Yesterday’s aspiration yielded eight (8) eggs. 

Today, L received a phone call from the fertility clinic indicating how we’ve done thus far. Of the eight (8) collected, seven (7) eggs were mature. That’s pretty good.

Now for the bad news: only two (2) were successfully fertilized.

They’re not what caused the poor performance. L’s eggs looked good and were in the desired quantity. Likewise, my sperm “cleared” yesterday in terms of having sufficient quantity and quality. What is more, ICSI, which we opted for due to my “borderline normal” semenalysis results, should have resulted in a higher success rate… but, needless to say, something didn’t quite go as expected.

Given these results, we’re now queued up for a Day 3 transfer on Friday. My hope is that the two good embryos continue as such until Friday. If so, and they’re of top quality, the odds of success are still fairly high (perhaps 35-40% for a live birth per embryo).

Bottom line: these odds are still infinitely better than with L’s blocked tubes (the primary source of our difficulties). And, I’ve always stressed that we should think of Cycle #1 as a “trial run.” 

Nonetheless, you’re always hopeful that you’ll get lucky (which we still might) and thus are disappointed when obstacles (whether real or imagined) appear. Putting this cycle’s eventual outcome aside, we’re mostly fearful of what (if anything) this portends for the future. That is to say, is something else “wrong” with one of us?

Where to start? I’ve setup this blog to document my journey through “fatherland.” You know: that (for me) mysterious and (so I’m told) wonderful amusement park of male parenthood. Fatherland.

Of course, as any kid who like me grew up in Florida knows, the real adventures don’t start until you reach the theme park. But, despite some fun games during the ride—or perhaps more accurately some fun rides as part of the game—our car keeps hitting potholes. Month after month we’ve wondered, “are we there yet?” And, the resolute answer has come back “no.”

To wit, we eventually sought professional counsel (more on that later) and learned that the usual “highway of love” was going to be for us a one-way trip to Nowhereville (more on this later too). The road to Fatherland (and Motherland) for us will involve a different route… one that currently has us making a pit stop at the Assisted Reproductive Technology Cafe.

So, why start this blog today? Because if all went as planned (and it might well have not), we will have hopefully conceived a child (or more accurately several children!) following a pharmaceutically-fueled, surgically-assisted, and monetarily-depleting regimen that I’ve come to call the “The Long Fuck.”

You probably know it by its more common name: In Vitro Fertilization (or more simply IVF).

While we’re waiting to know whether or not our science experiment was successful, I’ll provide more background over the next few days / posts: who we are, how we got here, why we’re doing this, etc. To that end, I’ve already placed a little background detail on this page.