IUI: round 3

my arms look like i'm a heroin addict and i'm embarrassed when my colleagues catch a glimpse of them, so it must be... IUI day! seriously, a week of blood taken almost every day is just abyssmal for the appearance of one's skin. but i guess there are more important things to think about.

we went this morning for the 1st insemination of this cycle. yes, i said the 1st, because we're doing another tomorrow. yippee! when the doc did the ultrasound she said our timing this round was "spot on." i still had the two big follicles, one in each ovary, and she said one of them looked like it might have been ovulating at that moment. they can't see that very precisely, so it's impossible to know if it's in-progress or not... it's all based on the size of the follicle. but i sure as heck feel like i'm ovulating. i had cramps all day and night yesterday and a host of other symptoms that i aptly recognize now but don't feel the need to list in detail on this blog. not that you must care about TMI if you're following along here. but as of this morning, things were still ripe enough to take another go at it tomorrow -- figuring i'll ovulate sometime today and still have time for things to do their magic for another 24 hours or so (give or take).

the specimen wasn't quite as spectacular today, no doubt because there was a significant depletion of the sperm stores over the weekend. hee hee. but -- it was still 29 million, which the doctor said is still a good specimen. between 20-40 million is a normal count... so 29's fine, just not "good" for the likes of my husband, Sir Super Sperm Count. the doc said the motility was a bit lower, in the 40%s, but with IUI that's much less important. we're putting them right where they need to go!

and, honestly, i think timing is much more important than anything else in this process, and i feel a billion times more confident about the timing this round than the last two times. i understand the logic of doing it early to make sure we didn't miss ovulation, and because the sperms can live for a couple of days anyway, but clearly it's better to do it right when i ovulate. (and even better, in my opinion, to have some backup sperm from the weekend that might still be swimming around in there.) it woo hoo! so we're back tomorrow morning for another insemination, and then my poor veins can heal and i don't have to stab myself with anything undesired for the immediate future. rock.