI vs IUI, she said they don't like to compare because the candidates for each have different issues (i.e. the ICI people tend to be younger, ovulatory, etc. and therefore more likely overall to get pregnant). But she said the success rates for IUI are around 10% per cycle, which is a bit lower than the averages I've read about other places, but I really try not to put too much stock in averages. They don't necessarily reflect my situation, and I hate getting sucked in to feeling like I need to conform to what is expected. And I also hate low numbers - I may change my mind if this doesn't work within a few cycles, but I'd really prefer to have hope than thinking about how crappy my chances are on each cycle.

I'm starting to get excited. I'm expecting that we'll be able to start trying in May, cause by the time I see this guy next week, I'll probably already be ovulating or very close to it. We need to start reviewing donor profiles more seriously and come up with a short list of about 3 donors we would want, just in case our first choice doesn't have samples available. I'm thinking I might want to reserve a bunch of whichever donor we start trying with so that if I get pregnant fairly quickly I won't need to worry about there not being more for siblings down the road. It's all a bit of a gamble at this point, but since we're really only having to pay for the sperm and associated costs like shipping and storage, I don't mind shelling out a bit for some peace of mind of having the extra samples reserved just in case I get my golden ticket.

I have to confess that I'm already starting to calculate when I might have a baby, and how pregnant I'll be at Christmas. Those of you who've gone through this might be shaking their heads in dismay at this point, cringing for me and what is most likely to be at least some disappointment. I know that it might be ill-advised at this point, but I'm going to enjoy it since this is the first time I've ever really gotten to try. There was a brief period after Manny's reversal but before we started getting the bad SA results where I felt like we were trying, but it was really short - like about 2 or 3 months. The sex, however, was *awesome* - all that good, hopeful energy. Sigh. Long gone.

I'm also thinking about how much I want to tell people at this point, even the people closest to us. I'm sort of leaning towards telling basically nothing - my family knows I've got this appointment coming up, but maybe after that to just leave it and let them know when there's some (good) news. I'm not sure, but in some ways I feel like this will preserve the sanctity of this process for me and Manny. People who get pregnant in the usual way don't tell everyone they know when they had sex and how they timed it very precisely to coincide with the woman's ovulation. They get to try, just the two of them, letting their love and hope become a secret conspiracy of goodness. I want that, but I don't get to have it, so I sort of feel like keeping it private will kind of return the process to us, make it ours.

On the other hand, I'm going to want support and good wishes. I might want those from my family, and I am pretty much sure I'll want them from all you lot. I probably will post about it all here. But maybe not. If you find I'm just writing about my dog for a solid 2 weeks in mid-May, you'll know something's up.