Fuzzy Pipe Cleaners

I’ve had a blog for YEARS on Blogspot and just racked up the same number of followers in one day on this one. Let’s hear it for women looking everywhere for kindred spirits and some information regarding artificial insemination! 😉

I really should have stated this earlier and since I’ve received my first question (more on that in a sec), it’s time.

DISCLAIMER: This blog reflects my partner’s and my experience. We were (in retrospect) clueless going into it and at the mercy of whatever information we could glean from friends, our doctor, and the internet. And as many of you have already experienced yourselves, that’s a hot mess.

I’m not certain the HSG test will work for everyone who is struggling with repeated IUI attempts. My beef with the test not being ordered is that it’s a no-brainer to me: before anyone tries IUI, why isn’t anyone checking to make sure the tubes are open? Like I said earlier, you can have the greatest, most eager eggs in multiples and a whole syringe of Michael Phelps’ sperm, but if your tubes are clogged and they can’t get to each other, what in the hell is everyone doing??

We’re fortunate in that there are two reproductive centers in our area. The only problem was, we couldn’t afford their services. Maybe my partner would have undergone a battery of tests before trying had we gone to them. But if we had, we wouldn’t have been able to afford the IUI specimens or worse — we wouldn’t have been able to afford to raise the child we were spending all of our money trying to produce!

My partner switched to her best friend’s OBGYN this year and went in for a pre-pregnancy-attempt check under the hood. She was surprised to see the doctor had infertility listed as a service and when she asked her about it, she was told that yes, the OBGYN could do the IUI procedure and at a fraction of what the fertility centers charge.

And so we were off to the races.

We love our doctor and based on my partner’s age (33) and her overall health (excellent), she acted as if this would be a one-and-done prospect.

Well, lucky for us it wasn’t. We might have saved some moola, but did I mention clueless? It wasn’t until we were approaching our third attempt that we discovered we’d been calculating the due date wrong the whole time. My partner is a teacher, so we wanted to coordinate (as much as possible) her maternity leave with summer so that one would run into the other. Had we actually gotten pregnant the first time, she would be delivering in January.

Whoops.

But as much as we love our doctor, my partner had to pretty much demand the HSG test after the second failed IUI attempt.

So I’m not entirely sure what the answer is to the question posed in the first comment on Fire in the Hole! I know that you have to be your own advocate with most medical care, but we found that we really had to direct a lot of this and I, for one, found myself resenting it a lot of the time.

We needed help and while some folks acted as if they were helping us, they really weren’t. They were behaving as if we had this endless supply of time and money and patience, which we didn’t.

If I had it to do over again, I would have gone to medical school before starting this. 🙂

Almost forgot! As for the HSG and pain — yes, my partner was lulled into a false sense of security, too. But that’s the thing — if your tubes are clear, I imagine it is virtually painless. And most women probably don’t have fully clogged tubes. My partner’s was painful because she was fully clogged.

I still think a good Roto Rootering of the pipes before starting would save a lot of people a lot of time, money, frustration, and heartache. And the statistics on pregnancy following HSG seem to back that up.

Just be aware that some doctors may have valid reasons for not ordering the test — and some may not.

My favorite part of this? When my partner told our OBGYN how painful the test had been for her, our doctor said, “Oh, I know! I’ve had it done!”

&^%$#@!

Fire in the Hole!

This wasn’t meant to be the first post, but since things were so crazy for a while and I’m a natural born procrastinator, here we are.

My partner and I wanted to start this blog as a means of documenting our baby-making exploits and more importantly, as a means of disseminating (no pun intended) information to other lesbian couples who are planning or trying to start a family. Because when we started this process a few months ago, we had a very hard time finding the necessary information. And it cost us. It cost us time and money.

Thanks to my procrastination and our desire to give you the most helpful information first, this record will be told a la Pulp Fiction: all discombobulated, time-wise. So please bear with me. And if you’re our daughter or son or lordhelpus our quadruplets and you’re reading this, you already know that our lives together probably continue to be marked by procrastination and wonky schedules.

So, without further ado…if you are trying to get pregnant via intrauterine insemination (IUI) do this IMMEDIATELY:

GO GET YOUR TUBES BLOWN OUT!!

Do not pass Go, do not spend another DIME on sperm samples, do not listen to your doctor when he or she tells you it isn’t necessary. Don’t flinch at the cost (~$800-1100). It’s NOTHING compared to the thousands of dollars you will spend shooting spermatozoa into your Fallopian tubes for NO REASON WHATSOEVER.

GO GET YOURSELF AN HSG TEST. NOW. GO!

Let me explain.

HSG is the Hysterosalpingogram.  It’s an x-ray test that checks to see if your Fallopian tubes are open and/or tied up like a pretzel.  Which would of course, inhibit fertilization.

I’m going to assume you all know how fertilization works, but maybe you don’t, So here’s a quick refresher:

The beauty of IUI is that instead of semen being dropped off down the street and your cervix having to rely on an orgasm to wonka wonka wonka suck up said semen into your uterus and then those genetic swimmers having to swim up through your uterus and into your Fallopian tubes, the unencumbered genetic swimmers are dropped off RIGHT AT YOUR FRONT DOOR.  No orgasm (sorry), no treacherous swim across the uterus, just “knock, knock…oh hey, egg, wanna go?”

Now, there’s still a catch. If your egg (or multiple eggs if you’re on fertility meds, which you probably are if you’re undergoing IUI) is spit out by the ovary correctly and gets picked up by those dangling Fallopian tube fingers as it should and starts traveling through the Fallopian tube (or tubes, if multiple eggs), there’s a chance your tubes may be clogged, either at the ovary end or the uterus end. So basically, you could have a bunch of eggs ready to go and this expensive premium IUI sperm specimen shot right at the front door, but your 500-lb father is STANDING IN THE WAY AND NO ONE’S GETTING THROUGH.

Well, isn’t that a fine howdoyoudo?

So here’s the thing. The act of performing the HSG test to see if your tubes are clogged usually UNCLOGS YOUR TUBES in the process. How fortuitous!

But here’s the kicker. If you look online, most doctors don’t recommend the HSG test until after 6 failed IUI attempts. Um…hey doc, do you have any idea how expensive IUI is?! We did dual IUI attempts during each cycle. That meant two IUI specimens and two IUI procedures. We paid for the procedures out-of-pocket, so each cycle attempt cost us about $2500 (this included the overnight shipping we needed for timing purposes; more on that later).

THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER HORSEPUCKY.

Basically, we could have just taken that money and flushed it down the toilet. Because no amount of eggs and no amount of sperm was EVER GOING TO MEET UP. My partner’s tubes were clogged. We know this because it took two bottles of contrast dye in order for the radiologist to achieve the desired test result.

Here’s what happens:

A radiologist injects contrast dye into the cervical canal. The uterus fills up and the radiologist can check the uterus shape via x-ray. Then the dye, if everything is open and/or not tied up like a pretzel, travels out of the uterus, through the Fallopian tubes and into the abdominal cavity. The radiologist had to forcefully push two bottles of dye through my partner’s uterus and Fallopian tubes in order to see the dye go through the tubes. Get it? The act of administering the test, opened her tubes. And based on the fact that they had to physically restrain her on the table, she’s confident those bad boys were clogged.

With what? I don’t know. Lost socks? Mucous? A stockpile of eggs? Who knows.

But this I do know, based on the 5 pregnancy tests my partner has taken over the last seven weeks: the IUI she had days after the HSG test resulted in pregancy!

No one ever talks about this stuff and we’re hoping that’s why we’re here. Even if you’re a straight couple with a seemingly endless supply of semen, if you’ve been having trouble getting pregnant and can spare the money,

GO GET YOUR TUBES FLUSHED.

All the time and attempts in the world are not going to get your eggs and his sperm where they need to be to make this happen. Please learn from our mistakes.

We have our 8-week ultrasound this week. I’ll let you know how it goes. Wish us luck! (I’ve become incredibly superstitious in the last 7 weeks. Apologies.)