Gina's Fertility Chronicles
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Late January
We are taking a month off of any medical treatments, but the good news is that I've learned how to use a Saliva-testing Fertility Monitor. They kind of look like a lipstick (except mine says "Fertile Focus", like, right on it), with a microscope inside, and you have to test your saliva at different times in your cycle and look for what they call a "ferning" pattern. On the days when I am ferning wildly and boldly, I email Jake with a ferning alert, so he can get ready to do his bidness.
This one is much better than "The Donna"--that was a lame product, imported from Italy, with a weird, 50s-looking drawing of a woman on the side--kind of like the illustrations on the Kotex pamphlet my mom gave me when I was 13. The light hardly worked, and it cost something like $46.00. So I returned it to drugstore.com and got the Fertile-Focus monitor.
It's kind of interesting, watching your hormonal levels fluctuate.
I'm supposed to be thinking about whether I want to go straight to a Donor Egg application next, continue with IUI (Intra-Uterine-Insemination--we had one cycle already) or go on to IVF (a whole medical procedure, anesthesia and all--but I haven't given it much thought. We are, after all, buying a house. More on that later.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Donor eggs, get 'em while they're hot!
OK, this happened when my fertility chronicles first began.
I had a different gynecologist at the beginning of the chronicles. I need to specify here that this was very early in my treatment.
I had been seeing her to discuss fertility, and I had already gone through some gyno checks to be sure everything was in working order - I had a prodecure called a "hysterosalpingography", to be sure my fallopian tubes were open, and everything was fine. The next step was monthly courses on a fertility drug called "Clomid", at increasing doses every month.
At an appointment with her at her office in Borough Park (I used to see her in her Manhattan office, where it looked like she had a largely HMO-client base, and the staff was not very good), she mentioned that she had some important "fertility information" for me, but it was at the Manhattan office. I figured it was something like nutritional information, general advice on health, as it applied to fertility. We agreed that she would leave it for me at the front desk, and I would pick it up there.
I was eager to get the information, being the motivated patient that I generally am.
Well, I go there and pick up a manila envelope at the front desk. And I go into the branch of the Public Library at 38th and 5th, sit down, and open it.
I open it, there is a nice folder from the Columbia Center for Women's Reproduction (the place where I am going now) and, inside that, there is a page with a SPECIAL on eggs for Donor egg patients. "$6,500.00 for One Cycle". !!?? And that was it, except for a couple of pages on other treatment options, and some biographical information about the founders of the Center.
Donor eggs, get 'em while they're hot! Two for one!
Shortly after that, I switched doctors.
Caroline, the British butt-kicker
It's the coldest weekend of this winter so far in NYC, and here I am back in Blogland.
So, I know one of the nurses at the fertility center where I've been going for treatment. We took a self-defense class for women together, which is pretty funny considering the common thread we are now sharing.
She's great, a very warm person who, I'd guess, is a good, empathetic nurse, but I'll never find out. This woman and I have been in a class together where, in a roleplaying situation, we had to defend ourselves against a so-called "predator" (a guy in a padded suit) by using the moves we were taught (kicks, eye strikes, kneeing, etc.). And other tactics, including psychological intimidation.
Anyhow, I had to go and have a sonogram last month (this is part of the monitoring the place does when you are taking fertility drugs -- they want to be sure your ovaries are responding properly). And who do I draw in the nurse rotation but Carolyn, my former classmate?
She told the physician that we knew each other, I got a different nurse, and everyone was happy. Especially me, in my stirrups.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
So, this all started back last year, when I got engaged in Costa Rica to my longtime (5 years +) love, the tall and adorable "Senor Jakey".
As for me and babies, marriage, etc., I never really had a game plan. I mean, I was never one of those girls who had her wedding all planned out at the age of 14, complete with color schemes and all. I just figured, when I met the right person, it might happen. But if it didn't, that would be OK, too.
Jake, for those of you who know him, is a whole different story than me. Anyone who's seen him around kids knows that he LO-OVES them (me, I took a little convincing ;). Due to his height (6' 3"), and, I believe, his general boyish quality, kids have taken it upon themselves to
a. Climb on him like he's Gulliver (no tying him up, though)
b. Jump on igloos he has helped them build (my 3-year old nephew can attest to this) and
c. Generally, act like kids.
Sooo, before the big proposal (which took place on a bridge over the Costa Rican rainforest), I realized that, yes, I could and even WOULD WANT to have kids with J.
The rub, however, was my advanced age.
Hi. I am the creator and subject of this blog, GINA'S FERTILITY CHRONICLES.
I started it so that I could document some of the humorous and even the not-so-humorous ("medicine, not funny?", you ask yourself..) situations I've found myself in for the quest for a baby, at the age of 41.
