Feeling Shy About Blogging

You know how if you go too long without having sex it starts to feel like a big deal doing it again? And you get all shy and awkward about it and come up with excuses not to do it that night, or the next night, or the night after that, because it just seems like it’s been too long and you don’t know how to break the ice again?

That’s how I feel about my blog. I’ve been on a forced TTC break since August, waiting and waiting and waiting to get back on the babymaking train, and drifting further and further away from my blog, my blog readers, and so many of my close online friends. I feel guilty, because I know many of you are in the heart of darkness right now, and while I’ve been gone you’ve been moving on with your plans, cycling, succeeding, failing, grieving. And it seems strange to pick up where I left off, to check in with your blog and try to reconnect while so much has happened.

So I feel shy. But, like ending a sex-drought (god, I hope I’m not the only one that experiences the sex-drought!), the only way to fix it is just plunge back in and do the deed. Because I need you all too much, and care too much about you, to let you go. So here I go.

Here’s my update (because, after all, the best thing about having a blog is that it’s all about me):

Our efforts to improve J’s sperm have been a total bust. Because of the insurance fuckup (see previous post), we have two more months of the very spendy hormone to give to J. But our RE says that most guys who respond to this do so almost instantly. So it’s now a long long long long shot that we’re going to see any improvement.

The most frustrating thing about this is that no one knows why this happened. When we first went to the RE, lo those many years ago, J’s sperm count was a bit low, but totally usable. They actually thought we had a great shot at getting pregnant with IUI. Then his numbers plunged, and then plunged again. Now there’s pretty much nothing. The hormones J is taking have his testosterone up, but his sperm production just isn’t there.

This means that we have to start looking at donor sperm, and I am completely overwhelmed by this. Not so much the fact of it—we’ve been gearing up for this for a long time. But the process of selecting a donor and figuring out how many vials to purchase and how many to keep in storage for (dare I think it?) a second child and whether we want an open-i.d. donor and what characteristics we want . . . it’s really daunting! So—on my return to blogland—I ask for help: does anyone have advice on how to do this? A checklist? A good book? I’m not going to lie, I’m freaked.

Of course, our last meeting with J’s RE (who looks exactly like Dick Cheney but is sweet and kindly) was also upsetting because he told us that he still thinks there’s only a 50% chance that the problem is J’s sperm. It still could be my eggs, he tells us. This is because almost all of my eggs fertilize (with ICSI) every cycle. Then the embryos die. Every time. (He even thinks that there was something wrong with the embryo that was ectopic—he thinks quality embryos don’t go into the tubes as often, but notes that it happens a lot with IVF.) Now, I assumed that since we know J’s sperm are pretty sucky, odds were much higher that the problem was his sperm. Right? But Dr. Sweet-and-Kindly Cheney says that eggs are so often the problem, he still lays even odds on my eggs being bad.

This doesn’t change our approach, of course. The only way to know which is failing, egg or sperm, is to replace one of them. And we can’t afford donor eggs, not if we want to have money left over for adoption. So the obvious choice is to go donor sperm. But now I’m less hopeful that even this will work. So fucking frustrating. I’m so tired of this shit. I so want this to be over. (Did I mention that we’re one month away from our we’ve-been-trying-for-FOUR-FUCKING-YEARS anniversary? Do you think they make a card for that?)

J showed his first signs of IF insanity after our meeting with Dr. Nice Cheney. In the meeting we decided to keep J on the bravelle for another month and a half, when we’ll have our final testing and meeting with the doc to make a decision on whose sperm to use. As we were heading out to the car, J told me that he wanted us to start getting ready to use donor sperm right away, and that he wanted me to already be halfway through my next IVF cycle when we got the final results. “I just don’t want to lose any more time,” he said, “I want to be doing something.”

Now, we all know that this is a little crazy, and luckily my cycle isn’t timed right to allow us to do it. The last thing I need is to have my body acting as a ticking time-bomb while we try to figure out our final steps of picking a donor and arranging for delivery. But I was kind of charmed by J’s little freak-out, even if it was delivered in his matter-of-fact, non-crazy tone. Because it’s just the kind of thing I would have said, were I in that place at the moment.

Okay, must work. (By the way, work is one BIG reason I haven’t been blogging as much—we’ve had an insanely busy late winter and spring.) I have lots more to say about lots of things: my crazy mom’s reappearance in my life (fuck!), my experience hiring day laborers to finish landscaping my back yard (yippee!), the possibility of losing my job due to recession (panic attack!), and my fabulous new tattoos (double yippee!).

But for now I’m going to post this, and see if I still have any friends/readers out there.

(Like that last bit? I threw in a bit of a guilt trip for y’all. Nice to know I still have that special touch, eh?)