About The Incubator

"The Incubator" is the name my lovely wife Sylvia has taken to calling me. Most days, I like the name; it sounds hopeful to me still. I am the one we are trying to get pregnant. All of our proverbial eggs are in this one basket (me), as my wife had a hysterectomy many, many moons ago.

I was talking the other day with a friend who is in the same situation (she is the only one who can carry; her partner cannot), and we were commiserating about the pressure that that can sometimes bring. While many of our friends are able to switch partners if one is not able to get pregnant (and some have, with success), we are stuck. It is us or... nothing. Success or failure is in our hands alone. There is no plan B for a bio child.

So a little bit about me, fertility-wise:
I was diagnosed with PCOS in 2005. As someone who has always wanted children, the news was difficult to hear. Sylvia's support meant the world to me, but I walked through a peculiar kind of private grief. I had long suspected something wasn't quite right (it was bleeding every day for four solid months that had led me to the gyn's office), but a Googleable diagnosis was a different animal entirely.

I mourned, then threw myself headlong into my career. (I do that sometimes-- use work to fill up the holes in my heart.) For the next several years I pushed and pushed my way up the ladder, coming to rest in the position I hold now: a comfortable place (more or less) to stop while we try to have a child. At every step Sylvia and I talked about what the promotion would mean for our family plans, and, in part, it was knowing that we might have a rough go of it that led us to decide I should take each one. It wasn't so much putting Baby on hold for Career, as it was pursuing Career to guard against the possibility of a long journey to Baby. Plus, we figured, a little extra income would help when it comes to paying the doctor bills.

So here we are, ready to start, peering into the infertility tunnel.

I've been temping since May of 2008, and in that time have ovulated a whopping five times. When I've ovulated, it's been "late ovulation"-- none have occurred before CD21. This, as some may recognize, is not a particularly good place to start.

February 2009 brought a visit to my gyn to get the ball rolling prior to our intended start date of April 2009. Pap, TV ultrasound, anovulation panel, fasting glucose, and CMV test were all ordered. In the past, I've had these ultrasounds done at a place where they would subtly turn the screen away from my curious eyes once the tech reached my ovaries and caught her first glimpse. This time, there was a monitor on the wall. And there they were in all their glory: 27-inch images of my ovaries stuffed full of cysts. I drove to work that day with tears running down my face.

The gyn prescribed 1500 mg of Metformin per day and told us to come back in a couple of months.

Feeling like we didn't/don't have "months" to spare, we high-tailed it to the RE. We'd met our RE, Dr. P, in 2007 at a "Maybe Baby" class. He seemed very genuine, knowledgeable, and proactive, and we thought at the time that he might be a good RE for us. Our initial consult was mid-March, and after seeing the lab and ultrasound results from the gyn (finally-- they had not faxed them over as promised in advance of our consult), he ordered a few more tests. Those were done (see last post) and so here we are, waiting to begin our first cycle.