IUI Archives - Svikki

The news is out! I’ve welcomed a second child into the world. It was always my intention to have at least two children if possible. I’m beyond grateful that this is now my reality.

I will be taking off the rest of the year from my work as a locum physician to spend time with my kids and do some traveling. My goal is to share much more about my solo motherhood. I’ve received several requests to do more content about being a solo mother by choice. I’m thrilled there is a demand for it and excited to deliver. I’ve always been an open book about this topic whenever anyone would ask me about my decisions. I’m hoping to bring more awareness to this lifestyle, support those considering it for themselves, and cheer on those who are living their lives as solo moms!

I will be sharing videos and info on Instagram/TikTok/Facebook. Additionally, I’ll continue to go more in-depth about these topics here on the blog. As I plan on traveling with the kids soon, I’ll be sharing this as well. I will continue to respect the privacy of my children. This involves not showing their faces in pictures or using their names in text.

I plan to cover the different stages of becoming a mother for a second time as well as being a SMBC. Hopefully, you’ll continue to join me on this journey. Feel free to suggest topics you’d like to see covered or questions you’d like answered! I will do my best to address them!

For this (and possibly future posts) I will split it up into Past, Present, and Future segments. This way, I can discuss my pregnancy journey that was but also keep you in the loop of what is going on now and what is to come!

PAST

Trying To Conceive

My siblings and I are all about 2 1/2 years apart. I wanted a similar age gap for my children. Although trying to conceive and pregnancies can be very unpredictable, I did more or less achieve my goal. After several months of being in Hawaii, I started looking for clinics. It will come as no surprise that there was not one located on Moloka’i. I did speak to the midwife on Moloka’i, who recommended a fertility clinic in Honolulu.

Thankfully, the fertility clinic offered virtual visits for the initial visit. I am a rather straightforward case. I have no known fertility issues. A workup was done with my first pregnancy. I already had sperm bought and didn’t need any hormone assistance for my cycle. Nonetheless, they did want me to do an ultrasound before the first IUI. For regular readers, you’ll know the difficulties of traveling to/from Moloka’i. For the first few trips to Honolulu, I traveled with sort of an entourage. My sister was still in town watching my first child while I was at work, so everyone came along for doctor’s appointments. It was a nice change of pace for us to be in a big city for a few days.

Attempt #1

Since everything looked fine on the ultrasound, I was able to attempt an IUI with the next cycle. I had regular periods for many months before trying to conceive which ended up being extremely helpful with travel planning. Given how unreliable the local airline was, I couldn’t book a ticket the same day or the day before. Consequently, we would spend two or three days in Honolulu. This in itself was not cheap given how expensive Honolulu is. However, given how time-sensitive an IUI is, it was a necessary expense.

I was so stressed during the first attempt. Besides the usual stressing over whether I would get pregnant, I stressed whether we would make it on time with our flights. Not surprisingly, our Honolulu flight was moved by the airline. I felt it was safer to fly to Maui rather than Oahu from Moloka’i and then catch a flight with Hawaiian Airlines from Maui to Oahu. The flights from Molokai to Maui seemed to have less disruptions than those to Honolulu. My sister was back in Austria at this point. Luckily, she had a friend who lived in Honolulu. She was able to watch my child while I went to the fertility clinic for the IUI.

Two weeks later, I took that test. And it was negative. I wasn’t really surprised by this. I just felt too stressed and I didn’t expect it to work right away anyways. Becoming pregnant is ultimately up to Mother Nature (aka biology). You can only do so much but there are so many things that can happen along the way that result in you not getting pregnant. Almost immediately after the negative test, I went ahead and booked my flights and accommodations around the time of my expected next fertility window.

Attempt #2

Having everything booked and squared away at work made me much more relaxed the second time around. My toddler and I flew to Honolulu, ate some good food, and waited for the smiley face on the ovulation test. It appeared as expected and I was able to go into the clinic the next day for the IUI. My sister’s friend again had some time to watch my toddler during the procedure.

An IUI, or intrauterine insemination, is rather straight forward. A speculum is inserted into the vagina to help visualize and access the cervix. A very thin catheter is inserted through the cervix into the uterus and the washed sperm is inserted. I had to lay on the exam table for an additional 10 minutes before I was able to get up and leave. That’s it. Easy peasy.

Clearly, I had a very limited non-work-related wardrobe

Halfway around the world

About a week after the 2nd IUI, we headed on a very long journey to the other side of the world, Germany. This was probably the longest traveling journey I had done so far with a toddler. The time difference between Hawai’i and Germany is 12 hours. Given how long the traveling was (we arrived two days later than we left), my toddler didn’t have significant jet lag. I have only ever experienced jet lag by proxy (because my kid would wake up at odd hours) but not for myself.

I was in the kitchen of my aunt and uncle’s place when I read the result of the pregnancy test.

Positive!!

I was so relieved.

Those who have actively tried to conceive will likely be able to relate to the feeling of relief from that positive pregnancy test. Not only the joy of being pregnant but the instant resolution of stress related to further attempt planning and waiting on a positive result. I am nonetheless always very reserved with my joy about pregnancy because I know how much can go wrong before it all goes right. But at that moment, I was just so happy that it had worked again.

It’s always a gamble to announce a pregnancy early on but considering we were throwing a family reunion, I did inform my family and close friends of the positive result. Always with the caveat that it was still early and a lot could happen. Ultimately, it was up to Mother Nature and I let her take the wheel.

PRESENT

Life with two kids has been a transition… for us all.

Before the arrival of my second child, it was just me and my toddler. Living in rural Moloka’i, this was even more the case than if we had been around family. It was just the two of us against the world. I prepared my toddler weeks in advance for the arrival of a baby. I made a personalized book explaining what would happen when I go into labor so that they would know what’s going on. They were so excited to become a big sibling. I was excited for them,…and also a bit scared of what the transition would be like for them.

Reflection and Growth

The transition has been beautiful but also hard at times. I never really felt that motherhood was hard until I found myself in the position of my toddler having an age-appropriate meltdown and my newborn needing my attention as well. My heart felt torn in two. I had to triage what needed to be done. Thank goodness for the years of medical training to help with that task and stay (relatively) calm. There have been moments where I was not as collected as I would’ve liked to be. The sleep deprivation likely didn’t help much in those moments.

My patience wasn’t as high for toddlerisms as it typically was. After reacting more harshly than I’d like, I’d feel awful that I reacted with a harsher tone. I made sure to apologize to my toddler for my tone so they know they don’t deserve to be spoken to like that. After reflecting on these moments, how they made me feel, how they must have made my toddler feel and how I would like them to feel instead while also reiterating the age appropriateness of their behavior, things have improved.

One of the things that surprised me the most was how I mourned the loss of the closeness to my toddler. Before the baby, I could focus my entire energy and attention on my toddler. Now I couldn’t. I missed our snuggles, our hugs, our playtime. I felt us growing apart. Thankfully, I have family and friends here who jumped in and took over some of those needs. But it still meant they didn’t have their mom there all the time and I didn’t have those experiences with them.

Now, I make the effort to seek closeness with my toddler in the few moments I don’t have the baby in my arms. Even when I am holding the baby, I get down on the ground and play with my toddler as best I can. I feel we’ve developed a new form of closeness that is meeting most of our needs at this point. I am confident we will continue to find our groove.

FUTURE

Not surprisingly, I’ve been feeling the urge to travel again. I’ve booked the three of us a trip to Mallorca, Spain towards the end of May. We might take a road trip to the Netherlands towards the beginning of May (depending on the weather). In a couple of weeks, I am taking the kids to southern Germany for a family event.

Traveling with two kids will certainly be another learning experience I am ready to take on. I recently came across the Bucket List Family on Instagram. Although they seem to be living the life I would love to live, being a solo mom with two kids would make such a lifestyle much harder. I’m happy to do a light version of their lives and travel often with my kiddos. I’m excited to show them the world and experience different cultures together.

I hope you’ll continue to follow along!

mfg

Fertility treatments are on a spectrum of how much is involved in achieving a pregnancy. On one end, you have home insemination kits where you buy the sperm and it gets injected into the vagina. The sperm then have to find their way through the cervix to the uterus, up the fallopian tube where they hopefully find an egg coming their way. On the other end of the spectrum lies IVF. This can involve many hormone shots, egg retrieval procedures, fertilization of the egg with a single sperm, genetic testing of the embryos, and implantation into the uterus.

My journey as one step up from home insemination. No turkey baster for me!

Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)

The procedure I had performed was called intrauterine insemination. In other words, washed sperm is injected with a syringe and tubing that has been placed through the cervical opening directly into the uterus. It’s essentially a fast pass for the sperm because they don’t have to find their way through the cervix themselves. “Washed” sperm means that any mucous and non-motile sperm have been removed. This leaves the good swimmers left and increases the chances of pregnancy.

Eisprung

Eisprung is the German term for ovulation. Literally translated, it means egg jump. I’d like to think of my eggs as little athletes who have to jump to get where they want to go, lol.

Before the IUI could be performed, I had to predict when my ovulation was going to happen (i.e. when the egg gets released from the ovaries). To do this, I would start using an ovulation predictor kit (available at drug stores/grocery stores and online)about 4 days after my period ended. Each woman has her own cycle length. I had recorded mine for many months prior to starting to try to conceive using an App. That way, I had a pretty good estimate of when things might happen since my cycles were fairly regular.

Ovulation occurs about 14 days before the next menstruation starts. That’s only helpful information if you know the average length of your cycle. Otherwise, when your period starts, you can only say you ovulated about 2 weeks prior. That’s not helpful when you need to know when you’re going to ovulate for a procedure. There are some physical signs you might be ovulating soon. The consistency of the cervical mucous changes to become more watery around the time of ovulation. This allows for sperm to more easily get through the cervix to their destination.

Smile! You’re about to ovulate!

To use the ovulation predictor kits, you have to either pee on the tester or dunk it in a cup of pee in the morning and wait. The one I used showed a smiley face if your ovulation was likely to happen in the next 24 hours. The test looks for the LH (luteinizing hormone) surge. The surge in LH triggers ovulation.

For the first round of IUI, my smiley face unfortunately presented itself the day before my family medicine board exam. I wouldn’t have been able to move that so I spoke with my doctor and decided to do it a day later. This drastically decreased my chances of it working out. However, I had ordered two vials of sperm and was only going to be in the area for two months. I didn’t want to pay for storage or shipping fees if I would’ve had sperm left over.

Not surprisingly, the first round didn’t work (even with my fertility dance). I wasn’t too upset about it since I knew the chances were slim.

Round two went much more smoothly.

Making a baby with my mom in the room

My mother was with me for both of my IUI sessions. I felt it was really nice to share that moment with her and I think she quite enjoyed it as well. Great story to tell my child someday.

So when the smiley face showed up the second time, things really fell into place. I was able to get off of work to have the procedure done the next day.

First, we had to show up an hour before the scheduled appointment to sign off on the sperm. This allowed the fertility clinic to process the frozen sperm for the procedure. An hour later, my mother and I were sitting in the exam room. A nurse practitioner came in, verified my identity, and had me verify my sperm donor’s information on the vial. Then I laid back, relaxed, put my feet up and the NP injected the sperm into my uterus. Afterwards, I laid there for about 10 minutes. That was it. Pretty uneventful. Not painful. And less fun than the alternative way of getting pregnant.

Two lines!

Two weeks after the IUI and on my last day of residency, I took a pregnancy test and it was positive!

My excitement was contained. I was very happy that it worked. I had never been pregnant so I was excited that I now knew I could become pregnant. Knowing how many more steps there were until I would be able to hold my hopefully healthy baby, my reaction to the positive test was not comparable to that in the movies. But I was definitely excited for the many milestones ahead and knew that with each of them, my excitement would grow.

Check, please!

One of the questions I often get is how much this all costs. I can only say what I paid. Each fertility journey is different with MANY different factors that can effect the cost. Some fertility clinics have all-included packages or reduced prices for self pay. I was self pay since my health insurance didn’t cover fertility treatments at the facility.

My expenses, including office visits, genetic testing, labs, imagining, IUIs, and sperm came to about $3,750.00 total. Each additional round of IUI would’ve cost me about $820 (sperm + IUI procedure).

I was grateful to be a position where I was able to save up and afford this. It would be nice to see health insurances increasing their coverage of fertility treatments. Maybe not primarily in my scenario but rather for people dealing with infertility. Infertility is a medical disorder, it’s not something people choose to have. My opinion is that it should be treated as such and be funded like other medical disorders are too.

Correction

Before I wrap up this post, I did want to make a correction to my previous post. I have since then learned that it actually IS possible for single women and lesbian couples to have fertility treatments done in Germany. I had someone come visit me a few days ago who is currently pregnant, a single mother by choice and had her procedure done in Germany. Apparently, the laws have changed somewhat which created a gray zone in the legislature. This made it possible for fertility clinics to start offering the services. So YAY to that!

mfg

And just like that… we are three.