1 down, hopefully not too many to go

erin — Fri, 09 May 2008 23:01:04 +0000

Yesterday I did my first round of inseminations. All things considered, they went pretty well. Some friends had really hilarious stories about their first times, but mine went off pretty smoothly … except for the dogs.

For the uninitiated, the sperm comes in a small vile stored in a large tank of liquid nitrogen. Here’s a photo, so you can see how tiny the vile is:

I did my first (of two) inseminations yesterday morning. I followed the sperm bank’s preparation instructions with no problems. Also per their instructions, after doing the actual insemination, I lay in bed, rolling over every 20 minutes, for 2 hours. It was a very boring 2 hours. I watched TV. I read my book. I drank water (but not too much – because you can’t get up to pee.) And since I’m oh, just a little anal, I set my cell phone alarm to go off exactly every 20 minutes, and each time it did, I rolled to a different position. (Hey, if I don’t get pregnant this cycle, I don’t want to believe it was because I didn’t follow their instructions *to the letter.*)

I had shut the pooches outside the bedroom while I was doing this, so they wouldn’t come bursting in and jump on me. Once I had (I thought) put the syringe and everything else away, I let them in and went on my merry way (which for me consisted of several hours of studying). Then, that afternoon, I noticed Miss Cass seemed to have acquired a new toy. She was thrilled with it – she could chew the hard plastic, it had a very interesting smell, and her Mama seemed extremely interested in it. What exactly was this great new toy Cass had found, you ask?

The sperm vile. Gross, I know. Well, I learned my lesson: I will always make sure I throw the viles out immediately after using them. At least she got to it after I’d already taken the swimmers out. Or it would have become a *very* expensive dog toy.

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They’re here

erin — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:45:32 +0000

The little swimmers arrived first thing this morning. Wonder Dog was *very* interested in the box and followed me through the house as I carried it, trying to get in a good sniff.

Thanks to some excellent and much-needed advice from a couple of good friends, I now know how to safely remove them and use them without freezing my fingers to the container:

wear gardening gloves and glasses;
don’t look directly into the container when removing the viles; and
don’t touch the vile until all the crystals fall off.

Now I am just waiting for ovulation…. The swimmers stay frozen for up to a week, so hopefully ovulation won’t take that long.

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Ocean Dreamer » sperm

1 down, hopefully not too many to go

They’re here