We can check one more accomplishment off the list... Artificial Insemination. HA! Wow, I just had a moment of "is this really my life" as I wrote that. I used to hear about IUIs when I was younger (in movies and such) and had no idea that this would actually be something I'd have to do. So strange how life is.
We had our IUI on Saturday morning. The morning started out as a race against the clock. We had to be at the hospital w/ the "specimen" at 7am, so we showered the night before, woke up at 6 am & got dressed. Before we knew it, it was almost 6:30 and my husband knew it was time for him to get down to business. I imagined me being a part of this part of the story... helping in some way or another.... BUT, the hubby was just like "I'm going into the bedroom now" and he shut the door. HAHA! I didn't want to make him any more nervous than he already was, so I just let him do what he was comfortable with. It took 5 minutes or so... maybe longer.... He told me after that he was JUST about to call me in because it wasn't working. Enough about that tho....
Once we had the "specimen", we got in our car and drove as fast as we could. I stuck it between my legs to keep it body temperature. We live about 30 minutes away from the hospital and we were told the specimen couldn't take any longer than 30 minutes to get there. YIKES. When we got to the hospital, my hubby dropped me off at the door so I could run up to the andrology lab instead of waiting for him to park and everything else. I'm pleased to say we made it in exactly 30 minutes. At that point, it was time to wait an hour and 45 minutes while they "washed" the sperm. It was breakfast time for us, so we went to Perkins and just enjoyed a nice meal together while we anticipated what was to come. After wasting some more time driving around, we went back to the hospital to wait.... UGH.... the waiting was the worst that day. We went back up to andrology and picked up the freshly prepared "specimen". It's pretty interesting. They take the sample and get rid of all of the "bad" sperm and keep the good ones.... these go into this vile. Then there's a second vile of pinkish liquid that goes with it. I wasn't sure what that was until later.
We then took this to our nurse and paid for the procedure. We both went into an exam room and she got right to work. It took a while to find my cervix (ouch!) and then she entered the catheter. The catheter already had the sperm sucked up inside -- which brings me back to that pink fluid. Before sucking up the sperm, she sucked up the pink fluid in the catheter. This was to make sure it was working and there were no bubbles. Then she spits that back out and draws up the sperm. Weird...
Well, back to the good stuff -- she then inserted the sperm very very slowly. Once that was done, I was told to lay on the table (pillow under pelvis, no pillow under head) for 30 minutes. She turned on a CD of classical music.... and my husband entertained me. He kept making me laugh -- looking at old stupid photos of me on his phone. I kept yelling at him because I wasn't supposed to use those muscles in my stomach. HA.... He's such a good guy tho. There with me thru it all.
I didn't want to get up when the 30 minutes was up. My husband even dressed me ON the table while I was laying down. HAHA! Eventually I knew we'd be kicked out, so I got up and surprisingly, nothing came out.
We made our way home and pretty soon after, my left ovary (the one w/ all the follicles) started hurting really bad. They put all of the sperm on that side since it was the one w/ the eggs that would be released - and wow, it really hurt! I was in some pretty intense pain. Luckily, I was told to lay on the couch for the rest of the day, so we stopped and grabbed a movie on our way home. I laid my butt on the couch and really enjoyed being lazy. That only lasted until 1:30ish because we had a graduation party to go to that day (blah, bad timing!). As soon as the party was over, I came right back home and laid down again.
All-in-all, it was great. Everything went really well and I'm feeling pretty good about everything. I haven't had any symptoms or felt anything since that day of extreme cramps on that side. Still waiting for SOMMMMETHING to happen. Will keep you posted!
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