Friday Follow-ups

After our appointment earlier this week at the fertility center, I was referred back to my urologist. As soon as we got out of the fertility center I jumped on the phone to the urology office. I got extremely lucky because there was a cancellation, so I was able to get in yesterday. If I hadn’t taken that appointment I would have had to wait until the middle of February.

The urology office is an interesting experience in itself. You walk in and check in with the receptionist who hands you a sterile cup. You have to run into the bathroom and give a urine sample, then come back out and wait in the waiting room until you are called into the exam room, Then depending on what the issue is, you may or may not have to drop you pants. Luckily yesterday I was able to keep my pants up.

The urologist came in and we discussed my situation. Because my counts had dropped so drastically and I had success with hormone therapy previously she suggested that we repeat the hormone therapy with a higher dose to see if my counts will come up again. Starting Monday, I have to pick up a prescription that will elevate my testosterone levels to stimulate my FSH levels to produce more sperm and increase my counts.

Now when I went through this treatment course the first time I was in the swing of P90X. So I was working out like crazy, and eating healthier. I wasn’t drinking beer or coke and was basically living off of water and a high protein diet. I think those factors also helped with my counts going up. Then after the first few months of  that I fell out of working out because of some life events happening, and my counts went down. I don’t think that the decrease is directly tied to the decrease in quality diet and exercise because the effects of the hormone therapy only last 3 to 6 months, but I definitely think it didn’t help the situation.

So this weekend is my weekend of relaxation. I am going to smoke a cigar or two, have a few beers and relax. I’m going to eat what I want and just forget about the world for awhile. Then on Monday it is back to the grindstone, I am kick starting my high protein diet and working out again. An added bonus of testosterone therapy is the muscle growth from working out, so that’s cool. I have to stick with this to give myself the best possible chance to get my count as high as possible and give us the best chance for our last IUI’s.

Wish me luck!!!

Trips to the fertility center...

Trips to the fertility clinic are never fun. There is a lot of poking and prodding if you are a woman, and if you are a man there is a lot of awkwardness because everyone know what you are doing when you are giving your “sample”, plus the whole process is very clinical and sterile feeling. All of the couples are in different states as you sit there in the waiting room stealing glances at one another. Some couples are beaming and full of hope, because they just know that this is the cycle that is going to make it happen, while other couples are nervous about the whole procedure and fidget with their phones waiting for the doctors to call them in, then there are the couples like L Bird and I, the seasoned vets. They have been through numerous cycles and don’t have a lot to show for it, so some are very reserved, and some are just downright depressed as they walk out after an insemination with little to no hope of it actually working. L Bird and I are very fortunate that we did get lucky enough to have A Bird, so we are actually one up on quite a few couples, but it still doesn’t help to ease the want of having a second child and giving A Bird a sibling to face the world with.

This most recent trip to the fertility center was especially tough because I am at the center of why we are not getting pregnant. Now I am going to delve a little into a very personal area for me and you may not want all of the details or play by play, so if that’s the case stop reading here.

OK, now if you are still reading this, I am writing this because maybe something I write here will resonate with someone else struggling with male infertility and they will know that they are not alone. Some history to start, L Bird and I were referred to a fertility center around ‘05/’06 because we had been trying for over a year with no results. I got referred to a urologist who is great and happens to be a woman. It was a little odd having a female urologist, because she is poking, prodding, squeezing and holding you in a lot of areas that anyone other than your wife shouldn’t be touching but that’s a whole other post. She very quickly identified me as having a varicocele which was leading to low sperm count and low motility and set up surgery for me. I went through the surgery to repair it and then a few months of waiting to heal before having a semen analysis to see if my counts had improved. My counts went up, but I was still abnormal (shocker, right?) in having lower sperm counts but we were still good candidates for fertility treatments. L Bird and I dutifully went through the treatments with hormones that sent L Bird on an emotional roller coaster and both of our stress levels through the roof. We went through 4 cycles of our allotted 6 lifetime tries (my insurance only covered 6) like they were nothing and we weren’t getting any closer. At that time L Bird had just started a new job which wasn’t helping her stress level at all, so we decided to take a break for a couple of months until things were a little more settled. Then through God’s grace he blessed us that next month with a miracle, A Bird. She showed up without any other intervention other than God’s.

Fast forward to today, L Bird and I have been trying to have another child. Before we started really actively trying hard, I went to the urologist and requested a semen analysis to see where I was at. I have to say that I wasn’t entirely shocked to hear that my counts had dropped again. That was 9 months ago. Since then the urologist identified that I had low testosterone and a vitamin D deficiency, she started me on a three month hormone/vitamin regimen and my counts came way up to where I was close to the lower levels of normal. L Bird and I were ecstatic, and actually hopeful for our first few cycles.

Then reality set in. Every month my count has dropped, or I should say plummeted. It takes roughly 10 million sperm to saturate the path to the egg. Once you have 10 million healthy, motile sperm it is up to the egg to grant entry and thus fertilization. It doesn’t matter whether you have 10 million or 50 million the odds are the same because you are at saturation level. Then everything below 10 million lowers your percentages of fertilization and becoming pregnant.

The first two months everything looked good, but then everything went into the tank. L Bird and I went back to the fertility doctor because we are down to our last insurance covered IUI try. The doctor looked at my results and basically told us we had slim to no chance and we shouldn’t waste our last try. That really took the wind out of our sails and was really a punch in the gut to me. I feel incredibly guilty that it is my fault that we are not getting pregnant. It hurts in so many ways. It stings my pride, because any man can make a baby, right? Then I throw a pity party and rack it up to just something else to add to the list that is wrong with me. Or I start to think that I’m being punished by God for all of my sins, and that adds to my guilt. It is just a painful roller coaster for me as I deal with these things because no one really has the answers, and no one can give me a magic pill that will fix me and make me more fertile.

But there was light at the end of the tunnel, a dim, single bulb hanging and flickering in the wind, but still a light. He laid out two options, the first being go back to the urologist and see if she could get me to repeat my success with more hormone therapy or switch to IVF which is not covered by insurance and is roughly $12,000 per try. IVF isn’t in our budget at the moment, so I am heading back to the urologist to get her input and see if she thinks I am treatable. I am really hoping that she can repeat some treatment and help me again, if not our only other option is me banking my sperm at a cryogenic bank for a year or two and saving up the money (I know we could take out a loan, but I think that for me "financing" a baby is just wrong) for one round of IVF, which brings its own set of emotional struggles.

So that’s it. That’s where we are and why sometimes we aren’t so happy or nice to be around. But here’s to cherishing our time with our own little miracle, A Bird and praying to God for another one.

Blogging is tough…

For those of you who read Life As Naps, you may have noticed that my posts have been quite few and far between lately. I am slightly introverted and a private person by  nature so blogging has always been a struggle for me but I did it because it was an outlet to get some of these crazy thoughts out of my head. Then people started reading it and started telling me that they read it, and instantly I was a self conscious teenager again measuring everything I said because I was afraid of what people would think of me.

So I go back and forth, I love to blog and get things off my chest and out there, but then I find myself fighting, well myself and deleting entire written posts because I don’t want to offend anyone with my thoughts. It was a whole lot easier when I thought I was completely anonymous out there and people that I had no idea of were the ones reading it. Its easy to be weak or strong or let your feelings show when you think that you won’t ever have to talk about or with them.

But then the flipside of that coin is that I do enjoy that people read my stuff and comment on my posts. I like the comments and the constructive criticism I have received and hopefully will continue to receive. I do enjoy when I can have a meaningful conversation with someone on something I wrote, because they can totally relate or they completely disagree and we have a frank, open discussion where in the end we agree to disagree.

So as 2012 approaches I am going to try and let myself go a bit and blog more often on a range of topics. I am going to try and let some more of the personal stuff out there, but I doubt that I will ever let the blogosphere know who I truly am. Sorry, its just not in my nature, and maybe that’s a good thing. Until then enjoy and be on the look out for new posts and please feel free to comment or talk to me, I would hate for this post to discourage that, even if it does push my comfort level. Being a little uncomfortable can be a good thing, right?

Christmas Craze…

Christmas is always crazy for our family. Both L Bird’s and my parents have divorced. My parents remarried a long time ago, but L Bird’s parents are still doing their own things. So because we come from separated families, we end up have five Christmases every year. We do Christmas with my Dad’s side, my Mom’s side, L Bird’s Mother, L Bird’s Father and then our own intimate family Christmas on Christmas morning.

So yeah, it gets crazy, but anyway our Christmas craziness started this past weekend with Christmas with my Dad’s side on Saturday and then with L Bird’s Mom on Sunday. At these two Christmases A Bird got a ton of gifts that she absolutely loves, but two of them stand out.

From my Dad and Stepmom she got a Disney Karaoke machine. She went nuts when she opened it. She has been putting in her CD’s and singing her little heart out, at the top of her lungs, of course with the volume cranked all the way up. How else can you sing, right? Then she found that she didn’t need the music to use the microphone and she found the echo knob. So she turns up the echo all the way and just says random stuff into the mic to hear herself. Sometimes it’s just “Daddy, what are you doing?” and then some times it is “woooooooooooooooo,oooooooooooooooooooo,oooooooooooooooooo” as she tries to be a “siren”. Yeah, that’s real fun.

The other gift that she is fascinated with is the a Wii game that she got from her Aunt A, Uncle E and Cousin J. It is Just Dance For Kids. We brought that home, fired up the Wii and she went nuts. It is actually a really cool game, it is made for kids so there are a ton of kids songs like “The Ants Go Marching”, songs from Yo Gabba Gabba, The Wiggles, etc. But it also has some harmless old school favorites like YMCA, Funky Town, and apparently A Bird’s new favorite “Everybody Dance Now”.

So here she is, dancing away:

So here’s to two Christmases down and three to go. Merry Christmas!!!

Wordless Wednesday

My little performer…

A Bird is growing up so fast and she finally has outgrown her toddler bed. So this weekend while she was having a spend over at Papa’s house, L Bird swapped out A Bird’s toddler bed for a nice big twin bed with brand new Tangled sheets and comforter. It was like that was all it took, A Bird came home saw her new “big girl” bed and flipped the switch. She went from 4 to 15 in about 30 seconds.

This past weekend A Bird has spent more time playing in her room than she ever has. She goes in there, turns on her radio, lays on her bed and sings her little heart out to Orange Cat who is normally trying to sleep on the end of the bed. Because she seems to really be enjoying her time in her room, I bought her a Carrie Underwood CD as a special treat. She loves country music and especially loves Carrie Underwood, so she has been listening to it non-stop.

Tonight, A Bird, L Bird and I had a tea party with cheetos and apple juice in A Bird’s room. After the tea party, A Bird cranked up her radio and gave quite the karaoke performance. She really is something else.

So without further ado, enjoy the show:

Inner Battles...

So I am fighting an uphill battle. That battle is changing myself and let me tell you what, change is hard! Apparently, I am a miserable SOB, and hard to be around most of the time and I don’t seem happy with the world around me. I don’t feel like I am that bad, I am actually very happy with my life, I love my wife and daughter, I love my large family, I love my small tight knit group of friends, and I have a job that I actually really do love. But I guess things need to change when everyone around you can’t tell that you’re happy.

I’m not totally sure how I got this way, but I have a pretty good idea. I’m a pretty private person by nature, so I don’t really talk a lot about anything. I have a real personal attachment to my thoughts, where I don’t like to put them out there. What I think is my business, and if I wanted you to know I would tell you. It used to be pretty bad to the point of if you asked me a question the likely response you would get would be “What are you the cops? Mind your business”. I feel I have come a long way from that place, but I still don’t offer up a whole lot in terms of conversation. Now I know that by now most of you have heard my sob stories of being picked on and getting into fights stories and the oh poor me, school of hard knocks stories so I’m not going to go into that, but my lack of vocalization probably comes from that place.

I have always idolized the Mob or Mafia, not the current wiseguys but the old school Mob that still had honor and its Omerta. Growing up the only way I found to stop being teased and taunted or bullied was to fight back. So I slowly started turning myself into a tough guy. I loved watching movies and documentaries or reading books about the old school gangsters. They fought and sought revenge and when they were done, it was over. It was as if it never happened because you never spoke about it again. The old Dons were men of few words and they played their cards close and never really said much of anything. The games they played were always calculated and won in their minds long before it was decided in the streets, but you wouldn’t know until after the fact because they never said a word. I modeled myself after these characters in trying to make myself as tough as I could be. I would pound out anyone who looked at me wrong, but you would never know it or see any trace other than the occasional bruise or cut because I wouldn’t talk about it.

I went on like this through my teens and well into my twenties before I finally grew up and let a lot of anger fade. But by then it seemed to be too late, I couldn’t talk if I wanted too and it would seem that I keep a stone face because no one can read my emotions.

So that’s where I stand now and it is unacceptable to me to keep going on like this. I am fighting to change myself to let more emotion show and I think I can do it, but it is definitely hard. It has been only a short time but I think I am making strides. I am trying to smile when I answer the phone, they say that if you do that people on the other end can hear it in your voice. I am trying to laugh more often and let more things go when it comes to L Bird and A Bird. I guess I am a little more strict or I think things should be done a certain way so I get a little twisted when it doesn’t happen that way. In the big picture these things are really small things that aren’t worth the effort or frustration I put into them. I am making a point to let the people I love know that I love them. I am just trying to make small changes, like kissing L Bird when she gets home from work, picking A Bird up, hugging her and asking her about her day when she walks through the door. Where before I would be so caught up in trying to get the nightly routine of starting a fire so the house isn’t cold, starting dinner so we can all eat early and hopefully together, letting the dogs out…. Blah, blah, blah etc. etc that I wouldn’t pay either of them any attention until things finally settled down later in the evening.

I am turning the tide slowly, but I’m turning it. Here’s to small changes that lead to larger overall changes that lead to happier lives.