The night before the procedure Jon and I put our heads together and to kind of plan the morning of.  Basically we wanted to make sure that we had plenty of time to collect the sample and get to our RE’s office in Downey on time.  We were told that if we are more than 10 minutes late that the appointment may be cancelled.  I’d have to say that the most difficult things were planning how much time we needed to get to the office as it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on traffic and getting the sample there within 1 hour.  We had our game plan and were ready to go.

We woke up and got our morning started, we collected the sample and made our way to the office with plenty of time to spare, in fact we may have given ourselves too much time, because we got there 30 minutes before our appointment.  We were instructed to alert employees at the front desk if we had been waiting for more than 15 minutes with the sample.  After 15 minutes I got up and let them know the situation and they called to the back to make the necessary people aware.  Another 10 minutes or so passed and we started to panic, it had now been a total of 1 hour and 15 minutes since the sample was taken and we did not want to go through all of this and it not be viable.  This time Jon told them that we needed the sample to be processed per the instructions we were given.  A few more minutes passed and a nurse came to get us from the waiting room.  You could tell she was annoyed and spent the next ten minutes telling us how we came too early and they couldn’t help us because they were processing another sample.  We explained that we understood, but planning everything was very difficult because of how far we lived from the office. This went on and on until, I broke down and the NP told her to stop stressing me out.  This whole situation is extremely overwhelming and the last thing I needed was an argument with one of the nurses.  They took her away and brought in another nurse who was 100% better, thankfully.

After that unnecessary debacle, the new nurse took us to another room where she took my vitals that included my blood pressure which was understandably high.  Jon took a moment to calm me down and then they took it again, this time it came back in the normal range, thankfully because otherwise we would not be able to proceed.  We spent another 15 minutes or so signing consent documents and then were told to wait in the waiting room while they prepared Jon’s sample.  We went down to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription for progesterone suppositories (fun, fun) and got back up to the waiting room just in time to hear our name called.  We were then we were brought into the room where they do the sperm washing.  We got to see our potential babies under a microscope which I have to admit was pretty darn cool.  The nurse told Jon that he had great numbers which was a relief to hear.  Everything was perfect, now for the procedure itself…

We were led to another room where the IUI would take place.  After getting myself prepared I laid on the table with my feet in the stirrups ready to go.  I was really nervous about the potential of the procedure being painful, they inserted the catheter and to my surprise no pain at all.  Jon was holding my hand the entire time (I am so lucky).  The NP asked Jon if he wanted to perform the actual insemination, which he reluctantly said yes to.  He was nervous, he didn’t want to mess anything up and most of all he didn’t want to hurt me.  He did it, asking along the way if I was okay, to which I replied, yes.  Everything went perfectly.  They removed the catheter and told me to lift my legs up and cross them against my chest.  They tilted the bed down ward so my head was toward the ground and my feet were in the air.  Jon’s chair was positioned in front of my feet and he was instructed to sit there with his back to me and I had to put my legs on his shoulders.  And there we sat for 30 minutes, hoping and praying that those little spermies and those nice eggies would do their job.

We were on cloud nine, just so hopeful that things would go our way.  We even decided to celebrate with some Pupusas!  Now it was just a waiting game to see if we were pregnant and those two weeks seemed like forever….