Great News!!! (No, not what you think, but close!)

So we got some very good news on Wednesday.  We met with an OB; not my regular one but a nurse practitioner in my OB's office. We were afraid she would tell us that we have no reason to even try IUI, that we may as well just go to IVF and ICSI.  But, instead, she did just the opposite. 

She said that yes, it's not great that Dan's morphology is low, yes it can make it harder. But that was where the negative stopped.

She started talking about the positives in our case.

My age for one. I am younger than most women undergoing fertility treatment in their office. All my tests have come back normal. My cycle is great.

Then she pointed out that the rest of Dan's numbers looked really good, some above normal. And that she has seen a lot worse in other patient's semen analysis.

So, we have a lot of positive factors on our side!  I had actually just never thought of that, oddly enough. I guess we only ever focus on the negative, on the obstacles. Now, I'm trying to remember the  positives on our sides.

The nurse practitioner also said that she wouldn't worry too much about me taking Clomid right now because I have no ovulatory disfunction. So we are going to try three cycles of IUI without Clomid and then re-evaluate and maybe do three more with Clomid. So we can do up to six cycles of IUI!!!

She said that sometimes the sperm get "lost" in the vaginal canal and can't find their way into the cervix. Morphology can affect the way sperm swims so our problem may just be that they can't find the egg and even when they do, they no longer have the energy to penetrate the egg.  IUI takes out the problem because it deposits the sperm into the uterus so the sperm don't have far to swim and the process of preparing the sperm makes it so that there's a higher concentration deposited and they have fewer abnormalities.  

In case you're wondering how the procedure goes, I'll describe it. If you don't want to know, then skip this paragraph.   I'll take an ovulation predictor test starting at a certain point in my cycle. When I get an LH surge I call the OB office and they schedule me the next day for my IUI. Dan will then call the fertility clinic two floors down from the OB office and schedule to give his sample two hours before my appointment. We then wait for them to process it, they give it to us in a little test tube, wrapped in foil, in a styrofoam cup and then in a paper bag, we take the elevator up two floors and they deposit it in my uterus. I then lay down for 20 minutes afterwards and then go home.  Then I wait around for two weeks to see if it worked.

It's simple and really not invasive at all.  It does take some of the intimacy out of baby making since it's done in a dr's office, but at least Dan gets to be there. 

We're very hopeful; maybe that's putting it too lightly.  After the appointment we were both ecstatic. I started to cry in the Dr's office because I was so releived!   For the first time in months we both have hope and we're letting ourselves once again imagine what  it would be like to have a biological child.  I could be pregnant soon!!!  That's awesome!