Glen Hansard Rules

I don't have much to say lately, so I figure I might as well throw some good music out there. If you haven't seen the movie "Once," you ought to... it's well done. Glen and Marketa Irglova won an Oscar for this song in the movie. I've heard a whole host of versions of the song, and I'll admit that the stripped-down acoustic versions are better - but I'm a big fan of The Frames, so I was pleased to see it played with some fiddle, drums, and bass. Enjoy.

Just Take Your Medicine

When I was about four years old, I had a fever.

"Mom, why does my head get so hot when I'm sick?"

"It's your body fighting the bug you've got."

"So it's good?"

"Yes, honey"

She then went to give me some kind of fever-reducing medicine.

"Mom, what are you giving me?"

"It's to help with the fever, honey"

Pause.

"But I thought my fever was a good thing?"

"Just take the medicine."

"But who is going to fight my bug if I get rid of the fever?"

"Just take the medicine."

"But mooooooooommmmmm!"

"Just take the medicine."

God love her. She is and was a tolerant woman. But I can't help but feel some kind of parallel between this and some of the ridiculousness with regard to infertility. I feel like we repeatedly try to treat the symptom and not the disease.

"Take the medicine" is something I think about every time I shoot my wife in the ass with some unpronounceable goop in a syringe. And I wonder - there's got to be a reason more and more people need fertility intervention. There's got to be some issue, some imbalance, some evil, if you will, that's causing this - and yet so little has been invested to try and determine what "it" is.

According to a Reproductive Genetics Center study, .05% of men were functionally sterile (sperm counts below 20 million) in 1938. Today that rate is 8-12%. Some studies argue the rate of male infertility is growing at a rate of 1 to 2 percent each year. Excuse my French, but that, ladies and germs, is seriously fucked up.

And yet, there is a dearth of research into causes of infertility while we pump each other full of hormones and masturbate in back rooms to try and create a family.

Now, I know there has been SOME research - we know that have a battery of chemical, pharmaceutical, and environmental possibilities for infertility. Heavy metals, hydrocarbons, varnishes, glues, solvents, pesticides, oxidants (free radicals), etc. – all exhibit effects on fertility but determining statistically significant causality is another matter. However, it’s probably safe to say that if you work in a rubber factory or if you finish floors for a living and you’re just getting to the family planning part of life, move to a state where IVF is covered by your HMO.

Type "in vitro" into a Yahoo news search though - you know what you get? Hundreds of articles about diagnostics markets, diagnostic partnerships, marketing agreements between businesses making in-vitro diagnostic machines, partnership agreements with foreign companies for in-vitro computer technology, in-vitro medical device permits, acquisitions, stock options, blah, blah, blah...

People are making a lot of money on us. I'm not sure they care about the cause.

"Just take the medicine."

Indeed.

I guess this is the end of my "good faith" sperm donating days...

You may have already seen this story, but I thought it was worth a post.

So if this guy is legally obligated to child support, then we should all be asking our respective embryologists for new skates or a baseball glove or something of similar ilk - I mean, they're just as much a responsible party in creating life as the parents were. Hell, the embryologist probably spent more time with the sperm than the biological father.

21 years old, going on... 1 month...

Since I seem to be a news hog lately, and full of only ugliness and evil, I thought I'd send along this link since it's fairly uplifting and interesting.

So I'm morbidly consumed

the hits just keep coming.. I'm not searching them out, I just see them in the paper. If I had a sense of humor today, I'd see the irony in all of this - but it just makes me ill. I don't get it. Insight, anyone? WTF?

Why them?

Every once in a while, I come across a news story that involves an infant or a child and some grotesque abomination that their only-considered-a-parent-due-to-matching-dna caretakers inflicted upon them. Sometimes I've actually read stories and just sat there and cried. But always - ALWAYS - when I read about abuse to children, as a person who has struggled to bring my own biological into the world, I wonder - "why them?".

It never gets me anywhere, and yeah - we all know that there are crack babies born by the bakers dozen on any given day, but I read the following story, and I just couldn't get away from it. Why them? Why her?

On point

Stumbled across a great, and so topic appropriate, quote:

“Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.”

– Christian Nevell Bouvee

I'm working on some new material, based on some of your recommendations that folks have e-mailed. You kids out there in blog-o-land like meaty details, it seems! So I'm working on a follow-up to the coffee/beer post and also something to give you an idea of our deliberations on IVF. So more to come, hopefully. Best to you all, and thanks for all the positive feedback.

- M

Vacation

Hi folks - didn't want you to think I'd given up so quickly... I'm actually going to be on vacation for about a week. If they've got wireless at our destination, I'll definitely sneak in a post.

My plan when I return is to take on the taboo. Personally, when I got elbow-deep into this ridiculous baby chase, I wanted to know the unseemly details, the lurid intracacies of kids-by-science.

This is an embarrassing process for both the man and the woman. It's FAR more invasive for women, but that's not to say there aren't plain weird moments for the guy. And, well... this was the whole idea of the blog - to present the guy point of view.

Now I know most of the ladies out there are going to let out a collective "GIVE ME A BREAK" as I whine about this, but the process of "collecting a sample of semen" is truly bizarre. And nothing can really prepare you for the walk of shame - the trip down the hallway with a cup in your hand as everyone looks at you knowing you're headed back there to smack your junk.

Maybe it's a gross subject, maybe it's funny, perhaps it's titillating. Regardless, I'm pretty sure none of you had to conduct such improper behavior a few paces away from your mother-in-law...and frankly, that was just part of what made my first experience in this ridiculous collection room so painfully memorable.

So in the meantime, feel free to comment on whether or not you think it's appropriate material, or if you'd rather I skip to more important topics involved in the IVF process. If anyone else wants to share oddball details of their collection room experience - go for it. The more we can laugh about it, the more normal it might seem.

See you in a few...

A warm welcome

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and for those of you with similarly themed blogs for adding me to your links. It's good to see some comments in here and I love that some of you have shared links to other horror stories on par with mine.

I wanted to post a bit of clarification as it related to my situation. You'll notice I tend to post in the past-tense. My wife and I have actually been undergoing IVF for the last year and I'm posting in a way that is a bit of "catch up," if you will. It's an effort to share our story for anyone who might find it useful, supportive, funny, what have you. And frankly, it seemed preferable to just saying, "we've been undergoing IVF for a year, it sucks, and...DISCUSS..."

My hope is to ultimately get caught up to where we presently are in a short time, and make the comments more real-time, as I suppose a more traditional weblog would be. In the meantime, I'll just continue to tell the story...