Me, my wife and IUI

Today marks one of the key steps to me and my wife realising our dream of having children. After three years of marriage, she has still not conceive. Apart from the usual family and social pressures that you face (not that I bothered too much), there is also this issue of our biological clocks ticking. My wife is her mid-thirties while I am in my early forties. Medically we have been advised that the older the woman the less chances of getting pregnant or complications in her pregancy.

Two years ago we had seen a gynaecologist. However after one year without success and coupled with the fact we felt that he was more keen to work with "normal couples" rather than focus on one with infertility problem like us, we decided not to continue with his services. In early April this year, we have been seeing new gynae who is attached with a Special Fertility Hospital. We were impressed with the results that the Hospital had achieved, helping couples with fertility issues. So far our experience with this new gynae has been good. He is a nice person and seemed caring meticulous in his work. He discussed all our results throoughly explaining in layman's term the various readings associated with the tests. It is through him that we discovered my wife has PCO . This is polycistic ovary syndrome that afflicts a section of woman. That partly is due to my wife being "overweight". I was actually more concern of other health problems when I heard this like the vulnerabilities with diabetes. We also found out yesterday that our new gynae recently had twins through an IVF program in the same hospital. My wife and I agreed that having gone though similar problems may have attributed to my gynae being more passionate in his work with infertile couples like us.

Anyway after all the tests, he suggested IUI(intrauterine insemination) for us. This is partly due to my wife's age plus the hospital has a "70%" success rate and a lot cheaper than the next stage, i.e. IVF. We accepted his suggestion and decided on this regime.

It has been weeks and after the 7-days jabs, prescribed the latest pen-based method, the gyane told us that we can go for IUI this evening, followed by another one tomorrow morning.

Last evening, my wife asked me the most poignant question,"With this test coming, are you hopeful ?". I told her that we should leave everything to Him. Without doubt, if He wills anything is possible. If He does not, we should be prepared for the outcome. However, at the "human level", we should strive with whatever means available to us in the pursuit of our dreams. My wife then smiled at me.