HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It has been a pretty good week. Ju and I have had some time alone, and also some time to talk about all that has been going on. The holiday timing of all of this and the fact that we have been surrounded by family for what felt like forever has made it hard to have a chance to figure out what to do/how we feel, etc.

Unfortunately, I had a major hormonal/emotional breakdown on Thursday. I basically cried for about seven hours solid (sorry, Ju.). If I ever needed proof that I have a great wife, the fact that she didn't get visibly angry with me while I completely lost it, clearly says a great deal. Anyhow, my breakdown seemed to strangely facilitate our talking about all this. We talked and talked and talked.

We decided that we both desperately want to have a freaking life beyond trying to have a baby. We are not ready to throw in the towel, but IVF is scary, both financially and physically. If this round of IUI doesn't work, we are going to shelf the baby project until school lets out. Then, we can have a chance to reconfigure our lives and focus on some other stuff that we have put on the backburner while we deal with what has become a freaking fertility hell.

Okay, so having said that, I think that I should probably give the details of our current project. We are doing a dual insemination on the 2nd and 3rd using unknown donor sperm. I am a little sad that this is the last chance for IUI . It feels like the end of the "easy" stuff and moving onto IVF seems to indicate that I might have a major fertility issue (can you tell I am really scared?).

The donor we are using this time around evidently has a pretty good thaw rate (over 60% on average) and has 19 known pregnancies. This gives me a bit of hope. I called the sperm bank and bugged the lab techs until they spilled the beans about each of the donors and who was frequently getting folks pregnant. In the end, we chose a guy who had both the most pregnancies and who seemed to actually have a brain in his head. I wish I had known that the sperm bank would give out this info when I started because I would have done so many things differently. Oh well, live and learn.

On a totally different topic (sort of), I saw my college roommates and their 1 and 1/2 year old baby on Friday. Some people hate to be around kids while they are trying to make this baby stuff happen, but I am really happy to be around kids because it reminds me of why we are doing all of this and what the payoff will be. Additionally, my friends are obviously wonderful, super-devoted parents who have a terrific kid. It was nice to see a really happy family.