Wednesday, April 7, 2010

You mean it works?!?!

When I first started this blog I titled it Crazy Pills for Her, Vitamin C for Me because it seemed to me that women got the hormone treatments while males received pseudo placebos. However, today was our first IUI and wow was I wrong.

This morning started off like most mornings, except instead of going to work I kicked my wife out of the room and spent some time getting to know myself better. Now this may sound like a lot of fun, but it's not really. Aside from chafeing due to the "No Lube or you'll kill all your swimmers" you also have to time when exactly you get out the cup. Too early and you have to go back to work and catch back up, taking more time, too late.. well lets not think about that.

The deed was done, I handed the specimen jar to my wife to keep in a warm place and cleaned up. I met Peapod at a nearby bookstore after she dropped off my sample and we spent the next hour waiting and talking. We walked around the mall a bit and then headed to the fertility center.

Before we walked into the fertility center we stopped by the ART lab and picked up my washed sample. Now in my head I was wondering how few viable sperm I would have. After all, washing gets rid of the bad ones.. of which I have a lot. If I used the results from my last analysis I would go from 13 million total, to 4 million that are swimming in the right direction. I might improve from a 1/2 to a solid 2.

Wow was I ever surprised, I felt like I won the lottery. 35 million buggers per ml and 40% swimming. It's not quite superfertility land but that's almost normal. After washing I even had 17 million left with 88% motility and grade 3!

Now I'm sure there are many reasons for this. Hormonal cycles, change in exercise, change in seasons, etc.. Heck it may even be that it's because I haven't nuked my lawn in RoundUp in about 6 months. However, I'm pretty convinced the vitamin C hand something to do with it. It's the biggest change I've made recently and it seems to have worked.

Now of course I'm strutting around after I see this and am half in disbelief. What's funny is I can't contain myself and I saw at least one couple in the waiting room with us roll their eyes at my excitement. I'm guessing they're new to IF or they wouldn't be so hard on a poor fellah!

Anyway, Peapod had her first IUI. It was a bit weird, the doctor appeared to be peering up her lady bits like it was a telescope. Then weird words left his mouth like, "Oh I'll have to straighten your cervix, this will pinch" and then he squirted my washed and readied fertility champions.

I don't know if this will work but I hope so. However, since the results where so good this time, if next time is the same Peapod and I will go for 3 IUI procedures instead of the two we had considered. Now granted, we don't know the morphology.. for all I know there are 35 million that have tails on either side or heads shaped like question marks but the volume is at least close.

I still am a bit shocked though.. Vitamin C really works.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing your side of the story. We also have morphology issues... I'll keep my fingers crossed for you!

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  2. LOL!!! This is a funny story. It is so good to read all this from the guy's POV. My DH has obstructive azoo, but doesn't blog.
    I am going back reading posts to get to know you both better- gotcha in my reader now. :)

    Hope I can cheer you two on.

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