I still believe that you will be here

Right, so we inseminated last week.  It was day 14 of Heather's cycle, she wasn't ovulating, and we got panicky.  The fertility monitor had given us neither egg nor dot, but the tank was in the front hall, kickin' it with the fertility idol, and we were afraid to wait any longer.

What Heather told me afterwards was that women reported that using Clomid delayed ovulation-- some who normally ovulated on day 12 would ovulate on the 17th instead.  Motherfucker.  I would have waited.  That said, sperm tanks aren't supposed to be kickin' it, with or without fertility idols.  It's a reproductive hot potato: you want to get the tank at exactly the right time and get rid of it immediately.  Perishable genetic material and shipping fees are the main reasons, but it's also scary to have one in the house.  It could mean that you ordered too soon, or that you're ovulating late, or maybe that you aren't ovulating at all.  It's a ginormous obstacle in the hallway, too.

Our tank has been shipped away again, which is a relief inasmuch as we know the cryobank won't put us in collections.  It's less a relief that we probably fucked this up and inseminated way too early, but at least I'm not looking at the black plastic behemoth o' dry ice and spunk.

This insemination coincided almost exactly with the Mega Millions lottery, in pursuit of which I wasted $20.  There was much giggling over how it would be so awesome if we won the lottery and got pregnant, too.  That seemed unlikely, though, and we figured we'd probably only get one of the two.  Or, you know, neither.  I can tell you now: I didn't win the lottery.

The nice thing about our eighth go-round is that we've had so much experience in thawing vials, filling syringes, and employing post-insemination rotisserie moves (whenever Heather rotates, I imagine the sperm spreading evenly around her uterus, like olive oil in a skillet) that we don't bicker and stress so much.  However, we did discover that my speculum skills aren't what they once were-- unless Heather's vagina changed shape-- so there was still a fair amount of bickering.  We also discovered that I am the most awesome person in the world, because I made an insemination playlist.

My mom, when I told her I'd planted the tank under our fertility lady, suggested that we might further improve the sperm vibe by singing to it.  Swimming songs, she said.  So I started there: "Baby beluga in the deep blue sea/ Swim so wild and you swim so free."  Then I added traveling songs: Cake's "The Distance," REO Speedwagon's "Take It On The Run."

Then I thought I'd focus on encouraging the baby, too: "Here Comes My Baby" by Cat Stevens, "Howlin' for You" by the Black Keys, with Liz Phair, Bruno Mars, and Aretha Franklin to follow.  Beyonce-- as always-- had something crucial to contribute:

Baby boy you stay on my mind
Fulfill my fantasies
I think about you all the time
I see you in my dreams.

For pure impact, though, we have to hand it to the great Britney Spears, whose classic, "Hit Me Baby One More Time" kicked off our adventure and thoroughly distracted Heather from kicking me in the face when the speculum first went in.  If you learn anything from this blog, it should start with using your camera phone to take pictures of the cervix, and you should now add singing along with Britney Spears during insemination.

What's great here is that we knocked out the basic insertion quickly, then cuddled in bed during rotisserie time, holding hands while Chris Isaak helpfully noted that "baby did a bad, bad thing."  I spooned Heather and she sang along to the totally-unrelated Disney classic, "Bare Necessities," exposing her sorely limited familiarity with the words.  Then we got up and had dinner.  It was so mellow, so comfortable, and so unnaturally natural that we were all the more disappointed that this insemination-- pre-ovulation, with a single vial-- has a lot of strikes against it, when this is exactly the kind of experience that should produce a baby.

My hopes are limited at best.  I told Heather that I only had about 2% optimism about this one taking, and she disputed, saying that I should at least have 20%.  I don't, but I get it.