Last week, I let you all in on a secret: we have started trying to conceive (TTC) baby #2.
(This photo is actually from the day we got pregnant with Finn.)
This is the second in what I imagine will be a long series of posts (though, hopefully not TOO long) about this journey.
In that last post, I mentioned that we have been TTC since this past February. That was both true and not true. Let me explain.
Around the holidays last year, Sona and I began seriously talking about baby #2, which we always knew was going to be part of our future. So, the conversations were never “Should we have another baby?” They were more “When should be begin this process, again?”
(Okay, sometimes when life was particularly rocky, as I’ve alluded to before, the conversations were about whether or not we should have another baby. But mostly, they were always about when.)
Since Sona was 35 at the time–36, now–we knew that the longer we waited, the harder it would be. We’ve also always been motivated to start sooner rather than later because of two other factors: 1. We want Finn to have a sibling who is relatively close to him in age–a playmate. 2. We want the baby/toddler years to be over ASAP. Neither of us are particularly interested in drawing out that misery. I mean bliss. (I mean misery.)
We also have always planned our attempts to conceive around my school schedule. I’m the one who has the opportunity to take the longest maternity leave, but that leave needs to be aligned with my academic semesters. If Sona has a baby mid-semester, I have no choice but to take off the full semester, should I want to be home, and I’d essentially waste 2-3 months of maternity time. I want to maximize the amount of time I get off with our second baby; I had 6 months at home with Finn, and those were some of the best months of my life.
So, our goal is to try to time it where the baby comes in either May or December, allowing me to have as much time off as possible (1 full semester + the 3 summer months). Of course, the universe has other plans.
Last fall, Sona started charting, tracking her morning temperatures, her ovulation cycles, and a range of other symptoms, prepping for an early-2017 IUI. We were all set to go when we found out that the doctor who did our last inseminations–when we got preggo with Finn–no longer performs the procedure. I talked about this, already.
When I ended my last post, I might have given the impression that we were going to try doing IUIs at home. Well, we were, and then we quickly realized that it was going to be a very bad idea. I had NO idea what I was doing. I ordered a random assortment of “supplies” from Amazon, including pipettes that ended up being for HORSE INSEMINATIONS. Horses, people. Those things wouldn’t have fit in Sona’s mouth, let alone her cervix. We had to find a pro, and a pro I was not.
We scrambled to find someone else, went with a recommendation, and ended up going to a posh OBGYN practice in the ‘burbs. The doctor was nice, but his hours were really inflexible. Sona can’t quit her job to get pregnant. We also can’t chance missing her ovulation window because our doctor has limited hours. It just wasn’t ideal, but any other options we explored (women clinics, LGBTQ clinics) were going to take too long to get us in, and we were only two weeks away from what we hoped would be our first insemination.
So, we went with it. We did our first insemination in February with one vial of sperm. Finn came with us, and we were all together for that first appointment. We were hopeful.
As you’ve probably gleaned, Sona didn’t get pregnant that first time. She takes each negative pregnancy test pretty hard, despite the science-minded part of her knowing that chances are relatively slim each time. Still, each month wears on us.
At about that same time, our marriage wasn’t great. To be honest, I can’t even remember what the problem was, I just know that we were not in a good place. Like, I think it was one of the darkest periods we’ve experienced in our relationship. Finn was working through chronic ear infections. Teething was awful. We had all just had a two-week long run-in with the Norovirus. And the stress of TTC–and all of the disorganized chaos that accompanied it–really didn’t help. We were struggling big time.
Still, we pushed forward, and we decided to try again in March. Sona wanted to get an ultrasound to help us better predict ovulation for that month, which the office offered to do. (I should say this: as great of a practice as they were, they were pretty clueless about guiding us through this process. That has been the case for every single doctor we’ve interacted with. We’ve been the ones taking the reigns, suggesting care plans, proactively advocating for what we needed.)
Just in case she was ovulating soon, she took the tank of sperm into the office for her ultrasound appointment, although we knew she was likely 4-5 days away from her window. She got checked in. Put the sperm in the office. Went to the ultrasound room. Found out that she was 3-4 days away from ovulating. Came back. And, to her horror, saw that the nurse had taken the sperm out of the tank and thawed it while she was gone. $1200 (sperm + doctor visits) down the drain. Her heart sank.
Of course, at that point, she had no choice: she had to do an IUI right then and there. So, she did. The doctor apologized. Said it was still possible that she’d get pregnant. But we knew she wouldn’t. The window is already SO slim, and the insemination was about 4 days too early. The sperm would be dead before her body even thought of releasing the egg.
It was a tough blow. It compounded the stress and anxiety we already felt, and it made us question whether or not we were doing the right thing. It added weight onto our already heavy marriage. So, when she didn’t get pregnant, which we knew was likely, we decided to stop. All signs seemed to point in the same direction; the universe was telling us that it wasn’t the right time. We listened.
A week later, we traveled to Italy together, leaving Finn at home with my parents, and it revived us in a lot of ways. We tried to make lemonade (limoncello?) out of lemons, and we relished in the fact that Sona could eat all of the cured meat, soft cheese, and drink all of the bubbly that she wanted.
We tabled the baby-making conversation for several months, although Sona kept tracking. Since we were trying to stick to the whole time-it-with-Danielle’s-academic-semesters thing, stopping meant that we had to wait a full 4-5 months before we started to try again. Honestly, it relieved a lot of stress–stress on Sona, stress on our marriage, financial stress. It gave us a chance to re-group.
In August, we started trying again. More about that, later.