Gotta start somewhere in The ugly truth about making babies

Joey and I have been indecisive about when to visit our docs to be referred to our local hospital for fertility treatment. Way back last April we had said we’d give it until new year (i.e now), then later on in the year my brother asked if we might come to Australia for his 30th - he lives there, so we decided we would probably put off until this summer being referred.

I’ve essentially spent the last few months swinging back and forth about what the best thing to do is, one day stressing that I’m not getting any younger, the next day thinking that it would be nice to have an extravagant holiday before we commit ourselves to ivf and all the trauma I’m anticipating it comes with.

We’ve spent the last few days talking about possibly moving house this year, and I said I’d rather focus this year on trying to get pregnant and all that that is going to entail. It seems that it is a decision that has been made by my subconscious. I think all the talk of buying a bigger house for the kids we imagine ourselves with just felt like tempting fate, like we’d be putting the cart before the horse and setting ourselves up for heartbreak if we had all these rooms and no children to fill them with.

As it happened, Joey had a doctors appointment today anyway, he thinks he has a hernia. The doctor concurs, it’s either a hernia or a tear in his abdominal muscles. I mentioned to him that he might consider asking while he’s there how we go about being referred to our local fertility centre, and he’s come home with an order for an up to date semen analysis.

I don’t know why I find it so amusing. It’s essentially the only thing about the whole process that holds any amusement for me. I think it’s because I know how mortified Joey is about the prospect of having to ring the lab to make an appointment to drop the sample off, in order to try to control the temperature as best they can. That he’s mortified at the prospect of having to wank into a cup, most likely in the toilets in the hospital, as the drive from our house is too long to maintain the temperature of the sample.

On a side note I do think it’s absolutely shocking that there is no provision for people having to provide these samples, no dedicated place that they can come and use that is private and secure. I can only imagine how horrifying it must be for a young guy to have to walk into a toilet cubicle in a public toilet to produce the sperm sample, how completely unarousing.

I’m working nights at the moment, i cried the whole way here in the car. It feels like we’ve just taken the first step in being able to achieve something we both desperately want. It’s pretty momentous. I think I had a little cry because I feel like we’ve opened a can of worms and they can’t be shoved back in now, we have to just ride it out. I know we can stop at any time but that means we haven’t succeeded. That means we don’t have our family. I have to keep thinking of it as a means to an end.

I said to Joey tonight that it’s exciting and terrifying in equal measure. That I feel like I don’t want to approach it with a negative mindset but equally I can’t walk into it all gung-ho like it’ll be great, itll be easy, we’ll be fine. I think I’d rather err on the side of caution and allow myself to be pleasantly surprised if the situation allows.

My head is so full right now.

Xx

Last updated January 12, 2017