Last month I posted about the difficulties my wife and I have been experiencing with infertility. Unfortunately I must report that they are continuing.
February was the time of our fourth IUI(aka “artificial insemination” for those of you not hip to the infertility lingo). It was not very successful, in that no little children were conceived as a result of it. Therefore, it is time for us to move on to the next step, which is IVF (in-virtro fertilization). As you can imagine, this is causing us quite a bit of distress, partially because due to the whack-job “Octomom”, everyone is very interested in offering their opinions on fertility treatments. Because, you know, one crazy woman is representative of the millions of people struggling with this issue.
It’s been an interesting road so far, this IVF thing. One “benefit” is that they put Carrie on birth control pills for a month (this is to make sure they have control of all the inner workings of her inside parts). So for the past four weeks, we had a respite from my poor wife being injected with various chemicals and potions that make it hard for her to know up from down. And, to be frank, we had four weeks of “Married Folks Fun Time” that was just that – fun. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to have pressure-free…recreation.
That’s all coming to an end now, though. We just started the next round of drugs to prepare for the “egg retrieval” portion. A few nights ago it was back to the needles, and this is going to continue for the next few weeks. In fact, Carrie is going to have to do it for herself for three nights next week when I am in Las Vegas for MIX09. She’s a trooper, my wife is.
I’m not really going to get into all the nitty-gritty details of the process (Wikipedia can hook you up if you’re really curious). We’ll just leave it at this – there’s still a few weeks to go, and it’s probably at least a month (if not longer) before we have a result. It’s a little nerve wracking.
On a related note, we are very fortunate that my insurance pays for quite a bit of this. Although we’ve already burned through all of my flex-spend for the year on the meds. And my insurance only pays for three IVF treatments – so if this one doesn’t work, we only get two more tries. So put it this way – by the end of the summer, we’ll either be pregnant, or we’ll be starting to investigate adoption options.
As always, your prayers and/or positive thoughts are well appreciated.