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This week you're all getting a break from all the uninteresting things I'm doing with kettlebells or jiu jitsu to talk about fertility treatments.
I know I'm not supposed to worry about it at all, that anything can happen at this stage, but I have to tell someone and I'll tell y'all because you I can't tell anyone who matters in my real life: after a little over a year of trying, my wife got a positive pregnancy test.
We'll have to confirm it, and hopefully it all works out, but I'm very excited.
We had what our doctor called "unexplained" fertility issues. Which is to say we were making love often enough, and individually our tests were coming back good, but no baby resulted. I guess its good the tests came back clean, but it was a little disappointing, in that when you go in for tests you hope for the doc to say something like "Oh, you actually have a very obvious, simple, and treatable common problem. You aren't doing anything wrong, you just need to do X and then it'll all work out." Sperm testing stressed me out, in that I feel like all versions of that are equivalent to "You're not really much of a man." Where female infertility, while surely bad, is so multifarious and complex, that it seems a little less bad. Like, where male infertility is "your engine doesn't have enough horsepower to move the car;" female infertility is "the wire harness came loose and the starboard vacuum sensor borked itself." Given, I'm sure Mrs. FiveHour felt the opposite way, that have slow sperm is better than being a woman who can't have a baby. At any rate, neither occurred, we were just stuck there with no baby for no particular reason. And hitting the age where while we could probably have a decent chance of getting it done, we might be under pressure pretty quickly.
Our insurance covered IUI, which is basically just optimizing the fertilization process. Mrs. FiveHour took some drugs to precisely trigger and optimize her cycle, then I was to jerk off into a cup, the facility would "clean" the sperm to optimize the sample, and then the nurses insert it directly into her uterus. We elected to give it a try.
This required me, of course, to jerk off into the cup, then immediately drive it across town to meet a very precise appointment time. I have never had a more stressful masturbation in my life. So much pressure! I really put a lot of effort into optimizing the production. I needed a good sample, I needed it to all go into the cup. And it's so weird carrying around a cup of my own splooge. I felt like such a bizarre pervert, in the car, then sitting in the waiting room. Not that I had much odds of getting into such a situation, but I would sooner be searched by a cop and have him find a gun or a half ounce of weed than I would have him find a cup of my own sperm. And the whole time I'm looking at the brown paper bag thinking, well that didn't seem like very much, I bet this was a miss.
I will note that according to my wife, as a personal achievement, that the doctor commented to a visiting med student who joined her for the procedure that the sample was "ridiculous" and that this was "definitely going to work;" they look for 5mm and I managed to hit 29mm. God I hope we don't have to do this again, because I'll have to try to top that. The natural male high-scoring instinct applies to everything with a metric.
I don't know if this will happen or not. We might not get a confirmed positive, it might not make it to term, or who knows.
But I'm praying this is our child. If for no other reason than I don't know how much more I can optimize my jerking off.
I am glad that you painstakingly offered the experience of this procedure you did. I always wondered what it was like to donate sperm, and I bet that's somewhat similar. I would have thought you'd have to do it on site or something. Did you wait a week or a few days from your last "emission" so that it would be a larger quantity? Well, good job, anyway. I thought you both were over 35 and already parents or happily not-parents or something.
I think female infertility would be a serious blow to a relationship. The way I see it in my mind's eye is that sperm is cheap, so if yours didn't work, you could just go get Chad DNA from a sperm bank or something. Chad DNA has its own benefits, because I would want my kids to be successful and having good genetics like tallness or lack of mental or physical illnesses are very helpful, but some people really want their kids to be "theirs". Personally, I would just want something to dedicate myself to that doesn't have any baggage like a preexisting child would. I guess I'm not evolutionarily correct, though the thought of my hypothetical wife cheating on me is still horrifying. On the other hand, female infertility leaves you in the same position that The Gays are in: either hundreds of thousands of dollars paying for another uterus, or tens of thousands of dollars for decent adoption, or a few thousand dollars for an adoption of a subpar kid or foster-to-adopt.
They recommend three days, that's apparently optimal. I got that the first time (15mm) we tried it, but the second time (29mm) they scheduled it last minute so I only got one day of abstinence, so I don't think it makes too much difference. I edged extensively both times to increase the quantity of the sample, though I haven't tested it not doing that so idk.
I will say: the day before the second sample I had an absolutely killer run at BJJ, so maybe there's something to the idea that winning dominance/athletic competitions increases testosterone production.
Weird, that’s not what I’ve heard. Longer time between ejaculations trades off fresher, more motile sperm for bigger loads, and what I’ve read suggests that 36-48 hours between is ideal for maximum fertility. It’s moot at this point though, so congrats!
36 was what I got the second time. I think it's all old wives tales.
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Haha, I wonder what the statistics are on edging vs no edging for samples. There's clearly a whole branch of gross biology studies that haven't been done. I'm something of a goonscientist myself!
I know that weightlifting increases testosterone, but not sure about success in general.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/believing-youre-a-winner-gives-men-a-testosterone-boost-and-promiscuous-disposition
It seems intuitive that such an effect could also increase sperm production in the short term.
As for edging, study compliance is probably an issue.
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There's a couple at my church who were having trouble conceiving. For them, the doctor did say "you just need to do X and then it'll all work out" where X was a hormonal injection into the woman. Apparently she wasn't ovulating and so this obviously resulted in no babies.
Well the hormones worked too well. She started releasing multiple eggs/month, and now they have a set of twins and quadruplets... 6 kids under 5 years old...
That's awesome. I've wondered if purposeful inducement of twins or identical twins would be possible, considering the usefulness of twin studies, and this seems like it's sorta-close to that. Good for her, imagine the family reunions 20 or 40 years down the line.
Making twins is super easy. Basically every couple I know who had kids >40 has twins due to how IVF works. I don't know of a way to make identical twins though...
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My wife is really hoping for twins for the economies of scale. Quadruplets would be a bit much though, I don't think I can come up with 4 precisely equal names.
Obviously FiveHour Jr, FiveHour III, FiveHour IV, and FiveHour V, in birth order. Then you just call them all FiveHour without the suffix, for maximum efficiency when calling your kids.
Romans did something similar. They didn't have many names to begin with, and starting with fifth child just named them by numbers (Quintus etc.) For girls, it was starting with Tertia. No idea why these numbers specifically.
Another way would be to use names Second, Third, Fourth etc. and when they ask "what about the First" tell them "well, he didn't behave..."
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Not even OneHour, TwoHour, ThreeHour and FourHour?
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This would work great if his name is Jerome and he winds up having all daughters.
I believe in FiveHour's ability to get creative. My wife's grandfather wanted to name his kids after him, and the fact that he had all daughters did not deter him in the slightest. That's how my wife wound up with aunts named Paula and Pauletta.
Jeroma, Jerometta, Jeromina, and Jeromabelle
@FiveHourMarathon We’ve solved your problem for you.
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I've seen that naming system in person. It works out poorly when FiveHour IV has multiple run-ins with the law and the other FiveHours get arrested for his warrants because a roadside cop can't be bothered to sort it out.
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Congratulation!
Enjoy, man. Every part of the process is great. Maybe not so much the cup, I guess.
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Best of luck man, kids are the best.
Hey, you were the guy who had the picture book of the Hobbit for your daughter, right? My niece just caught the bug when my sister read her a bit from a traditional novel version, and I'd like to gift them something like what you described. Any info to point me in the right direction?
Yeah, so this art book is what I let my daughter browse through while I read the novel to her. But another friend of mine read this illustrated version to her son. Probably advantages to both. Giving my daughter a separate book I think worked for us because she had some control over what she was looking at while I read.
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