wink     ; )

Recap

Previously in my Infertility story:

• I wasn't ready to have children. But then I was.
• Then I found out that I was infertile.
• I was in denial.
• I did research on different treatments.
• Adoption seemed to be the only option for having children. But I was paralyzed by self doubt.
• People said regrettable things to other people, and to me.

OK. Just wanted to get you guys caught up because I really do plan on finishing this.

Infertility: Part 6 (More Cruel Words)

(For background info, see Infertility, part 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.)

Though the previous story left me infuriated, it was merely the first. I would soon hear many more unitentionally cruel or insulting remarks (espeially from those who meant well). But although that story was the most infuriating, it was not the most painful. After all, the offending woman was a complete stranger who wasn't even addressing me.

The most painful remark came over a year later from a close friend who should have known better. We were discussing his experience with infertility (this was territory that we had covered many times before). His wife only ovulated maybe once or twice a year. Despite this, they managed to conceive on one of his wife's first ovulations after halting the use of birth control.

Knowing full well about my infertility, he said, "I don't know how we managed to conceive so quickly. I guess I must be a real stud." To his credit, my friend immediately apologized for his insensitivity without me having to say anything. But his words still sliced deep. This was a friend. Speaking to me. Who knows about my abysmal sperm count. And still he measures masculinity by the ability to impregnate. His words left me feeling not angry, but hurt. Betrayed. Deserted.

I know that he meant no harm, and I forgave him. But it is those unguarded moments, those slips of the tongue that let you know what another person really thinks.

Infertility: Part 5 (Cruel Words)

(For background info, see Infertility, part 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4.)

I was at the doctor's office to do one of the half-a-dozen sperm analyses that was required of me. I went there alone and the only other people in the waiting room was a young couple. After a few minutes, the doctor came out and announced to the couple, "Great news! Your test results are fine." "Lots of sperm?" the woman asked. "Billions!" the doctor exaggerated with a smile.

Despite overhearing their confidential information (in the doctor's defense, he couldn't see that I was there until it was too late), in that moment I was truly happy for this couple. They had managed to dodge a bullet that I could not. The joy on their faces was evident and I could not help joining in their delight.

But it only lasted for a moment. For the woman then turned to her husband and exclaimed, "I KNEW you were a REAL man!"

At the sound of those words, all the joy that had infused me turned into ice and I had two instantaneous reactions. 1) I wanted to get up and give her a calm but efficient pummeling. 2) I felt an enourmous pity for the husband. For now everyone in the room knew that his wife judged his masculinity soley by his sperm count.

Based on the fact that this was the first thing she mentioned, I'm sure that he had at some point confessed to her that he felt insecure--that he feared that having a low sperm count meant that he was somehow less of a man. And if she had even two brain cells, she surely replied that he was a "real man" to her no matter what the test results were.

But in this moment of unbridled joy, when the unspoken words of the heart break through and become speech uncensored, the truth was revealed. For her, being a real man meant having lots of sperm; and conversely, her husband would not have been a real man in her eyes if the test results had been different.

Luckily for him, he "passed" the test with flying colors, but her spontaneous outburst made it obvious that if the doctor had given them bad news, though she certainly would have said that he was still a "real man" to her, her woulds would have been nothing but deceit.

Although I wanted to smack her for insulting me, I wanted to skewer her for her insidious disrespect for her husband.

Skip to the end (beginning?)

I've been very busy. I meant to keep posting everyday on the Infertility serial until it was finished. But things came up. So I didn't. But I will.

Anyways...If you want to know how it ends (so to speak), read on.

Infertility: Part 4 (Wrestling with Doubt)

(For background info, see Infertility, part 0, 1, 2, and 3.)

In August of 2001, we drove across the country. The various national parks that we visited were a welcome distraction from the thoughts of infertility which were dangling just outside of my awareness, held at bay by hope and denial. When we arrived in Portland, we moved in with my sister, settling in to a nice space above the garage.

And once we got settled in, I could no longer ignore the infertility issues. I went to the doctor and got retested. The results confirmed the first set of tests. I was now convinced, but that didn't stop the doctor from ordering another set of tests. I gave another sample, and the results were amazingly consistent with the other two.

So.

Now it was time to think about adoption again.

Having already considered AI and IVF (see part 3) and discarding them as unfeasible, adoption seemed to be the only way that we could have children. When we first discovered that I had a distressingly low sperm count, Tree was immediately ready to start the adoption process. I was not. When she wanted to know why I was unwilling, I told her that I needed time to get used to the idea. "You've been thinking about it for 14 years. I've only been thinking about it for 14 days. Give me time..." I assured her, "I'll warm up to the idea."

By the time I had gotten re-tested and re-re-tested, it had been months. And I hadn't yet warmed up to the idea. "Maybe remaining childless wouldn't be so bad," I thought. After all, only a short time before this (less than two years previous), I was fighting to not have children (see part 0). However, I knew that as much as I may waver on the issue, Tree's position was never in question: she wanted children.

Adoption scared me. One of the reasons I had been reluctant to become a parent in the first place was that I knew that it was a huge responsibility. With something that big and that important, I knew that self-doubt would cause me to make lots of mistakes. And I was very good at doubting myself. My fear with adoption was that my self-doubt would overwhelm me. I feared that I would always be asking myself, "Would I have loved my child more if she (I had always envisioned having a daughter) were a biological child instead of an adopted one?" That one question would cripple me. As long as I was asking myself that question, I guaranteed that I would be failing my child on a number of different fronts.

I know myself. I know how I think. I know how I act. I would not and could not be a good parent until I had answered that question definitively in the negative. I needed to wrestle my doubts to the ground and pin them into certainty before I could adopt a child.

So I wrestled.

Day after day and week after week I wrestled. And each day my self-doubt refused to be mastered.

Infertility: Part 3 (Treatment Options)

(For background info, see Infertility, part 0, 1, and 2.)

We found out about my infertility a few weeks before we moved across the country. There wasn't time to go back to the doctor and get more testing done, and there was a lot of packing and tying up of loose ends to do. This fit in nicely with my denial; I figured I could just deal with this stuff after we moved.

During those final distractible days at work, we did a lot of internet research on infertility treatment. Here's the rough summary of the various treatment methods:

1. Drugs. Give Tree drugs that will make her produce lots of eggs. This treatment was obviously inappropriate for us--the problem wasn't lack of eggs, it was lack of sperm.
2. Artificial Insemination (AI). Collect sperm. Wait until Tree ovulates. Use the medical equivalent of a turkey baster to squirt the sperm into her womb. This sounded promising at first. But that first step was a problem. You need a decent sperm sample in order to do this. Sure we could collect multiple samples and combine them together, but with a sperm count less than 1% of normal and a storage procedure that includes a freeze/thaw cycle which kills 50% of the sperm, I would need to provide over a hundred samples over the course of a year or so just for one shot. Not as promising as it first sounded.
3. In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Give Tree drugs that will make her produce lots of eggs. Suck out the eggs via a scary needle. Drop them into a petri dish. Flood the petri dish with sperm. Implant the healthiest embryos into Tree. Sounds promising...and ridiculously expensive. And there remained the problem with the "flood the petri dish with sperm" step. We wouldn't need as much sperm as AI required, but we still needed more than I could reasonably produce.

None of this looked like it was going to work out. Maybe we could do IVF, but maybe not. And IVF is terribly expensive...not something you want to experiment with. We'd be paying a lot of money for no guaranteed results.

After this discouraging round of research, we moved across the country. My hopes were still pinned on botched test results--maybe my next test would show that the picture was not so bleak after all.

Infertility: Part 2 (Reactions)

When we first learned of my infertility back in the spring of 2001 (see Infertility, part 0 and part 1), I went into immediate denial. Maybe the sperm count was wrong and the next test would show that everything was OK. Maybe my cluster-headache meds had temporarily suppressed my sperm count. Maybe some lab tech had neglected to add three zeros to the end of my sprem count. Who knows, anything is possible. I had never considered the possiblilty that I could be infertile, so I had no idea how to respond to the news. And I certainly had no contingency plans.

Tree, on the other hand, had already already given the matter plenty of thought. Being one of those worriers who is always convinced that the worst is going to happen gave her a big head start in preparedness over me when disaster actually struck. She had always known that she wanted to be a mother. But the pessimist in her made her ask herself "What if I never get married? What if I'm infertile? What if my husband is infertile?" By the time she was 12(!), she had decided that if she couldn't have biological children for whatever reason, she would simply adopt.

Though she feared the diagnosis of infertility, she had been expecting it. In fact, she suspected it starting from the moment when we had our first negative pregnacy test. So immediately after opening the test results envelope, Tree turned to me and said, "I think that we should adopt."

I balked. No. I hadn't even accepted that the test results weren't just a big typo. I certainly wasn't going to start making plans yet. But Tree had already thought all of this through and was raring to go ahead. I was caught completely flat-footed and Tree, the consummate planner, was launching a contingency plan that she had put into place over a decade earlier.

So within hours of opening the test results, Tree was asking me why I didn't want to adopt. I kept replying that adoption wasn't the issue yet, and that I just wanted to get retested first.

There were a lot of tears that night, and for the next few nights.

Infertility: Part 0 (Do I want Children?)

Hmmm...I guess I should back up a bit and provide some background to this tale of infertility. So, here goes...

Three years ago, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to have children. I had always imagined that I would, but being madly in love with Tree seemed like enough to me. I was content.

Tree, however, felt otherwise. She wanted children. She knew this with certainty.

But suddenly, I wasn't so sure. For I had just realized that having a child would mean that I had to share Tree with somebody else. Our child would have a huge claim on Tree's time. And that meant less time for me. I was in a very greedy stage in my life and I was in no mood to share Tree with anyone. Friends and co-workers were one thing. But I didn't want any rivals. I didn't want anyone to get as much of her time and attention as me.

Tree tried to convince me that having a child would somehow mean that she would have even more love and attention for me. But I just wasn't buying it.

It was an admittedly immature time of my life. I was entirely too greedy and insecure. But even recognizing that (or, perhaps more accurately, having that pointed out to me) wasn't enough. That simply confirmed what I had just figured out: I was not yet ready to have children.

If I saw children as rivals for my wife's attention, then I was simply not ready for them. Tree recognized this too and backed off. She was content with assurances that I would in time be ready. I just needed to grow up a bit.

A few months later, we started trying to have a child.

Infertility: Part 1 (Discovery)

A little over two years ago, I found out that I couldn't have children. Tree and I had been trying to have children for a while without success. We were about to move to Portland, so we decided get some medical tests before our insurance ran out.

I have never failed a test so miserably in my life.

I have an abysmally low sperm count. (Less than 1% of normal. And poor motility to boot.) I know that they say that "it only takes one", but that is of course complete and utter hogwash. A lone sperm can no more fertilize an egg than a lone straw can break a camel's back. (exception: ICSI IVF, which we will discuss at some later date.)

Tree had been fearing news like this and had braced herself for it. I, on the other hand, had never before even considered the possibility that I might be infertile. I immediately went into denial. We then drove some 4,000 miles and I managed to not think about my infertility for the entire time.

To be continued...