January 24, 2012

My love,

I want to talk to you a little bit about implantation bleeding. Mainly, the fact that it’s a bullshit myth. Well, not entirely. I know it’s happened for real, but not nearly as frequently as infertile women trying to conceive would like to think. Let me back up – if you’re a girl, then you’re intimately familiar with the ways of the female reproductive system, specifically the menstrual cycle. If you’re a boy and you’re gagging right now, I have three words for you: suck it up. I want you to learn a lot from this journal, and one of those things is that infertility erases a good deal of modesty from your life and menstruation is nothing to be ashamed of.

Anyway, implantation bleeding is what (sometimes) happens when a fertilized egg implants in the uterine lining. This can cause minor bleeding. Very minor bleeding. But every woman trying to conceive wants to believe the spotting at the beginning of each period is implantation bleeding. Community boards are FULL of anxious women asking if they could be experiencing implantation bleeding, or IB as they call it. Needless to say, within a couple of days, when it’s revealed to be a full-fledged period, IB is the furthest things from our mind.

As I’m sure you can tell, little has progressed in the last six weeks on our journey to meet you. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve been on Metformin for about five months and I’m having regular periods for the most part (hence the IB angst.) Also, your dad’s been on a drug called Anastrazole for a month in hopes up upping his testosterone and lowering his estrogen, eventually raising his sperm count. He had some blood work done two weeks ago to check if the medicine had any effect. Today was his follow-up appointment and it turns out that the meds worked! His estrogen is down and testosterone is up. Good news for the sperm! We’ll find out more about that in a few months. He’s going to take the pills for another 90 days and then do a semen analysis.

So all in all, not a bad day! Wherever you are when you’re reading this, I hope you’re happy, healthy and warm. Goodnight, my love, and I’ll talk with you soon.

Love,

Me