I Didn't Study for These Tests

                So once we were directed to the RE (Reproductive Endocronologist) I was lucky enough to be told that I would have to do most of those blood tests again, plus a few more.  We were told that we have to have 3 SE (Sperm Evaluations) before my DH could be deemed infertile.  Due to his low counts in every aspect the doctors became very concerned.  My DH is only 30, in shape, and as far as we know healthy; so how could his county/motility/morphology be so horrid?  They wanted to check him for hormonal diseases, testicular cancer, and thyroid disease.

                During this time I did everything I could do to make me the healthiest me for a possible future baby.  This included eating more of the right things, and less of the wrong things.  I continued running, and tried to make it more of a habit, and also took all the appropriate vitamins, most importantly my prenatal vitamins.  My husband was told he could no longer take a steam shower at our house or use the Sauna at the Health Club.  They also say beer could effect your SE as well as cigarettes and unhealthy eating.  We started him on Zinc as well at this point, because the next 2 SEs came back just as poor as the first one.  Well you can imagine that at this point we were definitely done with get poked and prodded and tested.  I had successful blood tests and was told that I was very healthy but had a system that wasn’t working efficiently enough to prepare the eggs in time for ovulation. 

We finally found out that my hubby did not have any of the horrible diseases that they were concerned about, but in fact has Bilateral Vericocele.  Vericocele is a condition where the male has a varicose vein in his testis which creates a pool of warm blood where all of the sperm go to die.  In his case, he had two, one in each of his testis.  So between the two of us, we were deemed infertile.  Ugh..

                Now that we have went over all the nitty-gritty of the “fun times” you get to enjoy while going through the beginning stages of figuring out infertility, there is a lot more than just these tests and scientific things that are happening.  All of a sudden I was having conversations with my DH about adoption, and obsessing over our diets and our exercise plans, and how much the meat is cooked; and these are things that I was not too concerned with prior to this diagnosis of Infertility.  All of a sudden we were both reading pamphlets and books about all of the things that can go wrong during this process, and how much a woman’s body will go through in attempt to have a successful and healthy pregnancy.   We were “mourning” something that wasn’t ever ours to begin with, we were sad about the baby we had imagined would be ours . . and realizing that we may never have that.

                Don’t get me wrong, we tried as much as we could to be as positive as possible.  We relied heavily on our faith in God, and relied on each other to take turns lifting the others spirits when we would have a “poor us” moment.  We were excited to see what the next steps were.  I was very excited that we had some answers, and that neither of us had a life threatening sickness.  So now we had answers, as to what the issues were, so now we had to figure out what the answer would be…

Baby Dust to all,

Lindsay