When my husband and I decided to try to conceive a baby, he was dragging his feet about getting the process started at all. Even though he wanted to be a father someday, he was not ready for “someday” to be in nine months. The only thing he was looking forward to when we started out was getting to do lots of “baby-making.”
When we did not conceive after three months, I started to become concerned that there might be a problem. Once this stretched to six months, I was completely freaking out. I suspected there must be a problem and wanted to talk with a doctor about it today.
I told hub about my concerns, but he was not worried at first. In fact, I suspect he was more relieved than anything. However, I told him I was going to schedule my annual gynecologist appointment and talk with the doctor about my concerns at that time. He believed that the doctor would tell me that I was overreacting, so he did not get too concerned about it.
It turned out that the doctor did consider the inability to conceive after six months to be a problem. He drew some blood and found that my hormone levels were in the low range of normal.
The next step was to examine a semen sample. This is where I ran into a problem. Hub was not interested in providing a semen sample. He did not want to admit that we might have a problem, and he certainly did not want to have a doctor examining his body fluids. You should have seen his face the first time he saw the specimen cup that the doctor sent home.
Today, there is an at-home test for both women and men called Fertell. I wish that product had been available when I was going through my fertility woes. It would have been a much easier sell to collect a specimen to run through a gadget in our bathroom than to ask my husband to provide a sample in a specimen cup that I would drive over to the doctor’s office.
Talking with my spouse about fertility issues was hard, but we never would have pursued fertility treatments without my taking the lead. Someone has to get the ball rolling.
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Photo Credit: Lynda Bernhardt
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