Last Chance IUI (#4)

Yikes, sorry for my long silence!! At first I had nothing to say... and then I got busy with work. I am "on the wards" this month, meaning that I'm spending my days on the inpatient Hematology/Oncology service, rather than my usual, more leisurely lifestyle working in a lab. It is busy! 3 weeks and 1 day more to go (thru March 31st). This month's busy schedule is what kept me from doing IVF this month. Working in the hospital is stressful, but the time goes by pretty quickly.

I am so excited to announce that I was offered a job this week! I already knew beforehand that I would be working at our local VA, but I will now also be working at the university's cancer center, where I will specialize in breast oncology. Yay!! There are still a lot of details to iron out, including amount of clinical duties, other expectations, benefits and salary. I don't want to spread myself too thin, you know?

Anyway... in the interest of not painting my life as all sun and flowers, S and I had a difficult couple of days about 2 weeks ago, but fortunately we were able to iron things out. (I think the discussions were valid and important, but our disagreements got blown out of proportion. Ugh!) One part of it relates to S's profession as a psychologist, and the fact that he feels extremely knowledgable about child developement principles. I am concerned that he will shut down any opposing ideas I have about parenting under the guise that "he's the professional," and that he won't be able to see my point of view. To give you an example, we have already had multiple discussions about daycare versus nannies. S is really committed to the idea of one of us staying home or having a nanny, whereas I want to explore those options AND daycare. More on this topic sometime after I actually need to worry about it!! Anyway, in many areas both of us want to feel knowledgable and to have the other person's respect, and we need to be able to communicate in a way that doesn't seem dismissive to the other person's point of view or opinions. Things got so ugly that S suggested marriage counseling. As a psychologist, he sees counselling as a great way to improve communication. To me, it is more like a last stop before divorce, so I was not thrilled with the idea, AT ALL, as I perceive our marriage to be really good and solid. Ironically, I ended up agreeing to try marriage counseling, and then he changed his mind and decided that we didn't need it! For a few difficult days there, I wasn't sure whether we would be doing IVF at all, but at this point all is well and we're going to go ahead with it.

So, this is my "natural" (non-Clomid) IUI month, as I apparently need to "give my ovaries a rest" before starting IVF meds. Because of this, I got a nice 4 week break from my RE's office, and didn't have to deal with Clomid, ultrasounds, etc. That also made this cycle much cheaper... ($260 for the IUI...versus the usual $260 + $150 + $150 [ultrasounds] + $30 [Clomid] = $590). It's all just a drop in the bucket compared to the expense looming in April!

On Thursday afternoon (CD 13) at about 4PM, I used an OPK and noticed that it was starting to blush toward positive. However, rather than calling the RE's office in a panic for a Friday appointment, I decided to wait until the stick actually turned positive. And I didn't let myself check again 'til the next morning (Friday; CD14). By that time it was bright positive, and I scheduled a Saturday IUI (CD15). I think I like the timing better this month than last month.

Originally, we had been planning to get busy on Thursday night, with the assumption that I would be ovulating on probably Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. (Isn't infertility romantic! So spontaneous! Ha!) Anyway, when I realize that our IUI would be on Saturday, I still wanted to go ahead with the planned Thursday night nookie. For one thing, I was kinda in the mood, and it had been too long. Plus, I thought that it would be good to get in one fertile-zone session before the IUI. However, I know that S is always concerned that his supply might be less after less than 48+ hours of abstinence. However, we decided to try it.

The amazing thing was, after "only" 36 hours of abstinence, S got his best "totile motile sperm" count to date: 19 million. Our previous results were 11, 11.4, and 11.8 million. Yay!! I asked the nurse for a print out of all of his results thus far, but she said she couldn't get it for me today. (reason...who knows!) Instead, she let me look at today's results on the computer screen. Before the wash, his volume was 20 million/mL (a little lowish, but OK), volume 4 mL (OK), total count 80 million (OK), with EXCELLENT motility and "A" forward progression. Unfortunately, they don't check morphology on these routine IUI-day assessments, and that is our worst category. Anyway, I was pretty excited by the news. Dr W also did my IUI, and it again took only 1 minute using the stiffer "embryo transfer catheter". I like her more and more every time I see her. Thanks, Dr W!!

So, here I am in the 2ww yet again. If nothing happens, I'll have to start OCP's for 10-21 days before starting the hard-core fertility meds for IVF.

S and I are going to drive back to the desert tomorrow. It rained a lot this year, and the wildflowers are supposed to be peaking right about now!

Now I need to go and catch up on the happenings on the my Blog Roll.