Gender Reveal!

But first, a story..…

Heather and I have been married since summer of 2019. Shortly before our marriage, we decided to “pull the goalie”, so to speak and start working towards our goal of having a baby. Originally we’d planned to wait until after marriage, but neither of us were getting any younger, so the decision was made to get a head start.

A year went by with no success. Each month as Heather’s “Lady Time” indicated another unsuccessful attempt, our hopes sank again and again. Dozens of pregnancy tests, dozens of negative responses, dozens of tears.

After a year, we went to the fertility clinic and got tested. We were told the odds weren’t good. Heather showed as having PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome) and I was showing lower sperm counts with the likely culprit being exposure to various materials (lead and other heavy metals along with industrial solvents, etc).

It was recommended to us that we try IUI (Intrauterine Insemination or as I prefer to call it, the “Medicinal Turkey Baster”). Although it was an expensive treatment, my insurance at work would cover up to 6 treatments, so we decided to go for it.

Flash forward 6 months and 3 IUI treatments… As 2022 rolled around, I discovered my new insurance at work didn’t cover IUI anymore. We were devastated. We were forced to deicide to give up and become dog ranchers or continue on with our preferred goal. We took a break for half the year and then decided to press on despite the financial burden it would place on us.

With 5 IUIs down and only the financial bandwidth for a couple more (and not really even that… This put us in some serios debt as each treatment was between 3 and 5 thousand dollars plus the various drugs and pre-treatments), we were surprised to learn that in 2023, my company brought back the coverage for the IUIs! We went back to the fertility doctor and resumed treatment.

Then in June, we got this….