All Spermed Up and Nowhere to Go

So I was wrong. Follicles can shrink, but sometimes they're salvageable. And in this case, on Saturday, the call told me not to cancel but to trigger. I had a 16 mm follicle (not 14 as the tech told me...one more reason not to ever, ever listen to what the tech says) and my estradiol had plateaued. So I took the shot at 9 p.m. That shot could do me in someday, by the way. I think that after two weeks of shooting the hamsters so much depends on the hcg shot working properly that it drives me a little mad. Put it this way: I wasn't winning any "nicest wife" awards on Saturday night.

Anyhoo, went in Monday morning for the IUI. Husband went in and did his thing (I tried not to think about it - kept myself in denial that he was in that depressing little hospital room doing the deed with old porn mags), then we headed to the hospital cafeteria for what is becoming his customary (if doing something twice qualifies) pancake breakfast. I had nothing, since it was white carb city (can someone please tell me why on earth a hospital cafeteria serves nothing healthy?). Then at 9 a.m. headed up for the big event. Here's what I want to say about an IUI after more than two weeks of injections, vaginal ultrasounds, bloodwork, phone calls and angst: It is completely and utterly anticlimactic. You lay there, they put a catheter in there, it feels like little more than a pap smear, you stay still for 15 minutes and then you get up and leave. Nothing dramatic happens to your body, and no one claps for you as you exit the room. Even worse, from that point forward there is absolutely nothing else you can do. If you're at all action-oriented, if you've ever in your life been told that you can do anything you set your mind to with some hard work, this is a very troubling fact to live with.

Before my IUI, I bemoaned the fact that I had only one follicle, but the nurse assured me that one is totally enough, particularly for someone like me whose only issue is that I don't ovulate. I want desperately to believe her. Some fleeting minutes, I do.

-J.