Not the best swimmers

We nervously tore into the official-looking envelope from the andrology lab. Well, okay, I did. B looked on with feigned indifference, but I know he was curious. It was like getting your SAT scores in the mail...you desperately want to see the results, you've been checking the mail every day looking for this envelope, and now that it's here, you're not sure you want to know.

Here's what it said: he has millions and millions of the little guys (262 million to be exact), but only 23% are "progressively motile." What does that mean? The other 77% are swimming around in circles? To add to the ambiguity, his "overall fertility score" is 18, which apparently falls in the "moderate range." I watched B's face like a concerned mother trying to figure out how her child feels about his below average test scores. And he just laughed and said, "with my weak swimmers and your retroverted uterus, no wonder we can't get pregnant!" Somehow, this comment made me happy, because I felt, possibly for the first time, that he was acknowledging we're in this together. We're both terrible at making babies.

With only a few decent swimmers in the bunch, our odds at conception may not be the best. But it could be worse...as Lloyd said in Dumb and Dumber, "so you're telling me there's a chance!"

Some thoughts on adoption

I've been thinking so much about adoption lately, finally saw "Juno," and I'm reading lots of adoption blogs (one always links to several more, and before I know it I've been staring at my computer screen for hours). I think adoption is absolutely beautiful, painful, joyous, heartbreaking, and just really complicated. One thing I know for sure: adoption cannot be "the alternative" or "Plan B." I am ashamed to admit that I used to be one of those people who thought infertile couples should stop whining and "just adopt." Now that we're embarking on fertility treatment, I realize it's not nearly that simple. It seems wrong to choose adoption out of desperation or disappointment over failure to conceive. To do so makes adoption into a selfish act, i.e. "I want a baby and I deserve a baby, so I'll get one." At least for me, I will need to grieve the loss of infertility separately from making the decision to adopt. That doesn't mean the former has to happen chronologically before the latter. In many ways, I can already feel my heart being pulled more toward adoption even as the outcome of our fertility journey is still unknown.

And isn't that how so much of life is on this earth? The already and the not yet. The sorrow and the hope all tangled up in eachother and happening simultaneously. So much of this blog is, and will likely continue to be, a self-pity-party, because I have many moments where that is my honest state of mind. But God is faithful to draw me back to His truth.

I'm having a hard time articulating what kind of heartfelt desires should spur one on to adopt, but there are lots of more eloquent people out there who have described it so well. For example, one of my friends is in the process of international adoption and sent me this link in which John Piper wonderfully describes our adoption as sons and daughters of God and the applications to earthly adoption. Piper also includes the letter he gave to his wife when he decided to say "yes" to her desire to adopt. I was blown away by the obvious patience and gentleness, yet perseverance, his wife had in dealing with him on this issue.

Last night, over dinner, I mentioned that we should start saving extra money for a future adoption, and B's response was "maybe God doesn't want us to have children." Now, I can't say I haven't wondered the same thing many times, but to hear him say it out loud was so hurtful. And yet, I realized today how thankful I am that he is not going to "just go along" with whatever I say on this matter. He is going to point out all the potential problems and argue all the opposite ways of thinking. He is going to drive me to my knees in prayer over this, and I will continue to ask God to persuade his heart until I'm blue in the face. And someday, I hope, B will want to adopt even more than I do, and he will not let me do it out of vanity or pride or unmet needs, and he will not let me back out due to fear, and he will lead us in the process of expanding our family. I don't see how it could work any other way.... Actually, Juno helped teach this to my heart, too. The "painting the nursery scene" was so painful to watch for just that reason.

But to get back to the pity party theme, sometimes I'm just mad that I have to think and pray and struggle through this when other people just "end up pregnant." It seems like most people spend more time contemplating which car to buy than how to grow their family (or whether to grow it at all). And I'm not criticizing all those people...just jealous that I don't get to be one of them.

Why are we so hard on eachother?

I was shopping at Wild Oats the other day when I overheard a conversation between two female friends about a third friend of theirs who recently had a baby... The first woman was telling the second about how their friend was having serious problems with nursing the newborn, and the second woman replied, "Well, that's what she gets for trying to introduce the bottle so soon." The first woman agreed that their friend was obviously being selfish in her desire to sleep, and now she had ruined any chance at breastfeeding. I wanted to turn around and yell at them to give the poor woman a break!

It seems to me that as women we spend so much of our time and energy finding fault with one another. We moan about the "superwoman" ideal and the pressure of trying to be all things to all people, and yet we inflict unrealistic expectations on ourselves and criticize our friends when they fail to meet the impossible standard of perfection. Working women feel judged by stay-at-home moms and stay-at-home moms feel judged by working women, blah, blah, blah, and really we're all just trying to do the best we can with what we have.

I know I fall into the same trap, constantly comparing myself to other wives I know and keeping a mental list of all the ways I'm superior and all the ways I'm not measuring up (I don't grow my own vegetables, but at least I do my husband's laundry). I can't imagine how the competition intensifies once you insert babies into the picture!

Praise God for his mercy that covers all our sins. Not the "sins" of buying veggies at Wal-mart or introducing the bottle too soon, but the true sin of a judgemental, prideful, anxious, discontented heart.

Now, if only we could remember to extend a tiny portion of this grace to one another.

Sperm in a cup

Semen analysis...what a traumatic experience. I won't go into all the gory details, but let's just say it was quite an ordeal trying to get a semen sample out of B. There was absolutely nothing romantic or loving about it. I was being anal about the rules ("but it says right here in the instructions!") and B just wanted it to be over already. He finally managed to put about a teaspoon of semen in the damn cup, we screwed on the lid, wrapped it in a towel, put it in the oh-s0-discreet brown paper bag, and raced out the door.

We had to drive separately, since I was headed to work and B was going up the mountain to ski. Somehow, I ended up with the paper bag, and I nervously clutched it between my thighs while attempting to drive. I was hoping the warmth of my inner thigh region would suffice to keep the sample at an "ideal temperature of 94.5 degrees." Heaven forbid I should "expose the sample to extreme temperatures" and kill all the sperm we worked so hard to get. Never mind that it's 21 degrees outside!

We pulled up to the lab and hurried in. The receptionist ignored our presence at her desk for what felt like an eternity. She finally looked up at us as if we were an inconvenient interruption to her internet surfing. Her dagger eyes actually pushed B back against the wall, and I was left standing up there alone, clutching the paper sack to my chest, spokesperson for our family (as always). I was suddenly very aware of all the other patients in the waiting room (what is that pregnant lady doing here? get out!). I quietly explained that we had an appointment, and we have the sample already because we collected it at home. She did not acknowledge the urgency of our situation at all and, with a roll of her eyes, just told me to "sign the clipboard and have a seat." Really!? I just spent an hour torturing my husband to get a teaspoon of semen and now you people are going to let all the swimmers die here in this waiting room??? But we followed her orders and sat down. I tried handing the bag off to B at one point (why should I have to hold it? it's his bodily fluids, after all), but he nonchalantly tossed it onto the seat next to him, so I had to grab it back and continue pressing it against my body for the sake of warmth. Clearly, I will have to be in charge of these things.

Thankfully, the wait was not long, and we were called back to a weird tiny office to answer a few questions, sign a few forms, and pay our exorbitant fee. The perky lab tech gave us a label with B's demographic info and instructed us to stick the label on the outside of the cup, then leave the cup on the desk and show ourselves out. As we walked back down the hall, I couldn't stop wondering if any little spermies had survived in that plastic cup. B interrupted my thoughts by saying "that was dumb." I have no idea what he meant by that comment, so I chose to ignore it, but in my mind I was thinking "I couldn't agree more."

As I drove to work, I had the unsettling realization that I have already become the neurotic-infertile-wife-with-a-passive-husband. This is not good.

You've got to be f'in kidding me

Went to the doctor this week for a follow up visit related to some tests I had recently (one of which involved having a large ultrasound probe inserted you-know-where....lots of fun). My gyno sent the med student in first to complete an h&p. First of all, the student was way too skinny, gorgeous, and confident to be likable. And then she proceeded to ask me a series of inane questions about my attempts to conceive..."how often do you have intercourse? have you been taking your basal body temperature daily? have you tried putting two pillows under your hips after intercourse?" Seriously? Is that what they teach you in med school? Pillows under the butt as a cure for infertility. If it were that simple, I wouldn't be here, chica. And, yes, I've tried it. I seemed to have stumped her. I'm apparently a real medical mystery! I could see the wheels turning in her head...why isn't this woman pregnant? She wrinkled up her annoyingly perfect forehead and then she said this: "are you sure your husband is ejaculating when you have intercourse?" This comment was offensive on so many levels, I don't even know where to start. So I just said "yeah, I'm sure."

I must have given her a dirty look (my face always gives me away), because she promptly left the room to find the real doctor.

And as it turns out, all my labs and ultrasounds were normal. Part of me wishes they had said "guess what? it turns out you don't have a uterus!" Sad, yes, but the finality of it would be a relief at this point.