sperm, etc.

i've never thought or talked about sperm so much in a 24 hour period.

the hubby took the news pretty well. i think somehow he saw it coming. all day i assumed he'd forgotten that we were even supposed to call the doctor, and he never mentioned anything. but when i said i had something to talk to him about last night he knew immediately. he had also said something casually in passing after my bloodwork came back normal. it's true that there's some infertility in his family, but it was female infertility on his dad's side, so i'm not sure he thought that was very relevant. he told me he was glad to know and that he was glad it was at least something tangible with one of us. we had read that a full 1/3 of all infertility cases have no resolution: couples can't get pregnant but they never figure out why. he told me last night he knew that would have been worse (for ME, he said) so he was okay with it being something wrong with him. i can't tell how honest he's being about all of this, and he definitely seemed to have things weighing on his mind, but i tried to get him to open up and that was all i got.

he was not in favor of the "wait and see" approach that my doctor suggested. i explained that the doctor said it could have just been a fluke or a temporary situation, but he said, "but don't the past 8 months count as additional proof that things aren't working?" i said not necessarily, but i saw his point. he thought it was ridiculous to wait when we could run more tests to find out more information (he loves information) so he's planning to call the doc and get some more details. i'm in favor of a proactive stance, so i'm glad that's how he's seeing things as well. both because i feel like we're not getting any younger and also just because i'm tired of waiting and seeing.

but also because i did some thinking/reading after my initial reaction to the results yesterday that has my brain spinning a little bit. i'm nervous about the sperm situation because i'm afraid the abnormalities could be something genetic or chromosomally off that would create a messed up baby if we were to conceive somehow. i don't love the idea of messing with nature. if this is his body's way of saying he shouldn't reproduce, i'm inclined to take its word for it. if tests can show us that there's nothing wrong with the sperm other than they just don't do exactly what they're supposed to, then if there's a not-awful and not-expensive way for us to conceive i would still be willing to give it a try. but if not... it just doesn't seem like a good idea. i explained this to him last night -- only because he wanted to talk about it and asked what i thought... i didn't want to overwhelm him, but he said he was okay to discuss -- and he definitely seems to agree with me. i know we'd both feel awful if we conceived a baby with some kind of major issue when we had an inkling that something might be wrong, so it feels like the responsible thing to do is to have some more tests run to make sure that these results aren't indicators of a deeper problem. i haven't done a ton of reading on the topic yet, but from what i've seen it seems like it could be either case, but they have ways to figure stuff like that out.

that's where i am in favor of science helping us out. i am thankful that we have the means to a) find out what's going on, and b) find out if there's anything we can do about it, within reason rather than just mindlessly TTC for years and years. but that's about the extent of my comfort level with scientific assistance. humans have existed for a long time with biology making big decisions for folks, and i think we'd have a better chance of sticking around longer if we worked harder at continuing that trend. it may sound harsh, but the evolutionary anthropology major in me can't ignore millions of years of hard evidence.

not that it's an easy mental adjustment for me to realize that i have a good chance of not giving birth to my own children. i know i've assumed all along that it would work out for us the way it has for most everyone we know... eventually. even though i have always had a problem really imagining myself pregnant, realistically (which is something interesting to think about...), i somehow had at least an unconscious sense that it would happen. trying to wrap my brain around never being pregnant, never giving birth, never breast-feeding... it's weird after years of my body convincing me that my life would be worthless if that didn't happen. intellectually, i know i am fine with the prospect of adoption. i know that in many ways the hubby and i and our lifestyle would actually be better suited for it. but no matter how often i considered it in the past, i don't think i assumed it was reality. so that's a shift in mindset that i'm going to have to work to get comfortable with. because i know the two of us too well to think that we won't deal with this rationally, and i know that the rational thing -- for us, anyway -- is that if conceiving a baby ourselves will be too difficult or possibly inadvisable, that we're not going to do it. this is a reality.

reality really has a way of throwing you for a loop sometimes.