As Expected

Every month when I find out that I'm definitely not pregnant, I just say I flunked. I flunked again this month, as expected.

To be honest, I really, really don't think IUI works much better than no intervention at all (especially without medications - but I don't want the medications either).  That said, it's a lot cheaper than IVF and just in case it does work it seems like it's worth a try. Since Mark's numbers were up this past month, we'll do another IUI round this month and then evaluate whether to do a third and then a fourth.

I'm getting better about not buying ten zillion pregnancy test kits and starting to test a week and a half before anything could even show up.  I only went through three tests this cycle.  Believe it or not, that's a huge, huge improvement!!

Speaking of money, we've just received our first official bills so now I can really break it out.  Here's how it looks so far for one round of IUI:

Initial Visit with Dr. Sparrow: $280.00
Bloodwork for Me: $23.29 (insurance actually covered a lot of the bloodwork costs)
IUI: $175.00
Semen Analysis: $100.00
Sperm Wash: $225.00
Total:  $803.29

Adds up quickly, doesn't it?  The next round won't be as expensive since we won't need bloodwork, an initial visit, or the analysis. Just the IUI and the wash. 

So far this process isn't all that stressful. It's pretty sobering to think that we just spent $800 for essentially nothing.  Also, now that I've been through the IUI once, the novelty of having the new experience is definitely wearing off and it sounds more like a tedious errand to me than anything exciting, probably also because I have absolutely no confidence that it's going to work.  When we get to the IVF part (assuming we do) I think I'll be a lot more excited because I think the statistics for IVF are so much better for us.