Sad to report that attempt number two at home was also unsuccessful. We made our second attempt in the month of July. I am happy to report this time though that we had all of the right equipment, finding Jennie's cervix only took a minute and finding the opening of the cervix was even easy. The only snafu was I wasn't able to get the catheter into the cervical opening, so again no IUI. But we placed the sperm right at the opening of the cervix and crossed our fingers and toes that it would make it's way into the cervix on it's own. It didn't. We're not too entirely shocked by this because the type of sperm we bought was washed sperm and designed for IUI, which means it doesn't have any of the special fluids that help it get into and through the cervix. Needless to say, again we weren't too shocked when Jennie started her period 14 days later. Although the second failed attempt was a bit harder to swallow. We tried not to get our hopes up, but it happens.
Just after our first at home attempt we talked with some lesbian friends of ours in the area who told us they got pregnant the first try with an OB/GYN in the area. We were super excited for them and it opened our eyes that we might be able to go to an OB/GYN instead of a Reproductive Endocronologist, which makes sense because there's not really anything wrong with Jennie's reproductive organs. So we decided since our second attempt was unsuccessful maybe we should think about going to this OB/GYN with our third and final vial of this donor (he sold out before we could buy more). As we were approaching the time of the month in August when Jennie was going to ovulate we decided that we should try and get an appointment with the doctor to have her do the IUI. Unfortunately, they couldn't get us in soon enough so we decided to skip trying in the month of August. We went in for a consultation meeting with the doctor and Jennie had some screening blood tests done to test if she was a carrier for some different hereditary conditions (she isn't, and I can't even remember what she was screened for...). We loved the doctor, she was really friendly and down to earth. Basically the instructions were for us to call the day we get a positive on the ovulation predictor test strip and they would get us in the next day to do the insemination.
As I said before our schedule has been busy with work and photographing weddings, so we crossed our fingers that ovulation wouldn't fall on a day when Jennie had to shoot a wedding. We were lucky that she didn't ovulate on a day she was shooting a wedding, but she did end up ovulating while I was presenting at a conference for work in Breckenridge. I kept getting text updates from Jennie while I was at the conference, which was exciting. Texts like "I just picked up the sperm" and my favorite text "The sperm is in!!! She said it was excellent sperm with great swimmers and she thought I had an excellent chance of getting pregnant". I feel good that the doctor was excited about the quality of our sperm--I guess we picked well! And I am really hopeful that we are successful this go round and that the third time really is the charm. I also kind of hope that the insemination happening while I was presenting on LGBTQ inclusion in public health had to create some good karma :)
Anyway, we'll know in 14 days if this worked or not. If not, we'll be back at square one and having to find a new donor that we like. Think positive baby thoughts for us! And thank you to all of you for the positive prayers, thoughts, and high fives.
