Josephine's Story
Posted Feb 19, 2006

When my husband and I got married, we both knew right away that we wanted to start a family. I figured since I was 29 and my husband was 31 (and he already has a 8 year old daughter), getting pregnant would not be a problem. You can imagine my surprise when after a year of ttc - trying to conceive - I was still not pregnant.

I knew in my gut that something was wrong. So I decided to see a fertitlity specialist (even though my husband thought I was just being impatient). My doctor thought we were just having bad luck, but she soon started to change her mind. After a series of tests and cleaning out my tubes, they could not find anything wrong with me. At my doctors suggestion, my husband went and had a semen analysis - the results weren't good - he not only had a low sperm count, but he also had low mobility (motility) and a high amount of abnormal sperm. Needless to say, we were both crushed.

Again, at my doctor's urging, we went to see a male fertilty specialist. It turns out that my husband has a condition called Varicacele (varicocele) - varicose veins in the testicles. After much dilberation, my husband has decided to have surgery in hopes of fixing the condition, but in the meantime, we have decided to try our first IUI (my husband's surgery isn't for another month and after that, we won't be able to try again for 3-6 more months).

For the past 2 weeks I have been giving myself Gonal-F shots, and then the hCG shot to make myself ovulate. The doctor said I had 2 follicles, and we did the IUI this past Monday. It turns out that the day of the IUI my husband had a sperm count of 50 million and good motility (go figure), so we are keeping our fingers crossed that I will be pregnant at the end of this month!

Good luck to all of you who are trying to get pregnant and congratulations to all of you who have conceived!