Baby Deux, Part 9: The Numbers

Disclaimer: If you aren’t actively trying to conceive or immensely interested in fertility, you should probably stop reading right this second. If you choose to continue, I must apologize for the boredom–and for the onslaught of acronyms–that’s sure to follow.

Disclaimer #2: We’ve had a lot of questions about how we ended up with a successful pregnancy, mostly from other same-sex couples TTC (see, acronym). I want to provide answers to those questions because I know how hungry we were for similar answers during our own process. That said, it’s important to underscore something: Sona and I haven’t cracked the code of conception. Our answers may be helpful to some, but they aren’t meant to provide a step-by-step instructional for how to get pregnant, obvs.

Also, if this post shows you nothing else, I hope it shows you this: Pregnancy is a miracle, yes. But conception? Conception is science. Nothing but science. There is a bit of chance and luck involved, too–but it’s all about whether or not you are lucky enough to time the science correctly. Knowing this, for some reason, helped me cope. It prevented me from internalizing outcomes too much. It kept me from constantly asking, “But why? What does this mean?” If we didn’t get pregnant, I knew there was a very pragmatic reason why: We didn’t get the science right, that time.

So, let’s get to those numbers, shall we?

Before we zero in on how we conceived, I’ll go global. In the past year, leading to this pregnancy, we did a total of 8 IUIs over the span of 11 months.

We spent $8385.00 on donor specimen (sperm) and around $3500.00 on fertility clinic-related expenses (IUIs, ultrasounds, etc.). OUCH. Goodbye, vacation.

Sona took approximately 120 digital ovulation tests. We used these: Clearblue Digital Ovulation Test, 20 Ovulation Tests.

She also took about half as many cheap-y ovulation tests, once we realized that the CBE tests were sometimes inaccurate. I think that doing both of the tests alongside one another really helped us nail her ovulation timing. Here are the cheapies that we used: AccuMed® Combo 50 Ovulation (LH) & 25 Pregnancy (HCG) Test Strips Kit, Clear and Accurate Results, FDA Approved and Over 99% Accurate.

She took her temperature every single morning for nearly a year.

We did a single IUI for 4 cycles and we did two IUIs for 2 cycles, including the last one.

We saw 4 different doctors at 3 different practices: a women’s health center, an LGBTQ clinic, and, in the end, a specialty fertility clinic.

We got pregnant with the latter.

Sona was pretty religious about using Fertility Friend to track her cycles. It’s a really helpful app, and we strongly recommend it! Here are her charts from October and November, just so you can see the various patterns–and discrepancies.

 

She menstruated from October 26th-30th.

On October 30th, she got baseline bloodwork.

On November 2nd, she started taking 50 mg of Clomid, which she did for 5 days.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 8th, she went in for bloodwork and an ultrasound.  Her LH was 26.14 and her E2 was 522.

She had one 18mm follicle visible in the ultrasound.

That night, she did a 250 mcg HCG trigger shot at 6:45PM.

According to ovulation tests, she peaked the next morning, November 9th.

On that same day, she did her first IUI at 4PM.

The second IUI was at 7:15AM the following morning, on Friday, November 10th.

So, we did our IUIs roughly 21 and 37 hours after the trigger shot. We are pretty certain that she ovulated late Friday evening.

A week prior to inseminating, Sona’s progesterone level was 0.91. She started taking 200mg of progesterone each night, beginning on November 11th, which was the evening after the second IUI. Her levels immediately rose to 35 and have consistently hovered at around 41 since conception.

Currently, as of today, the fetus is measuring 6.5 weeks old, which puts our due date at around August 3, 2018–one week before Finn’s 3rd birthday.

And that’s all we’ve got, folks. If you made it this far, I’m impressed. I could barely get through half of this post in proofreading.

Still, I believe–as I’ve said many times–that knowledge is power. The more you know, the more empowered you are to make decisions for yourself, your body, and–hopefully–your baby. I hope this is helpful to some of you on your own journeys.

(Couldn’t resist.)