And so it begins…

My wife and I are trying to get pregnant.  It’s been almost four months, and no luck yet.  No matter how hard I try, it’s just not working.  Sometimes being lesbians can be such an inconvenience.

Almost a year ago, we began our quest at the Fenway Health clinic in Boston.  They held an informational night for couples hoping to get pregnant via artificial insemination.  After spending three hours with a LOT of other lesbians, we were left with a plastic speculum and some disheartening statistics.  For example, less than 20% of women get pregnant on the first try, and 1 in 4 pregnancies end in a miscarriage.

Even though the odds seemed daunting, we decided to go ahead and start the process of trying to get pregnant.  The wife is going to carry the baby – though I can’t wait to be a mother, I have no aching desire to actually give birth.  Since it’s been a lifelong dream for the wife, it was an easy decision for us.

We started by taking her temperature every morning and recording it on a chart.  And by chart, I mean on a nifty app she’d downloaded onto her iPhone called “Woman Calendar” – a steal at $9.99.  Our plan, like many couples trying to get pregnant, was to track her temperature each morning, hoping for a spike that would indicate that she was releasing an egg and ready to get pregnant.  Each day, she’d roll over, grab the thermometer, and take her temperature.  She’d mumble it to me, and I would roll the other way, grab her iPhone, and plug in the number.  It seemed easy enough.  Unfortunately, stress got in the way of our plans.  The wife went from having a perfect 30-day cycle to bouncing from 41 to 59 days, making her ovulation day completely unpredictable.  Instead of one spike, she was having several.  It seemed that her ovulation pattern was eluding us.

I tried to stay positive, but the wife took matters into her own hands and called up Boston IVF.  After multiple appointments, it was decided that she was healthy and fertile… just seemed to be having some trouble with consistency.  I agreed with the doctor, which earned me a jab in the ribs.  The final verdict – a round of Letrozole followed by ovulation predictor tests.  All we had to do was wait for her next period…