The kindness of strangers
When we started thinking about monitoring my own cycle more carefully, in line with the three signs lining up approach, I was ogling the Maybe Baby fertility lens. I almost bought it a few times, but it was $70 which seemed like an awful lot to pay for something that was going to duplicate the information that we were getting from the blood tests at the clinic. So each time I’d practically get to the check out and then I would chicken out and put it back. But then the other day I saw one being given away ‘free to a good home’ on this parenting/TTC discussion board I frequent. So I contacted the woman that was selling it. It’s totally sterilised and all it is is a microscope for your saliva so it should be fine. One of the reasons I wanted it is because I knew a lesbian who used this as her only monitoring tool and fell pregnant on the second go. So, it arrived today, in perfect condition and with a lovely note. I love the way the universe provides and how generous people are out there. It was so nice to get a package in the mail from a kind stranger.
I have just ordered both the Preparing to Conceive CD and the Pregnancy CD recommend by Vee so have a bet each way on where we’ll be in a week or two.
Ch-ch-changes
You know this song “Turn and face the change, ch-ch-changes…” I have had this song stuck in my head for far too long. Lo told me this morning that it was time to get a new song after I had sung the same three lines once too many times. Here are the changes I have made this month:
- commenced acupuncutre with the wonderful wonderful wes
- given up soy milk – I love soy milk. It is the one hangover from my vegan days. I didn’t quite realise how detrimental to fertility it was, and with my restrictive diet it has been the one thing I can drink. But I have discovered I can drink cow milk. I am drinking organic full fat milk. (inspired by scary stories about low fat milk and that famous fertility diet study that showed that one serve of full fat dairy daily increased chances).
- cutting out all herbal teas except for the absolute safest ones.
- cervical monitoring with the spec-o-cam. (i.e. Lo, a speculum, a desk lamp anchored to our bedroom dresser and some KY jelly a.k.a. how not to start a night of hot lovin’)
- use of OPKs to second-guess when the clinic will detect my LH surge
- reading The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth for the trillionth time
- Lo and I are starting each day with an early morning walk. It’s so great to get the light behind our eyes, and with spring here it’s such beautiful early light, and troops of kangaroos bound right past us (I must post a photo). It’s also so good to get a chance to connect first.
- I have been mixing up my routine at the gym. I have cut out the high-impact classes that seemed to trigger the bleeding (which has now stopped), but am trying to do more yoga, cycling classes and swimming.
- I bought a meditation cd. I couldn’t find one especially for conception, but I figure any meditation will be so useful right now.
- I finally realised why our temparature tracking had been so hard. We couldn’t find a basal themometer when we started, after checking every chemist and getting blank stares when we asked the staff, so we just bought a normal digital one. It took about five minutes to get a reading. And even then it wasn’t that accurate. Now, I have found this new massive chemist warehouse, and discover that there is such a thing as the basal themometer. I bought one and am noticing the difference. Better late than never.
- Trusting intuition a bit more and feeling more empowered to have some ownership of the process.
- Realising that intuition can be trumped by science.
I thought that I would be surging today. I thought that our insem would be tomorrow. The delays in this cycle (which, thanks to Stephanie, I attribute to the full moon) have made life ultra complicated. Lo had a business trip interstate planned for tomorrow. I had a training course I was meant to be doing. So confident was I in the fact that we would inseminate tomorrow CD20 (after we didn’t insemiate on CD18 or 19 as I had thought), I cancelled my training course and organised to take the day off work (I used a complicated rouse about having an appointment with a specialist for a medical procedure that would require a day off – which I had been on the waitlist for a long time and the appointment had just come up thanks to a cancellation) which is all practically true. And then, my 3pm call from Buffy tells me that I am not surging. So, therefore there won’t be an insem tomorrow. So then, I had to explain that I would indeed be at work tomorrow (try explaining that one), and Lo proceeded on her business trip (she’s back tomorrow). Wes continues to stand by ready to do acupuncture once I have insemination times lined up. So now, I am home alone, trying to negotiate the spec-o-cam singlehandedly and monitoring all signs. Friday’s going to be really bad day to take off work as it’s my big boss’ final day after a long time of working together, so I really need to be there. And Saturday, in my voluntary capacity, I am running a training course all day, training volunteers who facilitate coming out groups for GLBT. Part of me feels like if we’re going to have time for a baby, we need to have time for making the baby, but life does go on. It’s so frustrating not having any indication in advance of timing, particularly as a lot depends on Dr Y&F’s availability, so there’s very little flexibility from our end, and this mega-cycle has really thrown my diary out of whack.
The Test
1. We went shopping for pregnancy tests last night. We went to three stores, deliberating between the various designs and styles. We settled on a three pack of the first response.
2. We had planned to test this morning at 13DPO and CD32. A day before my period is due. We’ve been pretty restrained not testing prior. The clinic blood test is on Tuesday.
3. I woke at 5am and desparately needed to pee. Lo woke up and we deliberated about the instructions on ‘first morning urine’, we decided to test then, bleary eyed in the bathroom.
4. It was definitely one line. And one line only.
5. There was a mix of incredulity, disappointment and some relief. This cycle has been really tough. And I’d like another shot at staying calm and welcoming to our little baby, rather than the difficulties we’ve had these past few weeks. I felt sad that if we were pregnant, the first few days of being pregnant had me in a bawling and paranoid state. While of course we would have been thrilled to be pregnant and to be successful on the first go, it also would’ve felt quite soon from our perspective. We’ve been gearing ourselves up for it to take a few months.
6. We’re going to spend today’s road trip discussing how we approach the next cycle. There will be another, but I want to reflect on the lessons learnt from this one.
7. Lo is packing up around me, I am drying my hair with one hand, and writing this with the other. We’ve packed the other two pregnancy tests in case my period doesn’t show. Lo hasn’t given up hope yet. And I am about to google the stats regarding 13 DPO etc to see whether it’s possible we could still be pregnant.
8. Alas. Writing this, I feel sad.
Tight timing
It all seems to be about time at the moment. Our sperm comes out of quarantine on the 25 July. The final requirement is another HIV, Hep C etc test for our donors before the clinic will allow us to inseminate. As I expect our insemination will probably be around the 17 August, I thought we had a decent window to get the tests done. But: the clinic wants the test results before we can even ‘book-on’ for our cycle that month – i.e. around 1 August. Which makes timing incredibly tight.
Our donors have been wonderful throughout the process and have been pretty complicit with all the administration required. But we have project-managed the process pretty carefully the whole way along: booking appointments, writing instructions, calling ahead to the clinic to ensure the bill is fixed up. We wanted to make sure there was as little impact on them as possible. When they undertook all the screening and depositing in January I wrote them up a little chart with each appointment, what to expect, where to go etc. Like most men, they loved being taken care of like this. But now they are overseas, we have a lot less control over arrangements, and hell, I have no idea where they should go for a blood test. They had said they would take care of it, and I have no doubt they will, but they had also expressed some doubt about the pathology services where they are and how quickly the could get results. Now that we have such a short timeframe (i.e. the 1 August one) my nerves have set in about we can get a blood test taken and pathology results in a developing country and faxed back to Australia in a 5-6 day timeframe.
(insert interlude) …. rather than writing about my problems, I decided to take matters into my own hands and, thanks to some good internet research, I have just called up the 24 hour private hospital there and got put through to one of the laboratory technicians, a delightful man called Jessie. I am sure getting a call from some random Australian was the highlight of his night shift. The good news is: they can do all the tests we need and have results ready in 24 hours! And it won’t cost a gazillion dollars. I am so glad. And the fact that it’s 24 hours means that our donors can go in on the Friday evening to get the tests done. Meaning, we should be able to go ahead for August! And I can relax. Almost. Just waiting on the final tranche of consent forms to come back from them. And sorting out our future.
So, Inshallah, we have one month until lift-off.
Buffy, the sperm nurse
We went for our orientation at the fertility clinic today. We’re this ridiculously zealous pre-inseminating couple. We’ve still got six weeks until the sperm can come out of storage, and probably about eight weeks until we do our first IUI. But, as we’ve been waiting since last December, we’re eager to be as prepared as we can. So off we went for our first glimpse of the place where our sperm is waiting and where we’ll be inseminating. It’s a pleasant clinic. Neutral tones. Down lights. Quite glamorous really. Although the room where we’ll be inseminating looks a bit like a kitchen with a set of stirrups in it. I am planning on taking Stephanie Brill’s advice and making it our own, bringing in our insemination playlist.
Our Nurse Coordinator’s name is Buffy. I love this and loved her instantly because of it. I was imagining a funky, young dyke, but she’s actually a kindly and delightful middle aged woman, who is so neutral and non-judgemental. (Lo later tells me that Buffy is a well-known shortening for Elizabeth, but I never knew this and am still captured by the novelty of my kindly sperm nurse Buffy.)
In our last appointment with Dr Young & Funky, we decided on starting with a stimulated IUI. You can read about my grappling with whether to use drugs here. Even though most of the advice we received from other tccing lesbians was to the contrary, Lo & I have decided to go straight to stimulated IUI. I noticed that most advocates of no-drugs IUI had ended up having to ramp up their attempts to using drugs and IVF after a few unsuccessful cycles, and because time is of the essence for us, with an overseas move at the end of the year, and our sperm is frozen, thanks to known donors who are in another country, we’ve decided to go straight to what we think will work best with limited intervention and less ethical complexity than IVF. We figure that we’re not trying to recreate heterosex and would like to give this the best chance, and shortest timeframe, as possible.
So we’re going to be using Puregon, at a very low dose (50), and then a trigger shot and then something for a few days after the insemination (possibly the trigger shot or the Puregon again?). There will be a regime of blood tests and ultrasounds. I have completed all the blood tests and ultrasounds that are required before starting treatment, and just need to have my HSG (I have been waiting until closer to the time, as apparently if it’s had close to the time of insemination it increases your chances.)
Reading other blogs out there, including Vee and Jay’s staggering running total, we’re so fortunate to live in a country where our Medicare system covers most of the costs involved in this whole process. There’s a lot we had been shelling out for earlier in the process (sperm analysis, sperm storage and a plethora of tests for our donors) but thanks to the system here we’ll probably only end up out of pocket about $300 per month for over $2000 worth of treatment. Perhaps less with our health insurance on top of that.
So we’re on our way. It’s finally coming into sight. And I am so excited. There’s still mountains of administrivia before we’re home. Such as discovering a whole bunch of consent forms the clinic was meant to get our donors to sign when they deposited were not given to them to sign, meaning we are now having to send them across the world for them to sign (and find a witness for – which will be tricky for them to explain) and return. We also have to arrange their final blood tests and ensure that a third world doctor’s testing and diagnostic procedures are reliable enough to satisfy our doctor. And we do all this just to get to the starting line…
So far, our donors could not be more perfect. Lo and I are both a besotted with them. As such decent human beings. As such wonderful men. They have been so willing to go through this process so openheartedly. And for that we are grateful. Originally, our first ob/gyn (who we saw for our first appointment) said that we had to choose from one or the other and we were a bit trapped in a cycle of weighing up attributes and sperm quality. But we have since decided and told the clinic that we want to alternate between the donors each month. This was a bit of a revelation, but works for us. Because we entered into this with them as a couple. Because we equally couldn’t decide between one or the other of them, nor did we want to. Because storing two types of sperm protected us from waiting six months to find out that the sperm didn’t work so well. Because ideally we’d like for Lo to have our next baby with the other of them’s sperm. Because having this concept of a donor-couple really waters down the biology of it all. It’s our baby, but our friends are helping us. And such wonderful friends they are.
Even though I had been the original proponent of using an anonymous donor, I am so glad about how this has worked out for us so far. With the right men, known donor arrangements can work so well. As we all know, with the wrong men, they can be disastrous. I think distance always helps.
So that is where we are on a Thursday evening in June. It’s so cold outside. Lo is out for the evening. I am listening to a wonderful CD by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and contemplating a pile of dishes.
And the countdown is on.
