I think too much... with bonus feature: the IUI that almost wasn't

First things first, no? Yesterday's IUI almost didn't happen. As feared, we'd waited a bit long.. but let me back up and give you some background.

G was hanging with his usual babysitter, my neighbor. I like for his visits to her house to be short. She has a son who is close to G's age, and the two of them do not always get along. They react one of two ways - either they're best friends, or they fight like cats and dogs. Being as they're three, it's hard to predict what kind of day they'll have, so it's generally best to not have them together for extended periods, or I risk my kid getting beat on. We have recently discovered the hospital day care (who will watch him! for free!), but they will only watch him when I have an appointment at the hospital. Since the andrology lab that does sperm washing is not part of ths hospital, on IUI day, when I really need a sitter, they're not an option for the first half of my day. So G was at the neighbor's and I was determined not to spend a lot of time away.

After we left the lab with our swimmers, we had two things to do - the IUI, and a visit to the insurance office at the hospital to straighten out an issue we've been having with them. Since the last two IUI's had been a breeze, I told B to go ahead and deal with the insurance, I'd go solo to the insemination so we could get home faster. Smooth move.

Yeah, the last two went just fine... but this time, since I'd already ovulated, my cervix was already closing (closed?) and that whole painlessly-insert-catheter-in-five-seconds thing didn't happen. Two words: tenaculum and ouch. I was really worried my doc was going to call this whole thing off when he had that much trouble. He didn't.. although he did ask if I'd been through this before. Yes, but it never hurt before!

Survived that, and I have a tiny ray of hope.. I had this weirdly symbolic dream while snoozing through my half hour of laying down afterwards. FYI- weekend IUI's, done in L&D have much more comfortable beds. I'm not going to recount the dream yet, because I'm oddly afraid of jinxing myself, but I did want to mention it, so I don't seem so nuts if I get hopeful this cycle*, even though so many things went wrong that made this seem like a hopeless cycle.

Which brings me to the 'thinking too much' part of this.

This is not what I'd call the ideal IUI cycle. We waited too long, I had already ovulated, possibly as much as 24+ hours before the IUI, AND we'd totally blown away the IUI abstinence, which (as expected) drastically affected B's sample... enough that his count, typically low-normal, occasionally low, was flirting with 'severely low', but thankfully not too low for IUI. Interestingly, the lack of abstinence did not significantly change his motility. Which has nothing to do with anything, except that it's interesting trivia.

So, I'm telling myself that this is not the cycle to get my hopes up. The only thing that was significantly better than past cycles was my endometrium. That measured a fluffy 10-point-something, a big improvement over my piddly 6.9 last month. B's numbers were depressingly low statistically speaking. I had maybe two viable follicles (three if you include Monday's collapsing follicle), which is much lower than my average of five.

.. but I can't shake the knowledge that my two pregnancies both came about when it seemed hopeless. I got a positive test with G two days after B's first SA results came in. You know, where my doctor said she wanted to look into that before proceeding any further because it was a problem. My second pregnancy, conception occurred about two weeks after my doctor said it was bad enough to require IUI. So I have a proven history of conception when it's least expected. My public reproductive fuck you to my doctors, so to speak. Not to mention this was the one IUI where B was not even in the room. So I've got the added knowledge that it should not work this time, combined with the crappy-conception story of how the hubby was not present. Which does not make me less hopeful, it has the opposite affect. (I'm really f'ing backwards here.. recurring theme in my life)






*at the moment, i'm not hopeful, i'm confident... which is freaking me the fuck out. because, you know, i'm confident that fertilization occurred. the only thing keeping me from freaking out MORE is that i'm not confident about implantation.. just fertilization.