The IUI

S and I woke up at 5:30am today, a lucky Friday the thirteenth.  We took quick showers, got dressed, packed our bags, and left our apartment.  We arrived at the clinic at 7:25am and were quickly ushered in to speak with a doctor.

"You used the Ovidrel on Wednesday night?"  she asked.  I reported that we had.  She said were were ready for the IUI.  She asked me to confirm the donor number, and then explained it would take up to 30 minutes for the lab to thaw the sperm.  She asked us to sit in the waiting room until they were ready for us.

S and I parked ourselves in a couple chairs near the big flat-screen TV in the waiting room which was tuned to a hilarious local news channel.   Like we do when we watch Fox News or read the Sky Mall catalog on an airplane, we giggled through the next forty minutes at the outlandish reporting.   It helped calm the anxiety in my belly.  I took some acetaminophen in anticipation of the fact that the IUI might hurt.  As we waited, I noticed our primary doctor, the one from our alma mater, talking with another client.  I hissed as S, "she's here!"  We looked at each other, smiling.  During our last consultation, she had told us she would fight to do our IUI if she happened to be working the morning of our visit.  I felt reassured.

They called us at 8:30am.  A nurse escorted us to a small, dimly lit examination room with a small chair and examination table.  The nurse asked, "what is then name of your donor?"  I looked at her with wide eyes.  "Number, I mean," she scrambled.  "What is the number of your donor?"  I reported the number and she showed me the vial to confirm.  She asked me to undress from the waist down.  I sat primly on the examination table, my legs covered with a small sheet.

"What do you want me to do?"  S asked.  "Do you want me to hold your hand?  Look into your eyes?  Not look at you?"

"I don't know!"  I replied.  "Just be chill and supportive.  Don't overdo it like you did in the elevator."  We laughed as we both thought back to the moment we arrived at the building just an hour before.  As we entered the elevator with two women and a straight couple going to the same floor, S stared at me intently with a big, knowing, obvious, loving grin.  He sprinkled my cheek with kisses and jumped up and down a bit.  I was mortified, thinking, "everyone knows we're about to do the deed!"

The door opened and a tall, white man in his 50's walked into the room.  I was taken aback.  My body filled with dread.  In all of my visits to the clinic, never had I had an interaction with a male staffer.  Now on the big day, the one that mattered most, it was going to be a dude injecting sperm into my body?

The next five minutes went by so quickly I didn't really have time to worry.  The doctor turned out to be as kind and gentle as any of the women doctors with whom I had worked, and he explained every step of the process. "It's going to feel like a pap smear," he said as he inserted the speculum.  "Now I'm going to use some antiseptic on your cervix.  This is the catheter I'm going to put into your cervix, it's very small.  Now I'm going to insert the sperm."  I held my breath and then tried to breathe.  In, out, in, out, relaxing my pelvis.  I clutched S's forearm as he sat on the chair next to me.  Meanwhile, the nurse handed him the vial of sperm inside a test tube, saying, "you can keep this."  He looked at it with confusion.  "But it's empty!"  he said, thinking he had been tasked with "warming" the sperm.  In fact, the empty vial had been given to him to keep as a souvenir.

And just like that it was over.  The doctor instructed me to remain lying down for five minutes, during which time S held my hand, looked in my eyes, and gave me hugs and kisses.  I stared at him in disbelief.  "I can't believe we just did it!"  I said.  It didn't feel like anything.  No pain, no cramping, no rush of sperm entering my body, no awkwardness.  It felt totally fine.  Good, even.

As I was getting dressed a few minutes later, I heard a knock on the door.  Our primary doctor stuck her head into the room and said, "I just wanted to wish you good luck!  Fingers crossed!"  She gave me a wide, genuine smile, and I felt a rush of relief in my body.  It felt so good to have her blessings.  S and I smiled at each other again, giving thanks to the universe for our good fortune and capacity to go through this process together.