The Final Shots & The Sperm Freezing Saga

I totally forgot to blog about how everything went last week when we went to freeze my DH's first sperm sample at the clinic. And to my surprise, it wasn't what I expected...not even close.

After he did the deed, we had to wait 30 min. for them to do the analysis before we met with the andrologist/lab director. As we walked into the appointment with him, it never crossed my mind that any of this would go wrong, but to our surprise the sample was not considered "ideal" for freezing. As a matter of fact, he thought we should scrap that one and try again because of the quality, or lack there of. I was shocked?!! How could this be? Well here is why:

His count was good at 40 million, but his volume was high and his motility was very low again at only 26%. At that moment I thought "thank god I got pregnant"! I mean I already knew how lucky I was, but this made me even more grateful. Now, in an fresh IUI attempt, this would have not been a horrible sample, but when it comes to freezing and using frozen sperm it becomes a whole other issue. See, 1 "batch" fills up 4-6 vials, so with the high volume and low motility, it makes for less concentrated sperm in each vial. He told us that when using frozen sperm, they want each vial as highly concentrated with good sperm as possible, and this sample was not what they would ideally like to freeze because you also can lose up to 50% when thawing.

He told us that they would not charge us for today if we wanted to throw out that sample and start over. Well after much thought, we decided to keep and freeze it. Only because it is so hard to even get my DH down there, and who knows that the rest of them wont be as bad? I mean, it may just be a fluke thing (and I hope it is) but 1 thing I have learned from all of this is not to expect anything. So we kept and chose to have it frozen. It is not useless, but if we were going to do an IUI with that sperm, we would defiantly have to use more than 1 vial per attempt because of the sperm quality.

So today I picked up his last vial of hcg. He will do exactly 5 more shots, go in to leave 2 more samples over the next 2 weeks then he will be done. Sterile once again. He is thrilled to stop, I on the other hand am terrified. But I know he cant stay on it forever, and I know he has gone through a lot to get to this point, so I don't blame him. He has done so much for this baby.

This feels like a HUGE chapter closing. I know it ended happily with me being pregnant, but I still cant believe what we have gone through to get here. Looking back on all the ups and downs, the tears, the disappointment, all the shots, hot flashes, vag cam appointments, and the time and money that we have put into making this baby and all of a sudden I am "just a normal pregnant lady". Normal OB appointments, normal tests, normal ultra sounds. Almost like this never happened. But I know I am not the normal pregnant lady, but I wont let any of this take one moment of excitement, or joy out of this pregnancy. IF took enough from me, and it's a chapter in my life that will always be there, but it's time to close that chapter now and begin a new one : )