I am such an in-my-head kind of planner, and I’ve been thinking about/planning for a potential #2 for so long, that I realize I have forgotten to let A in on my plans at all. For months I was planning an artificial insemination (at first I thought I would do an at-home low-tech turkey baster version) before I thought to let him know.
It turns out he is against the IUI, as he deems it unnatural. I think he’s thinking of it in the same way I was thinking about trying in March vs. April– he doesn’t want to have that kind of explicit “control” over the resulting child. Also I guess he’d just rather have sex without a condom for once. Ahem. But in case you think I am exaggerating about the pain and my reason for doing IUI, I will tell you that the one time a nurse looked at my area after condomless sex, she said it looked like I’d been raped. I’m not kidding around about this stuff. So, while I find it vaguely curious and somewhat interesting that he is anti-IUI, I don’t really care!
The other thing is that I asked him what he thought about March vs. April and he immediately said April, because it’s farther away. It always surprises me when he acts like a “typical” guy, because mostly he doesn’t. I know he didn’t feel quite ready to try the first time– but the threat of infertility and recurrent miscarriage suddenly changed his mind! I think he was mentally much more ready to be a dad when Gatito finally got here than he would have been if it had happened the first month. But apparently he’s not at all concerned about our ability to have a second and so… cold feet!
How involved is your partner in your planning and decision-making around reproductive issues? Do you also find yourself making the decisions and just informing him/her? Do you ever forget to inform him/her?
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Oh, and happy new year. You don’t mind if I skip the whole introspective post, do you? 2007 was good. Hopefully 2008 will be, too!
oops. Seems like it’s time for a longer chat with A.
I do the same thing. And I find that B does the same thing. A trivial incident happened this weekend, when we decided to make his family pie recipe for new years. He bought all the ingredients, as he was at the store, and I made it while he was napping one day. Little did I know he had wanted to try his hand at making it – and he was quite irked when he found it already done!
Ironically, of course, men do seem to complain when we talk and talk and talk their ears off….
With us, because we were infertile, S knew everything as it happened or as thoughts occurred – it simply couldn’t be any other way. But with minor details regarding the procedures and the shots and the whens/hows he basically just showed up when I told him to. Historically, men have a really hard time warming up to IF treatments – probably because like A, they feel there’s something unnatural about it (which is a subject that makes me extremely defensive, because what – my medically-engineered babies are somehow “less” simply because of how they were conceived? are you serious?), but that’s men for you. They don’t think. Which is why you have to do it for them.
I think that A just needs to have you share some of the IUI stuff info with him. While you are stacking the deck a bit, IUI is not just one sperm being injected into an egg like ICSI for IVF. The swimmers still get to swim and it is still very random as to which sperm actually fertilizes the egg. It is still one in millions. Still rather random.
Also, he may have some anxiety about what he has to do in a cup. Depending on how private of a person he is, the thought of anyone knowing what he did to get the sample in a cup might freak him out oa bit. And rightly so…sometimes you have to do into a room that is in the middle of the hallway and the poor guys can hear passerby conversations. Hardly private in some places. If you are lucky and live close enough, he may be able to do it at home. We lived about 45 minutes away so we would get all ready to go, put the dogs away, he would go up to the bedroom while I literally tapped my feet and then would come rushing down a few minutes later. Definitely not the way any man thinks he is going to father his children.
Maybe you can find some links for him to read to get more used to the idea. GOod luck!
We have been talking about it for months now. In fact, I think we started talking about it after the sleeplessness wore off with Ainsley, but we knew we wanted to wait until she was a little older.
However, now that the time is (ahem) here for us to begin trying again, I think he just wants to be directed, if that makes sense. He wants one more child, it doesn’t really matter when, at this point, so being told what to do and when to do it is all relative. In fact, after the peak reading today, I actually scheduled an afternoon interlude with him. (Secretly, I think he knows the “peak” means all of the craziness will end for at least a few days soon! ha!)
Oh, the joys of trying to conceive.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed for April too. Maybe we’ll end up there together!