Monday, July 17, 2006

You and I and IUI

Well hello out there. I have to admit, this is a little weird. I recently have found out that the chances of me and my husband conceiving naturally are about say, one in nil, so I did what every modern girl these days does--turn to the Internet for clues, advice, anything...

I found a wonderful collection of IF blogs and figured if they had offered me some comfort, then I should start my own. So, here's my story...

My husband, let's call him H, and I have been married for over 6 years. We married young and had agreed from day one that we would start trying for kids when we hit the five year mark. Since we waited until marriage to have sex (yes, its true), we figured we deserved the time to get used to being together without the added pressures of children. So, imagine our surprise after all of our waiting and proper birth control when a year of trying passed and we didn't even have so much as a pregnancy scare. Meanwhile, our other, well-deflowered friends were getting knocked up without even thinking about it and then crying about it because it meant no more crazy nights out at the bar.

H saw how easy it was for the rest of them and thought that there was no way we would have any problems. He was wrong. Turned out we got a two-for-one deal. Male factor infertility combined with only one working tube, probably due to my secret nemesis endometriosis, which my OBGYN has sworn for years that I do not have. The prognosis--go directly to IVF...do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. I had just barely convinced H that IUI wouldn't be the end of the world when we found out from our new RE, Dr. Optimism, that IUI wouldn't be enough anyway given our super combo deal of problems. For H, IVF has serious ethical ramifications. It's pretty funny that I'm the Catholic one and he is not religious at all, but when it comes to ART he sounds like the most die-hard Catholic you'd ever want to meet. For me, I'm a believer of science and of God. I believe that we wouldn't be able to do procedures like IVF if God didn't want us to. When God closes one door, he opens another, right? So, while the whole thing sucks beyond comprehension, I'm mostly okay with trying IVF if that's what it will take for us to have a baby. H is still struggling to come onboard.

He's having a hard time with me talking about all the options and possibilities right now, and I'm having a hard time not talking about it. When I told him I had gone online to read about people with similar situations, he blew up at me, saying he just couldn't handle it right away. I'm having a hard time accepting it, but I've already moved onto dealing with it. I need to realize that we react differently. So once he calmed down, he suggested that I keep my own blog and perhaps start to network with others.

What's hard is accepting that this is actually happening to us. We were the responsible couple, the mature couple, the perfect couple that had been together forever. How could we also be the perfectly infertile couple??? While I am so thankful that we have each other, I think it is cruel that we might never experience having a child together.

2 comments:

Motel Manager said...

I had a similar experience with endometriosis...I'd had symptoms for years (nothing huge, but stuff that I did always mention in my annual exams), and a whole slew of highly qualified OBGYNs had always assured me it wasn't endometriosis but was probably irritable bowel syndrome or stress. When I went to the RE clinic, they suspected it in about 5 seconds. I was annoyed, although who knows what I would have done if I'd found out I had it when I was 25 and unmarried and nowhere near TTC, you know?

GLouise said...

I can relate to your feelings of being the "responsible" couple. We waited several years before TTC, and it was a shock that we have had such a delay.

Best wishes to you!!