The Ruminator

What to expect when you’re not expecting X: The Great wall of Gyna

• Lord Sutch
• 2
• Posted on June 13, 2017January 10, 2018

Back to hopeful again. Boy. We had our follow up appointment with the specialist to find out what the hell happened and why we had the unforgivingly named “total fertilisation failure”. Apparently 2 per cent of IVF rounds end at this point.

For those keeping score at home, our last round failed at a point where only 10 per cent of rounds fail. So Kim and I are really good at getting into that tiny minority group.

We learned that my sperm (henceforth: warm dudes) had desperately sought a way into Kim’s eggs. That in the morning when the embryologist went to check on our progress she saw a bunch of warm dudes still hustling and bustling their way round the petri dish, still alive, still wiggling, still trying to get in. But no dice. Not in those shoes mate.

The doctor wasn’t 100 per cent sure but he was fairly certain that Kim’s eggs just won’t let my people in. I asked if they were anti-semitic eggs. He said he hadn’t heard of that before. I also asked if we could have this condition named after us. He said it wasn’t that rare that this would happen. I wondered if he was anti-semitic.

So we’ve taken to calling it the Great Wall of Gyna.

I said in my last post that I hoped that the reason for failure was on me, that Kim had had to wear so much that I would like to shoulder some of it. This part still looks like it’s more to do with the female component of procreating than the male but this has made Kim more determined. She’s a fighter. She’s so strong. So resilient.

In fact we think the Great Wall may in fact be the reason for this whole fucking schmozzle. We had to get to this stage to find out.

The good news is they can do something about it. ICSI. Or Intracytoplasmic sperm injection as its known to us in the biz (I’m so not in the biz). Basically once I jizz into yet another plastic receptacle they’ll take a warm dude, chop off its tail and inject him directly into the egg thus bypassing said Great Wall of Gyna. It’s a more expensive option and it’s also another point at which it can fail which is why it’s not done as a matter of course, but it’s our solution.

So now we plan out another go. Another round on the carousel of IVF exhaustion. And not only that but we’ve managed to get the funds together so we’ll be doing it in about a month’s time, when nature allows us to. And I’m nearly wholly delighted. But there’s a part of me that is so drained, so goddamn sick of the highs and lows that I’m tired at the thought of dusting myself off and getting back on.

But ya gotta. Because I really want that child. And Kim really wants that child. Fuck it, if it happens, it better be an amazing child.