Maybe that's why some couples get pregnant so easily or even accidently. Maybe they aren't quite ready to be parents; the newlyweds who are too excited to use birth control, the young single girl who is experiencing her first love and sexual awakening or the couple on vacation who gets a surprise when they return home. These babies are usually conceived in pleasure and love.
When you’re in fertility treatment this not the case. Forty-eight hours before the IUI procedure, we abstain from the one thing that will send endorphins throughout our bodies and give our moods a lift. Sperm lives inside the body for approximately 48-76 hours so my husband and I usually have sex 48 hours before IUI because if we get pregnant we won't really know if it was our lovemaking or the IUI. That's one of our ways of coping.
The IUI experience is...strange to say the least...sterile. I like the word "sterile", to describe people, places and feelings with regard to fertility treatment because that's only word that hits the nail on the head. Most doctors hardly listen, don't ask how you’re feeling and are in and out of the room once they perform their part of the procedure.
We are part of some bizarre sweatshop scenario. We show up with a "specimen", the lab "treats" the sperm. (Fun Fact: during sex, our vaginas clean the sperm before it enters our uterus!). So for IUI, the sperm is chemically treated since its being put right into the uterus.
So, I lay on the table with my legs in the stirrups, waiting for the lab to put the finishing touches on our baby batter. Me and my husband are talking about whatever, deciding what we want to eat afterwards, playing with our cell phones, figuring out what we want to do for the rest of the day...waiting.
The nurse comes in with a test tube and tells me to hold tightly in my hand. When I look, it's a pretty pink elixir that is supposed to get me pregnant. It looks like a sweet test tube dollar shot. For a second I want to drink it. But that would be silly...
While I'm warming our potion in my sweaty palm, the nurse is opening plastic wrappers and clanging medical instruments and the doctor is preparing my "vagg". Speculum...saline to clean the uterus...gauze to soak up the saline...the nurse reaches for the test tube...a thin catheter is inserted...I feel a tiny deep pinch...done...they remove the instruments and close my legs.
Now we have to wait 5 or 10 minutes until I can get up. Obviously the experience isn't romantic or sensual or even loving...sterile.
Although, I have to say that my wonderful husband strokes by hair while I deep breathe to get through the discomfort. When the procedure is over, we sit and stare at each other. We hold hands. He kisses me. He rests his head on my chest.
Its strange how something so personal becomes so clinical and how a private event that takes 2 people turns into a party...minus the cocktails.
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