One of the unfortunate things that has made me a little sad for other women going through IVF, is the MASSIVE unbalance of discomfort when it comes to the male vs. Female role. If its not bad enough that a woman would have to go through the emotion of dealing with infertility, and all that it steals from you…you also get the joy of knowing that your bundle of joy (if you get one) wasn’t conceived as part of a passionate night of love. Hell the actual “knock up” in my case and in most woman’s won’t even involve the husband being in the room…can you wrap your head around how sucky that thought is? Babies are supposed to made with love…and all happiness surrounding, even when they are mistakes. Hell, I envy those that are able to have “mistakes.” Instead, in this case, they were a result of your husband in a room alone with some tacky porno star or playboy model. My fertility clinic even bragged that they were “Noted to have the best mens room of all area fertility rooms.”
What does that even mean?! Are we joking? A huge collection of videos? magazines? comfort? Some of them are described as comfortable guest bedrooms. Meanwhile here you are, treating your body like some messed up fun house with a built in rollercoaster. There are no “comfy guest-rooms” when it comes to the woman’s role here…just cold stirrups and things stuck up and in just about every part of your body. Everything goes “in” for the woman, and only one thing needs to come “out” for the guy. Unfair much? Every man, should be bowing down to their superwomen wives if this is the case for you. It’s complete BS!
August 1st 2019
I got a little lucky in this particular scenario…well more lucky than most. I didn’t have that added gut punch of the “mens room.” I got at least some satisfaction knowing my husband had at least one procedure. haha…j/k I’m not that mean…maybe a little…
On this day, Ron went under the knife…or at least his family jewels did. He had his sperm removal
During the sperm removal, known as the TESE procedure, (Testicular sperm extraction) the urologist goes into the testes and aspirates sperm with a needle. If they are unable to aspirate the sperm, they can take tissue samples which usually have sperm connected. We were super optimistic and of course Ron had the impression that his Sperm were super heros and would be strong and plentiful…
Unfortunately we hit our first partial roadblock. The doctor informed me this day that he had to poke Ron, about 20 times. He stated he wasn’t able to get the amount he would have liked and he opted to not take a tissue sample because he felt I was young, and he had enough for 2 rounds of IVF…and his words “you won’t have any issue”
Rons recovery…not so fun at all. by the time they let me back to see him, he was already awake and grabbing his crotch. He was visibly and audibly uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure he got the roughest nurse in the post-op. She was not very quick to give him anything for pain and lacked even the slightest bit of empathy that he just got stabbed in the balls…literally. I felt horrible…then… lol…now I don’t feel as horrible, I’ve been tortured more so that warm fuzzy “awe poor baby” feeling has since passed (HAHA.) His recovery went well, there were no issues other than swelling…lots and lots of swelling and bruising. He was good after about 2 weeks.
The Results
So when we sat down with our amazing infertility Doctor, who is always so positive and glass half full, we got the information that some of the vials had no sperm, and others had “twitching” sperm. She kept my spirits up, despite that info starting the stress of the unknown, and told me that she had enough. We discussed the “what ifs” of the results…what if it wasn’t enough? Ron of course didn’t want to discuss that, but with the results not giving me the “look at all these swimmers!” vibes…I was nervous, and I’m a woman so I wanted to know the what if question. We of course would cross that bridge if we came to it, but I had 2 roads. Do the procedure again with medication for him to improve quality, or get a sperm donor. Ugh…the future is so unknown! Next step…on to my work. Time for me to start making some eggs!
To be continued…