It’s Poetic, Really

This week is National Infertility Awareness Week.  I’m afraid only those of us who are already well too aware of infertility know about this week’s designation.  But just the same.

It seems appropriate, then, that the timing worked just so that I had my third IUI today.  I kind of want to restart the counter and call it my first, since it’s the first one to be done by an RE, and it’s the first one where I was actually being monitored and not just guessing at the right day based on OPK’s.  Also, I am pretty sure that my “real” first IUI was done too late, and the second was done too early.  So let’s call this one my first, shall we?  Those other two were just dress rehearsals.

I have been doing my injectables up until Saturday night, and then Sunday morning per my RE’s orders, I gave myself an HCG shot.  The plan was for me to go in for an IUI this morning, and another one on Tuesday.

Well apparently that mondo-follicle in my left ovary that was producing a lovely ripe egg realized that yesterday was Easter and heard that people were hunting for eggs, so it got a little squeamish.  Or something.  Point is that my body responded to that HCG shot very fast.  I was crampy and bloated all day yesterday, and this morning, before my IUI appointment, I felt a sharp pain in the left side of my abdomen.  I thought maybe it was just the follicle getting ready to release the egg, or something.

But when I got to the RE’s office, an hour after my husband had dropped off his, er, deposit, the ultrasound showed that the egg had already started to release.  So Dr. T said he’d do the IUI and the timing was perfect, but there would be no point in doing another one tomorrow.   What followed was a very uncomfortable 30 minutes or so, where we learned that my uterus is at a funny angle and my cervix bends in a weird way so it was extremely difficult for Dr. T to get the catheter in.  I told him that the first doctor to do an IUI on me had to use a tenaculum and he said that was precisely what he wanted to avoid.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the unpleasant details but I was pretty uncomfortable for a while there while he tried to get the right angle.  Finally it worked and he managed to do it without a tenaculum, which I am grateful for.  So the IUI is done!

And it’s not only appropriate what with the Easter egg and the NIAW, but the day that I’ll go back for a pregnancy test?  It would have been mother’s day, only that’s a Sunday so it will be the following day.  Here’s hoping I get my first ever mother’s day present.   Until then, I am officially Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise.  Let the two week wait begin.

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