ICLW Welcome

{Stepping up to the podium}


Thank you for stopping by. I'm Jenni, and my husband and I are infertile. I have endometriosis, which may or may not be impairing our ability to reproduce because my husband has crappy sperm so we've never really tested it. I have always wanted children, in fact my initial plan was to get married at 19, and have 4 kids by about age 27. That unrealistic plan was completely blown out of the water by that fact that I didn't even meet my husband until I was 27, and got married at 29.

We spent most of the first year TTC hoping that we'd have good luck and assuming it was my fault that we weren't successful. I had most of the testing right as we started, so the next step was a repeat laparoscopy for me. I thought we should make sure that we had taken care of any possible issues on his side before I had surgery, and to our shock all of the news on his side was bad.

Now I don't get a laparoscopy right away, which you might think of as a good thing, but I'm one of the lucky ones for whom endometriosis is not a silent problem, instead it's more of a screaming, tearing, ball of pain in my abdomen for a couple of days a month, and a gnawing, dull pain the rest of the time.

Last month we saw a urologist, and he was a complete waste of time. He heard the word Diabetes and assumed that Jakobe was a poorly controlled Long-term diabetic, so the problem must be retrograde ejaculation, and hurried us right out the door. (Jakobe was diagnosed with diabetes only last October, and is extremely well controlled) Thankfully when we saw Jakobe's endocrinologist for his diabetes, he agreed that the urologist didn't really take a good enough look.

We got in to see the Reproductive Endocrinologist at the beginning of June.  In his description of our chances without IVF/ICSI was "as close to zero as you can get without actually being zero."  In other words, short of the gods reaching down with their magic fingers and declaring me pregnant - it's just not going to happen without medical intervention.

In September, we had a repeat SA for Jakobe, which showed marked improvement (but still probably not enough for us to be able to get away from doing ICSI.  In addition, we were able to complete all of the generalized infectious disease testing so that we can go ahead with an IVF cycle in April.  the time is drawing close, but at the same time, we've had several unexpected expenses pop up, so that we won't be paying for everything in cash, and will instead be borrowing more money than we would like to.  But , we're moving ahead.

{stepping away, and finding my seat}