During December 2016 we decided to start trying for a baby. We both knew that this could take some time but was never prepared for what followed. I was fairly relaxed by it as everything including getting married and buying a house took me ages, so why should this be any different. After 6 months of trying Andrea wanted to speak to her doctor. My thought on this was, Is it that unusual to try for 6 months without success? Andrea felt something wasn't quite right, at this point I have to admit, if something was wrong I didn't want to know, I needed more time to prepare myself for any disappointment. Andrea did speak to her doctor, who told her that we would have to wait a year before anything could be done. I thought that was fair. During the next 6 months we moved house and was forced to change doctors, this was where things began to change unfortunately not in our favour. A very determined Andrea approached our doctor to be told you have to wait 2 years. Andrea wasn't accepting that and repeated what she was told by her previous doctor. "OK all I can do is send your husband for a semen analysis and you can have a blood test to assess your hormone levels" A form and instructions were given to me explaining what I have to do. Being honest my initial reaction was I don't want to do this, its too much hassle, why can't we have children like everyone else seems to. In my defence, my reaction was out of pure ignorance and I now know that 1 in every 6 couples struggle and have recently met a few who have had previous experiences. Also I was totally ignorant to what little I had to do in comparison to what Andrea had to go through. There was me being selfish, whilst my wife was battling for every test she could get. Andrea wanted answers, I was worried about the worse outcome and would rather not know.
Back to the test, the nearest hospital by doctor gave me was 25 minutes drive from my house, the instructions were clear 'You have 30 minutes between producing the semen and getting it to the hospital' There are nearer hospitals as I later found out, this was the first error our doctor made. I managed to arrive in good time with my sample and Andrea had her tests.
A week later we were called into the doctors to talk about the results. One of the first things the doctor said was that my semen was fine, maybe a bit low but good enough to produce children. He then went on to say to Andrea "Your husband has had a child through a previous relationship right?" No wrong, very wrong. Has he got the right records was my first response, he has but somehow that was on it? Then he started to look at Andrea's results, I could tell he hadn't looked at them prior to our appointment. He struggled to understand them to the point I thought he was making them up as he went along, his conclusion was all was fine and keep trying. Andrea was then sent for another test to check her ovaries and womb. Ah now this makes sense, I thought this might show us where the issue might be. Of course it didn't and all was fine. Now for the first time I was starting to get confused. I process things in a simple way and believe there is a solution for everything. Meaning we'll family and friends were trying to reassure us and kept saying "just have fun!"
I can assure you this was fast becoming no fun at all!
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