Saturday, June 25, 2005

Is There A Gene For Proofreading?

It seems that bad timing, communication problems, and a poor sense of direction run in my family. Let's just hope that the donor's family is better at all three.

Case Study #1: My father got married tonight. It was a beautiful celebration (and a study in culture clash as my dad's very Anglo family clumped together in corners while his wife's Puerto Rican family had a blast on the dance floor). However, it almost didn't happen at all, because the invitation had the wrong address. No one (including the owner of the house where the ceremony was held) noticed in the six weeks between receiving the invites and today. A circus ensued as guests kept arriving at the wrong location, finding each other and then muddling their way across town to the right house. The best part was when my uncles looked out the window of the limo and saw my brother walking from the subway. They picked him up and spent 30 minutes making static-y cell phone calls and laughing hysterically until they found the house. Cait and I, not so lucky, got routed (by my dad) onto a highway that might as well have been a parking lot. Eventually we made it.

Case Study #2: We are hosting a brunch for everyone who's still in town tomorrow morning. We've spent virtually every minute of the last 2 1/2 days getting ready for it... but I managed to convince myself that it was at noon tomorrow. My grandmother informed me (thank God!) that I had in fact written 11:00 am on the invitations. Oops....

Case Study #3: It looks like we might have missed the egg.* It's too early to tell, but my temp did not go up (ok, .1, but that's practically irrelevant) and my cervix was still open most of the day today. It's frustrating -- not just because it might mean another wasted month** but also because it means my body is getting less and less predictable. In all the months we've charted, I always ovulate the day after the positive OPK. There was only one other month (last month doesn't count because of the freezing room) where ovulation *may* have occured 2 days after the OPK, and that was the cycle one year ago to the DAY. This is getting a bit freaky....

If we're lucky, the donor's family is quite the opposite, and the sperm, imbued with such genes, will have no trouble with the directions from the uterus to the fallopian tubes. It will find the egg at JUST the right time, and it will be such a suave communicator that the egg will issue a properly timed and addressed invitation for it to come right on in. Here's hoping.

*However, I am remarkably calm and Zen about the whole thing. I just keep saying to myself, "If it's meant to be, it's meant to be." Hopefully I can maintain that. Cait is not as Zen.

**The MOST aggravating thing is that this cycle might have a better chance of success if only the bank/our doctor's office hadn't lost our vial. We could have done a second insem after we realized yesterday's was probably too early. No such luck.

2 Comments:

  • Better early than too late! Remember those swimmers can live up to 4 days in there. Doing it early gives you a better chance of a girl!

    Good luck, I hope you get that rise in temp in the morning.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:30 PM  

  • Sadly, the frozen ones have a MUCH shorter lifespan than sperm straight (pun intended) from the source. More like 12 hours... :(

    By Blogger Jen, at 10:43 PM  

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