in news completely unrelated to infertility

I am a teacher, and I live in the midwest. We got DUMPED with snow (my husband and I were trying to clear the driveway today, and we had drifts that were at least 3 feet deep; I think our total snowfall for the two days was more than 10 inches) over the past two days, and tomorrow is DAY 3 of no school! The semester is ending on the 18th, so now I have to figure out how to revise my lesson plans so that I can finish everything I'm supposed to before then.

infertility curiosity

I have noticed that people tend to ask me this question a lot: "how are...things?" Like they want to know what's going on with me and D fertility-wise, but they don't know what/how to ask. One co-worker friend asks this fairly frequently, but sometimes he asks something like "how are things on the baby front?" Then I know he wants details, but the first, vague question doesn't tell me that. I feel like I've laid it all out for people several times, and it makes some of them uncomfortable. It's hard to gauge how much people want to know. I don't really care who knows what (as long as I'm the one to tell them), but some of them don't really want to know, you know? :)

ugh

So now I have a friend who doesn't want kids ever who thinks she might be pregnant. She made a post (most of us communicate/keep in touch via livejournal) asking for advice and early pregnancy symptoms from those who have been pregnant. I was surprised at how many people I know who have had abortions. I've always been pro-choice, so that's not really the issue. But it just drove home to me how random infertility is. Several of the women who had abortions now are either pregnant or have recently had a baby. I've never even thought I might be pregnant (except for the month since D and I started trying that my period was late thanks to hyperstimulated ovaries), yet I want to be so badly. These women have thrown away chances at babies, yet were still able to conceive when they wanted to. It just sucks all around.

infertility wall

So the friends Thanksgiving was very fun. The former friend who cut me out was there, and I successfully avoided her. I caught her looking at me a couple times, but I looked away/walked away each time. Maybe that's immature, but I don't care. I'm sure anyone that was there would tell me to be nice to the pregnant woman. But she had no consideration for being nice to the infertile, so I don't care.

I have another friend there who recently had a miscarriage. I recognized the determination in her face that it takes to be around a pregnant woman or around someone with a small baby (both of which were there). Weird how once you've dealt with infertility, you can sometimes recognize the same emotions in someone else.

Last spring a bunch of teachers and I went to a conference. Of course, the nosiest woman there asked one of the guys who has been married for a while if he and his wife had kids or were going to. He responded with "not yet" and then immediately cast his eyes down. I responded that way so many times in the last year. It made me wonder if he and his wife were dealing with infertility or if I was just projecting.

Anyway, I'm able to handle pregnancy talk and pregnancy announcements much easier this holiday season. IVF looming on the horizon has renewed my hope and optimism.

friends Thanksgiving

So some of my friends are big in the bar scene, and they have arranged a private day at one of their favorites for us to have a friends Thanksgiving. Most of the people that are going to be there know nothing of our infertility struggles; the ones who do know have been pretty supportive.

But then I found out someone else is going to be there too. They all talked her in to going. A few months back, she announced her pregnancy online. I said "congratulations!" just like everyone else did. She then deleted me from her friends list. I was a little thrown by this. She emailed me and basically said "I guess you noticed that I deleted you. I just don't want to feel guilty every time you comment about me being pregnant. Good luck with your life." Now, I can kind of understand her wanting to keep her emotional state in the neutral area and not feel guilty because an infertile dared to be positive about her unplanned pregnancy. But then I think about how this particular online site has FILTERS, so I emailed her back and said something along the lines of "well, you could just make a filter and exclude me from it. By deleting me, you also now cannot read anything that happens in my life." She never responded. Which completely tells me that she was never a very good friend in the first place.

Well, now she is going to be at this Thanksgiving dinner. I was really looking forward to it, thinking I could have a day where I'm not bombarded with infertility reminders. But she will be there, with her pregnant belly, as a huge reminder that some people have it so easy, and will never understand what I am going through, and just don't care to even try.

So my solution is to try to avoid her, and to get mildly drunk.

money

Unless some huge unexpected bill pops up, D and I will have enough money saved (yay for no insurance coverage!) to start the IVF process in January!! When I realized how close that is, I felt extremely excited and extremely freaked the hell out.

D's urologist appt

Well, D went to the urologist suggested by Dr. G. I asked how it went, and D said "I got fondled....and a finger up the butt." So we went for Chinese food for dinner as D's treat (our tradition is to get a treat of the invasive/uncomfortable-procedure-victim's choice). We were going to get TCBY for dessert, but apparently they have now closed.

Anyway...

The urologist said he found a small varicocele which could be causing the problem with motility, but he kept saying D's numbers were good enough to get me pregnant (since his count and morphology are in normal ranges). I'm sure if I wasn't already 34, and we had the option of being patient, it could maybe happen on its own. I mean, there has to be a super swimmer able to get past all the slow ones at some point! But the varicocele surgery, with all the anesthesia that goes with it, would be a good chunk of money. And our insurance won't cover it since it is for sure for fertility this time. The urologist said there was a 50/50 chance of it helping, but D said his tone impled that it would not.

So our choices are:
1) D has the surgery and we use our IVF savings to pay for it. Then if it works, we have a real chance of getting pregnant naturally. If it doesn't, we have no chance and no money for IVF.

2) D does not have the surgery and we continue on our plan to do IVF in early 2010.

So we have chosen option 2. We feel that IVF at least gives us a real fighting chance...even though the odds given to us are the same as the varicocele surgery. Maybe it's not logical, but it feels right to us. And even going in to the urology appointment, D and I had discussed the time frame for a corrective treatment for him, and we had kind of decided that unless the odds of it helping were VERY good, we would probably still pursue IVF.


So that's where we are. Same place we were two weeks ago, but we feel like we are a little more confident that IVF is the route for us...and that there wasn't some magical urology fix for D.