Another round on the Baby Bandwagon. Statistically, the IUI sperm statistics never seem that bad. The sperm count is very high, about 107mn/ml (anything >20 is considered fertile), and the motility, though not fantastic, is between 51%-69% (>50% is fertile). It's the abnormal shapes that are kind of throwing a spanner in the works, at 2%. Normal is apparently at least 4%, with fertile considered >14%. Some websites say >30% or >40% is fertile, so my takeaway is that if >50% of your sperm is normal-shaped, that would really make your chances good.
It does make you consider all the men you know and, from the demographic of their children, assume what their statistics would be like. My husband is a large, strapping man, somewhat burly, and plump men seem to have a higher incidence of issues with fertility. Maybe masculinity is just a facade; the really fertile men also seem to be the scrawny, skinny, pale ones. Could it be that his count is as high as he is harrid, but as abnormally shaped as he is intemperate and unparticular?
In this third round, although I took the injectibles, I have only grown two follicles, and those are one really dominant, large one and one small one. The others didn't even really germinate. The doctor suggested again that we should just try naturally. It isn't a good sign that I'm no longer responding that well to the medication, since perhaps I might be developing immunity. The two follicles have both grown on the right side, and on the left, simply nothing, just some baby follicle debris. I wondered, of course, if it had been the way I was injecting the medication, but the doctor reassured me that he sees this all the time. I was beyond frustrated that I had taken all this medication only to wind up with what seemed a regular period cycle.
On the scan, these follicles are like blurry black dots. Little black, round amoebas. They don't move around that much. They start off as 30mm little things and then at maturity, they are about 1.8cm in spherical diameter. Isn't that crazy? To think you could have several of these inside your lower abdomen, every month. No wonder women are bloated and crampy.
Only women who do IUI or IVFs will actually have seen their children not just as older embroyos but all the way back as pre-fertilized follicles. Like a pre-brine Thanksgiving turkey or a pre-dissection rat carcass. It makes me think that in parenting, parents really can only do so much (not that it's not a lot!) but that our children have to make their own way into and through the world. A motivation to succeed in life is just an extension of the fact that they've made their ultrasonic way through your womb. It made me think about how, say in the case of adoption, the biological parents are just one part, a genetical help to bring you onto the platform of life.
Watching the follicles grow made me laugh to think that someday, an actual child would be $10,000 baby or could have been a bloody smear on toilet paper. Will this process make me a parent who is more likely to over-precious their eventual, emotionally-invested progeny? Or will it make me a more disciplined, appreciative parent because within these arbitrary efforts and outcomes, life really is a gift and so I'd seek to raise a child who does justice to it?
This last month really broke me. On the third IUI, I went 34 days without getting my period. I don't know why I was so hopeful, given I knew there'd only been one dominant and one immature follicle. It's our third wedding anniversary, and we had gone on a trip. While travelling, I had a twisted Freudian dream about my college boyfriend. We had a magnificent talk and real laughs, he told me about how we'd moved on, about his kid and that he was glad we were trying and we'd be great parents. I woke up shaking. It was so real and so liberating.
I had expected to get my period before we went away. So, as day after day of the holiday passed, and there was no sign of it, I started to think, is there even any possibility at all that it could be twins? I rubbed my belly hopefully and a little protectively. I was excited, a greedy excitement, thinking about how we would break the news, about what we would do different. It was almost Christmas and then finally, when the first splosh of blood came, that sharp, fast liquid feeling was like all the magic draining away, leaving only dismay and an almost-anger that I had let myself feel anything at all.
All the words around infertility, intolerance and fear just flooded through me. The knowledge that probability doesn't improve with the statistics of each try, only with the number of times trying, and that I was truly tired of trying.
