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.
A little bit of infertility
Things are not going quite to plan this cycle. According to nurse #3 at the clinic, I have “a little bit of infertility.” “We have only tried once!” I cried. “I have a 32 day cycle!” I said in defence of the fact I had not yet ovulated at CD15. “Spotting can be a perfectly normal experience!” I am becoming the uber-assertive-Stephanie-Brill-says-there’s-nothing-wrong-with-me client ( I refuse to use the word patient).
It’s now CD17 and there are no fertile signs as yet. We’ve had a slight change of direction. Following the call from the clinic’s regional manager, we’re now able to inseminate twice at a reasonable price and with DDX’s good-quality second-batch sperm. While I still really like the idea of an at-home insemination (and said-artichoke jar has been purchased) I suddenly started to freak out about not knowing who the bio-dad was. I’d got so used to this monthly alternation model between our two donors. I never imagined myself to be a girl who did not know who had gotten her pregnant. It’s different to having an anon donor as we’d still have some conceptialisation of the sperm-donater. I just didn’t like the idea of having to examine the features of the baby to work out paternity. And not having a choice about whether we divulged this information or not because we didn’t know. And we felt like we wanted to try with DDX having tried with DDY last month and that that was part of the agreement we had with them both. So, now that we’re back with our clinic plan, we’re going to do the clinic insems with DDX this month and then do at-home insems with DDY next month (possibly supplemented with an IUI with DDY). We realised that we should probably just choose one approach and stick with it, but intuition is important. And we’re in control of this process and want to keep refining it. And thankfully our donors are so great.
So, it’s a stressful week. I have another blood test and ultrasound tomorrow. As much as this is at the centre of our life, Lo and I are trying to work out where we’re going to fit the insems into our hectic schedule. It’s difficult finding the flexibility to be as absent from work as much as this process demands. I also don’t want to give it too much space, given how much I freaked out last time. My approach this time is to go to the clinic, go to acupuncture, and go back to the office. Although my wonderful acupuncturist is a hard man to catch. With our two inseminations, Dr Y&F wants to do two IUIs. I had asked for an ICI and IUI. But it will be my concession to her to go with two IUIs. Probably better chances, but I kinda liked the idea of the vaginally inserted sperm swimming their way up in a leisurely fashion. With the stress, the spotting, and the dramas I am feeling like September isn’t really our month. In October we’ll be on leave all month (a staycation! there was no way we were booking a holiday as we wanted the flexibility to be around for this whole process), we’ll be doing the KD DIY thang, and will be a lot less wound-up. So, in true ttc trooper style, my mind is already on next month.
