One Step Ahead

The sperms for try #4 were received by Wifebian this morning. They were not delivered to the wrong location and the gay sperm man didnt forget to give us the combination to the tank. These must be signs.

Except that Operation Pregnancy has turned into “outpatient-surgery-with-local anesthetic” pregnancy. No water, no evening primrose, no temping, lots of milk, coffee and a few alcoholic drinks for good measure. This is consistent with my general nature — erratic, unpredictable bursts of effort saturated with resentment and ambivalence. It’s just that last month every cup of coffee felt like an abortion and that made me angry, so whatev. If this baby can’t handle a few cups of coffee, it has no business being in my house.

That being said, I have an appointment on the 23rd at some fertility spot. We are considering a hail-mary IUI in May — the month the money runs out. Getting an IUI would require a sonogram, some bloodwork and a test of my fallopian tubes to confirm that they are clear, AKA an HSG. According to a phone conversation I had with an insurance rep when they were refusing to pay for something else entirely, the company pays for diagnostics related to infertility if there are “signs and sympotoms” of infertility, but not treatments. Of course, I dont know what Anthem considers to be a” sign” or “symptom” of infertility. When I called them, they would only tell me that it depends on what the doctor says. So, I don’t know if there are any lesbian clauses in there when it comes to “signs and symptoms”. For example,  “We dont need to pay for a sonogram to tell you that fucking a chick isnt going to make a baby.” But I’m not gonna lie about the chick thing so, whatevs.

Finally, an IUI in May would require a change of donor. There are only two donors at the gay sperm shop who are IUI ready and ours isnt one of them. Can you make non-IUI sperm be IUI? If not, of the two who are, the one who has knocked up some ladies describes himself as a “scientist for the government”. Another way of putting that might be, “Using my sperm puts your offspring at high risk of autism spectrum difficulties affecting every realm of intrapsychic, interpersonal, vocational and social life. He is also educated, employed, landed, bisexual, tall, brown-haired, blue-eyed, non-smoking, non-drinking and from NYC. So, we will trade autism risk for smarts, gayness, health, good coloring and some regional flair. You have to remember that using sperm from this shop means that we will actually end up knowing the donor in some way. I wouldnt mind adding a New Yorker to my repertoire.

So let’s email the sperm shop and find out our new donor’s sperm stats, shall we?

Lots of Highs, Few Loops

After four days of inseminations with pharmacy lubricant, a plastic speculum, a wonky celsius thermometer — and oh, yeah, sperm — I am emerging from the liquid nitrogen fog feeling like I’ve been to another gynecological planet.

Highlights:

• Mr. Human orAnimal?
• perfect tank arrival timing
• bonus speculum
• *four* inseminations
• seeing my awesome and perfect cervix
• happening upon the website “Beautiful Cervix Project“
• Wifebian stating, thick with sarcasm while batting her eyelashes, that any thought she every had of being trans had totally evaporated, after I complained that she wasn’t making me feel beautiful and encouraged her to start embracing this womanly experience
• The last night, when I yelled at her 5-year-old-style that I wasnt having fun anymore! and she pushed me onto the bed while holding the syringe
• Calling the bed “insemination station”, rather than bed
• Receiving the email highlighted in the previous post
• Wifebian being totally with me, physically, mentally and emotionally through a whole cycle for the first time

Lowlights:

• four inseminations of only 1 cc each
• very unattractive cervical mucous
• pinching my vaginal wall with the speculum and that sickening thud when you pop it into place
• being wholly unable to detect any convincing temperature spike with my wonk-mo-meter
• no noticeable improvements in cervical mucous despite primrose oil, water and limited caffeine

So now, I’m really all into the words we are making up for this . . . process. Fuck those dumb acronyms. Do you guys have any lesbian conceptionisms of which you are especially proud?

OPERATION PREGNANCY

Week 1 Report.

Evening Primrose Oil= 7 days

Prenatal Vitamins = 7 days

Irritating Emails from the Sperm Shop = 3

Decaf Coffee = 3 days

Regular Coffee = 2 days

No coffee = 2 days

Water = 34 ounces per day

Robitussin = 0 oz.

Temps = 0 days