When I take time to think about the reproductive system, it baffles me that anyone could ever be infertile. Yes, I get it if a man has a zero sperm count or a women has no ovaries, but short of the complete absence of sperm or egg, it perplexes me that conception could not happen. Of course, I am living proof that this does, in fact, happen, but I still do not follow how it does.
Mother Nature seems to go into overkill with conception. A man who has fewer than 10 million sperm is considered to have a low sperm count. Ten million!! Considering you only need one sperm to do the job, how is it possible that nine million sperm cannot manage to get the job done? My brain cannot even wrap itself around what 9 million of anything would look like, so I doubly cannot fathom that 9 million sperm are expected to miss the mark each month.
So then we take measures to increase the sperm count and succeed. Now we have 45 million sperm ready to do the job. If I cannot wrap my mind around 9 million sperm, I am hopeless in imagining 45 million. The best I can do is think about increased odds, which, in this case, would be increasing the odds of conception by 500%. That sure seems like it would be enough to do the job. For me, it was not.
Also, each intrauterine insemination (IUI) is supposed to have about a 10-15% chance of succeeding. So, 10 IUIs at the most should do the job, right? I had over 20 IUIs but never conceived. How is that possible? By running any probability matrix, I should have conceived twice over, but I never did. How is that possible when supercharged sperm are deposited directly into my cervix on a day when we know that I am ovulating? It absolutely flummoxes me.
Perhaps my reproductive organs need to read a book like Conception for Dummies.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
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