Well, we did it, we took everyone’s advice who said “Just take a vacation, it’ll happen then,” and guess what, it didn’t happen. But we thought, let’s take some of the other wonderful advice (insert eye-roll) “Have a few drinks then have sex, that worked for us!” Picture this: we drank, on vacation, AND had sex and guess what…it still didn’t work. Huh, funny how that advice didn’t actually pay off, so please stop saying it to us or anyone you know that is battling infertility.
– end rant –
Picking up from my last post, my AMH is low, so we didn’t want to prolong this process any longer which was good because our first IUI was targeted for March. There was just one tiny catch. We had a family trip planned, my cousin’s wedding, on a cruise to the Bahamas and Mexico. Full disclosure, when this was planned, we thought we would already have a baby and be unable to go (babies can’t cruise under seven months old). Now, if you’re mind is anywhere focused on TTC, you know that Mexico is off-limits due to the Zika virus.
I informed Dr. F of our plans on February 5 (the AMH phone call) and explained we would be gone the first week of March with one day in Mexico (the CDC cleared the Bahamas at this point in time). We discussed the side effects and severity of the Zika virus along with CDC guidelines and he gives us three options.
The CDC requires incubation periods for men and women when they travel to an area infected with the zika virus. For women, this period is two months, starting the day you return home, and for men, it’s a three month period.
Our cruise returned home on March 8, so based on the guidelines above, my incubation period ended on May 8 and J’s ended on June 8.
Option 1: don’t go on the cruise and move forward with our March IUI.
Option 2: go on the cruise, and wait until J’s three month incubation period is over for our first IUI.
Option 3: go on the cruise, freeze J’s sperm and have our first IUI after my two month incubation period is over.
We decide on Option 3 for a few reasons. We didn’t want to miss the wedding, we are very close to my family and my cousin was one of J’s groomsmen at our wedding. This was the first trip my family would take that included J, my brother-in-law, my nephew and my new cousin-to-be. And after all, we were only putting things on hold for a few months not a few years.
After battling the guilt of it looking like we would rather go on vacation than have a baby, I finally mustered the courage to call Dr. F and let him know. And just like that, J was on his way to the main office to freeze some sperm. A few days later, Dr. F called me with J’s results, post-wash he had 133 million sperm with 44% motility. His collection was separated into three viles (two with 50 million each and one with 33 million). We discussed Zika symptoms one more time, went over rules for protecting ourselves against the virus and the biggest rule of all…no unprotected sex until J was out of his incubation period, June 8. All I could do was laugh at this rule for obvious reasons. Over the next few days, we (I) packed for our vacation, making sure we had the correct bug spray, long sleeve shirts and pants, and condoms. I have to be totally honest and tell you how odd it was to be buying condoms at Target. We should have thought about this purchased them online or have gone to a store where we wouldn’t run into anyone we knew, but it was our luck to see the whole town that day, even one on the condom aisle. J was so embarrassed that he walked away when I felt like shouting “Nothing to see here, just a married couple trying to have a baby, buying condoms!”
And for the next few months, we just waited.
