Why is this blog here?

Please vote in yonder poll to help give me some direction.

So, I suppose I should start with why I am doing this blog.

To make a long story short, "I got no swimmers". I found this out earlier this year after many months of unprotected sex (with my wife) not producing babies.

She went to the reproductive endocrinologist to get her bits checked out, and while we were there they went ahead and asked me for a sample.

The collection process is exactly what you would expect. You are given a small plastic cup and directed to a room. In my case, it was basically a carpeted bathroom with a loveseat, television, vcr, basket full of porn, a commode and a sink. Y0u can choose to use your imagination or the provided materials. I thumbed through the magazines long enough to feel like I needed to wash my hands, and after doing so, went about my business.

After leaving my "sample" at the counter, we went on our way. A few days later while the wife was out doing something the Dr called. The news wasn't good. Sperm count was zero, zilch. After discussing with him if the fact that it was ZERO was bad, and being told it wasn't, I told him that I would talk with my wife and see what we wanted to do from here.

The feelings that you experience after being told something like this are strange. It's not quite the blow you expect, it's different. You just have to come to terms with it. At that point, you really don't know much. Particularly WHY. And of course, this Dr doesn't deal with that, you have to go see a urologist for that.

After talking with the wife (another post about that at some time), we decided to get the blood work done to make sure my hormone levels were correct, and then goto the urologist. Of course, my hormone levels were perfectly normal. So much for the easy answer.

A visit with the urologist tells us that all the bits that can be examined externally were in good working order and "quite nice" in his words. This left us with plumbing problems. More discussion led is to believe that the likely cause was one of my 3 hernia repairs caused scar tissue to clog it. And, of course, there is really no way to say for sure without some pretty invasive and painful testing.

This lead us to option #2 which was IVF after surgical extraction of sperm from me. Which means the boys would have to go under the knife. We started going down that road until one night we discovered that we were both doing it because we thought it was what the other wanted. Neither of us really wanted to do it. It has risks and problems for both of us.

Following that decision, we started down the road to adoption and eventually foster parenting. But, that is another post as well.

So, there you have the Readers Digest version of events so far.

The other reason for this blog is because among the online infertility community the fairer sex is well represented with almost nobody from the male side of things. As is true with most things, the male view is somewhat different and I hope to bring my version of that view to light and encourage other men to speak about similar things.

Well, thats it for now, time for dinner.