This has been an exciting couple of days. First, we got the good news about our follicle count with our magic number. Then, we successfully shot Heidi up with human chorionic gonadotropin (very fancy words for HCG and yes, I do feel quite brilliant saying it). And now, we have officially gotten to the point in our journey where we will get to meet cowboy hat baby, in a round about way, via his sperm. Yes, my friends, this little vial, containing .7 ml of sperm, is the meeting we've been waiting for. Every day in this process has led up to this meeting, every doctor's appointment, every temperature charted, every ultrasound, every worry. Everything we've done up to this point was so we could transfer that sperm into little Heidi. And here we were...meeting our baby daddy for the first time. Hello, little cowboy hat baby, hello.
So Sunday morning was our first of two inseminations. We were very excited to be going to this appointment. When we arrived, there was cowboy hat baby, sitting frozen on the counter. Huh, frozen, a spermcicle if you will. Oddly enough, the sperm stays frozen until about twenty minutes prior to the insemination. We sat and chatted while our frozen sperm thawed. We were excited, nervous, amazed that something so small cost so much, and anticipating...
Dr. Welden came in to start the process...the first insemination. Whenever I think of these words, very dramatic music plays in my head. This is big! We're here! We're here! Time to knock my wife up!!!
Now, the process is relatively simple. A small catheter is used and placed into Heidi's uterus. Then, the sperm is slowly injected directly into her uterus. There is actually more sperm in each vial than needed so a smidge is placed on a slide for Dr. Welden to review under a microscope to make sure each of the spermies are active and swimming in the right direction. After the injection, Heidi lays on the table and marinates for about twenty minutes. Now, to respect my little Heidi's privacy, I'm not going into too much detail here except to say that Dr. Welden was awesome about letting me see what he was doing and explaining everything step by step. Interesting to say the least. Sadly, Heidi wouldn't let me take any pictures of this particular process to scrapbook later. I'm still a little sad about that. I mean, how many people can actually have a picture of their cervix!?!
While Heidi was marinating, Dr. Welden took me to check out our spermies under the microscope. I am proud to say that cowboy hat baby's sperm appeared to be the Michael Phelps of sperm; very strong, all swimming strongly and seemingly looking for an egg to crack. Go sperm! In one little tiny drop were thousands of sperm. That certainly gives me a huge boost of optimism when a lot more than a drop was put into the baby making chamber, I mean, millions of sperm are all working toward one goal...find an egg and breaking into it. And we probably have three eggs so how can we feel anything but extremely optimistic about this?
After the insemination, Heidi and I went home and took it easy for the day. While the doctor said nothing would happen, there's still that inate desire to feel like you have to lay down and make sure nothing leaves its intended receptacle. So, that's what we did...laid low. Heidi napped (it's exhausting making a baby, people!) and we made sure we were creating the ideal environment for fertilization.
Then today was the same process only a little longer. It took Dr. Welden just a little more time to get the catheter in because her glands were swollen from ovulation. Still, all of the spermies made their intended destination. Because she's ovulating today, she was a little more uncomfortable with back pain. We took it easy again today. She napped again and I worked...making sure I was here to take care of her if she needed anything.
So what's next? If Heidi doesn't get her period in twelve to fourteen days, we should consider ourselves pregnant. Then starts blood draws every three days to make sure. In between all of this, a sixty mile, three day walk. No...Heidi is not going to walk the whole thing! She's going to walk a little each day so she can participate but she is definitely going to take it easy. I mean, she has to...those are the days that the egg should be implanting into the uterus. We don't want to disturb that process!
So, fingers are crossed and we're starting to think of the future. What's next? Maybe baby names. Dr. Welden said if we didn't pick a name by six weeks, he got to pick the name and he's already used all of the good names for his kids so I guess we ought to get to it...concentrate...we would really, really like to use a boy name...concentrate...leave the stem on the apple, cowboy hat baby sperm!
