The Baby Ball Is Rollin'

Now that I have health insurance, we've wasted no time in getting cracking on our baby plans.

The insurance went into effect May 1 (well, technically, at some point it will have gone into effect May 1), and I was at the lab that morning, bottle o'pee in hand, sleeve rolled up, ready to give them all my some blood.

Oh, the pee bottle. Did I mention that? One of the thing that my nephrologist likes to see is a 24 hour urine test, to check my total protein and creatinine clearance.

In other words, how much good-should-stay-in-my-body-stuff and bad-should-be-peeing-it-out-stuff (respectively) are my kidneys putting out over the course of 24 hours.

They're not kidding about the 24 hour thing, either. For a full day, I have to catch every drop of pee that I produce and put it in a bottle, which has to be refrigerated until it's dropped at the lab (within 48 hours of collection), at which point I also give them blood.

As you can imagine, this takes some careful planning.

First, I have to go to the lab to get the pee bottle. Usually, I have to show a doctor's orders for this test before they'll give me the bottle.

Once, I didn't have the orders, because they'd not yet been faxed, and I had to argue with a nurse about getting the bottle. Finally, I asked her just how I could possibly hurt myself if I peed in a bottle without authorization from a physician.

(This was when I lived in Houston, and I was particularly annoyed because there was a toll bridge between home and the lab, so it would've cost me an addition $3 to go back later to pick it up!)

Then, after I have the bottle, I have to figure out when I can collected it, because I can't leave home long enough that I'll have to pee while I'm out.

I usually collect from Sunday morning to Monday morning, then drop it off and do the blood on Monday.

This time, however, I collected on Sunday/Monday, then kept the bottle in the fridge an extra day, since I didn't have the insurance coverage until Tuesday.

I picked up my results today (no way I trusted them to fax everything to all my doctors on time) and, to my unprofessional eye, it all looks pretty darn good.

They do give you a cheat sheet on the print out, of course. For each test, it lists my results, as well as the normal range, plus any that are outside the normal range are flagged with an "H" or "L" to show if they are high or low.

My kidney function is not quite normal, but closer than I've seen it since I started paying attention - and that includes the visit a few years ago, when the nephrologist told me that my "disease is completely resolved" and said that the only concern he'd have with my getting pregnant would be my blood pressure (which was high then, but is now normal).

My nutritional stuff all seems to be right on target, except that my calcium is a teeny bit low. I guess that means I need to have more of my yummy-chewable-sometime-forget-they're-not-just-breath-mints-cinnamon-flavored supplements. Darn.

I don't have hepatitis B or C, nor do I have syphillis (not that I was worried about any of those things, but they are standard preconception tests) and I am immune to rubella (German measles) which is all good to know.

Best as I can tell, my FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) looks right, for that point in my cycle.

Oh, and I'm not pregnant.

Yeah, no shit.

One of the tests that my nephrologist ordered was a Beta HCG. I asked his nurse about that, and explained that, while I am checking this all out because I plan to start trying soon, there's no way I'm pregnant yet.

She said that "He doesn't expect you to be pregnant, but it will give you baseline information."

Ok, cool. Except that what they ran, according to the report is a "qualitative HCG" which just says "negative" as opposed to giving an actual (very low? zero?) HCG level. (I assume that would be a "quantitative?")

So, yeah, all we learned from it is that I'm not pregnant.

On Monday, I will have day o' doctors:

• 10:00 am - Dietician
• 10:30 am -Gastric Bypass 2-year follow up (5 months late)
• (Drive 30 minutes)
• 12 noon - Nephrologist

On Thursday, I'm scheduled for the HSG at noon. I have a few questions that I'll probably go ahead and ask the OB/Gyn then (she performs the HSG) but most of the talking will wait until we'll go back to see her on May 21, to discuss my labs and do a pelvic, which will include a Pap smear and some other tests of the naked variety.

We'll confirm this with her on Thursday, but I think that assuming none of those tests turn up any issues that have to be resolved first, we should be good to go for June!

As to the other half of the baby-making equation, we've definitely, sort of, maybe got our donors narrowed down to four:

1. Bow Tie
2. Popeye
3. New Guy (just downloaded his info last week)
4. Doc

On Wednesday, we notarized and mailed off the consent forms for all four of them, which we think is the last bit of paper work that the sperm bank requires before we can call up and place an order.

We also ordered lifetime photos for Popeye and Doc. We've already seen baby/toddler photos of all of them, and that's all that's available for the other two guys.

We'd really like to have more photos of the guy who ends up being the guy, for the kid's sake, but in terms of checking him out before hand, we're fairly ok with not having the adult photos of those two, because for both, the "staff impressions" part of their profiles refer to them as "tall, dark and handsome."

They say nice things about all the guys, but they do not say that they are all good looking. Sometimes it's more like "friendly eyes" or "a nice smile," so I figure that when they do say "tall, dark and handsome" they must really mean it.

We hope to receive those photos in the next week or so, then we might rearrange the final four, or could possibly even eliminate one.

When we are actually ready to order, they want us to have at least three choices, in case our top choice isn't available in any given month. (They quarantine it for six months, pending repeat blood tests, and then release it, so the supply varies.)

So, a lot has happened over the past week, and even more will be happening over the next week and the next few, and we could be in our first "two week wait" as soon as six weeks from now.

Holy crow!