Well, damnit. Damn.

So maybe things didn’t go so smoothly this month.

1-Working with a midwife who seems to be allergic to returning messages and whose motto is ‘meh’.

2-Freaking catheters! Necessary for transporting sperm from point A, the vial, to  point B, my uterus.
She didn’t have them and I couldn’t order them from my cryobank. She was supposed to use her medical contacts to help us order some, but she was MIA until Wed, cutting it really close.

But then, Wed night, I start to feel cramping. I’m hoping it’s just the fried shrimp I had the night before for dinner (don’t worry, the logic gets even better). It can’t be ovulation cramping; it’s too soon! Right before bed, I did an ovulation test and it came up positive. I started to panic again-it was too soon! I wasn’t set to ovulate until the next week! NOTHING was lined up for an insemination! In a stunning moment of willful disbelief, I tried to convince myself that the excessive CM was messing with the results (don’t google that. If you know what it means, you’re ok knowing that tidbit. If you don’t, you don’t want to know). Yes, I tried to use one positive proof of ovulation to convince myself that another positive proof of ovulation was wrong. I don’t know.

And that was the end of this month’s effort. I peed on two different sticks in the morning, both came up positive, and I just cried and cried. I was so frustrated and overwhelmed and stressed. How am I going to do this when my cycle won’t cooperate, right?

I cancelled everything, the cryobank was able to cancel shipment, nixed the catheters. The Wife came home early to hang out with me and, despite feeling a bit like I was giving up, we talked about going to a fertility clinic.

Positives

I’m taking good out of this experience.

• another month to gather info. The more the better, right? I’ll have more data about my cycle to work with.
• another month to get even healthier! Eat all the nutritions!
• fit in more fertility-friendly acupuncture (Oh, yeah, I had an acupuncture appt and it was actually pretty cool! I did it as an added precaution, it can’t hurt, right?)
• less rush. I really hated feeling like I was being inseminated in such a slap-dash manner. And, while I’m sure my midwife is a fantastic fit for someone else, I’d prefer to work with someone who wasn’t so laidback about everything.