IUI at last!

Here it is, our first [and hopefully only] round of intrauterine insemination (IUI). This week has been a whirlwind of procedures and emotions. 

After getting out of the hospital for my kidney infection, I then had to go in for regular scans where they checked my ovaries to see what was happening.

On my first visit, my doctor said to me, "Those black dots are all potential eggs" and I panicked a bit because there were about 10!

He then explained that only the largest would mature into eggs. The other follicles would die off. It looked like I had 1 "sure thing" and two "maybes" among the many other follicles. 

Two days later, and it was a sure thing that I would have 2 good eggs coming to fruition soon. They had me take a blood test the next day which showed that I did have an LH surge (which means I'm about to ovulate), so we were booked in the next morning.

My husband provided a semen sample which then had to be washed and prepared. That meant we had 2 hours to kill while we waited. We took a drive and walked around a nearby mall, browsing for Christmas shopping lists.

Then it was time! We came back, and I took off my pants and slid onto the table. They'd provided me socks, but I wore my own. I explained to Chris that one of the weird bits of research out there shows that women who wear socks during IUI and IVF procedures have a higher chance of success. No one has any idea why, but they now provide socks in a lot of clinics.

I still don't know why, but it took about 40 minutes for them to get to us. I laid there with my husband next to me talking. I was very glad he came with me to the actual appointment (he'd considered not) because I would have lost my mind with boredom otherwise.

When they did finally come in, the doctor was ecstatic. Our sperm sample had provided 61 million motile sperm! For reference, most clinics require at least 5 million to do the procedure, and 20 million is considered a "good chance." we had three times that many.

So, the doctor had me lie down so he could find my cervix. It's a tricky cervix. It hides often. My family doctor has actually had to go looking for it before. Not sure what it's doing down there, but it appears to reside in China.

So the fertility doctor had to "pull" my cervix up to get it into position which was, to say the least, unpleasant. Most people would not appreciate an internal organ being rearranged while they were conscious.

Once everything was "in place," the doctor slipped a catheter (tiny tube) through the cervix and injected my husband's sperm. It was over in a jiffy, and that part wasn't any more uncomfortable than a PAP smear.

Then, I was given instructions to lie there for 15 minutes (more strange research no one can really explain). We are to have intercourse tonight, and I start progesterone vaginal suppositories on Tuesday. They come with a whole new set of side effects, so I'll do a side effect post starting then. 

So here we are! 61 million sperm headed toward my two eggs and all our fingers crossed. Swim boys! Swim!