My cycles have been around 30-32 days for the last 6 months. Last month, I had scheduled the sperm delivery for so early that we almost missed the 7-day insemination window (the dry ice is only good for 7 days after delivery). I was determined not to let that happen again so I scheduled delivery for CD14.... and by Murphy's law, I got a positive OPK at 3pm on CD13. Not the end of the world - still plenty of time for a good insemination but a little nerve-wracking that we cut it so close again.
In order to ensure that we got the delivery early in the day, I called FedEx and asked them to hold the shipment at their sorting facility rather than put it on the truck for delivery. That way, I was able to pick it up at 10am rather than wait for the guaranteed-by-4:30pm delivery. (FedEx actually usually comes through our town around 4pm so this seemed worth the 40 minute drive to the sorting facility).
We had decided to try a water-bath thaw this time. I'd read a study done with cattle IUI and it showed a dramatically higher success rate with water thaw. We purchased two high-quality thermometers of different brands (so that we could at least make sure that they match each other or take the average of any small difference). We set up our large cooler in the bathtub and filled it with hot tap water and then added cold water to bring it down to 95 degrees F.
At around 11:00 am on CD14 Erin dropped one of the vials into the water and timed 3 minutes and then did the IUI. I stayed in bed for about 45 minutes while Erin made breakfast.
My mom and step-dad came to visit that day. It was a little stressful to have company while trying to keep track of everything else too but it really worked out fine - especially with my early ovulation.
That night, Erin and I stayed up really late and did the 2nd insem. around 2am on CD15. That was 35 hours past my positive OPK so it actually was a bit late by OPK-timing-standards. We left the 2nd vial in the water bath for 4 minutes and when I checked them under the microscope it looked like every single one was motile. It was so cool! The last vial looked like it had about 50% motility (totally fine for a frozen sample) but this one was AWESOME! The other "good luck" sort of thing was that the date on this vial was 8/30/04 and here we were using it on 8/31/07 - how weird!
We have had some trouble with the sperm just flowing right back out of the cervix (I'm not convinced that we're actually getting it all the way to the uterus) so we tried something a little bit different this time. We cut the end of the catheter off so that the flared end would hopefully block the os a bit and help force some of that sperm in the right direction. It seemed to work OK. Erin said there was definitely less coming back out. I like this way and I think we'll probably stick with it if we do need to try again.
So this all sounds great right? Unfortunately, my temperature didn't rise Saturday morning as it should have if I had ovulated in the last 24 hours. It did rise on Sunday (a lot) so it really looks like I actually ovulated on Saturday and that we were early.
Who knows if that 2nd vial of super-sperm can survive that long (I've heard that post-thaw sperm is only viable for about 6 hours). We'll see.
So if things don't work out this month, it leaves us with some decisions to make next month. We can either a) get two vials and use them at 24 and 48 hours after surge b) get 3 vials and do 20, 30, and 40 hours past surge (if we don't get a temp rise) or c) stick with same plan as before - the "standard-issue" clinic timing.
Oh well, no sense in thinking about that stuff yet.
You really don't realize how small 1/2 CC is until you see it. This little vial comes less than half full (I set it next to some lip balm for size comparison).
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