Speaking of Sperm...

My posts have been utterly devoid of humor lately, so I thought I’d share a couple of amusing sperm-related anecdotes. (After all, who doesn’t like a good sperm story?)

The first one happened a couple weeks ago, when the container for R to do his sperm DNA fragmentation test was delivered. As the Fed Ex driver carried it into our foyer, she looked at me with a puzzled expression.

Her: This doesn’t look like horse property.
Me (a bit confused): Um, no, it’s not.
Her (now a bit confused herself): But, isn’t this horse sperm? (motioning to the container)
Me (surprised): Ummm, nooo.
Her: Huh. Because I just picked one of these containers up yesterday from a house that had horse property. The woman told me to be real careful not to lose it because it was the sperm from her prize stallion and it was really important that it gets to where it’s going.
Me (at a loss for words): Oh.

She stood there, clearly expecting some sort of explanation. I’m not good at telling people “none of your business,” but over the past few years I’ve become pretty good at being blunt about infertility, so I finally decided to go that route with her.

Me: Well, there’s nothing in there at the moment, but tomorrow it will have my husband’s sperm in it.
Her (a bit taken aback): Oh. Um. Oh. Well, we deliver a lot of these. I guess you never know what’s in them.

At that point, I proceeded to launch into an explanation about the test, the lab it was being shipped to and what the results would mean. I figured, heck, if she’s curious enough to ask, she deserves answers, right? Her eyes kept darting back to her truck, no doubt trying to figure out how she could make her escape from me, the crazy infertility lady.

But I’m betting the next time she delivers a container like that to a house that isn’t on horse property, she won’t ask any questions.

Sperm-related anecdote number two happened this week. R and I made the trek to our out-of-state clinic so he could freeze some sperm there for our future IVF cycle.

After we got back home, I was having a conversation with my mom. She’s learned a lot of the infertility lingo during these past few years and can actually follow along pretty well with the medical jargon.

She asked how the trip and appointment went. She knows why we were there, and that he has also frozen sperm in the past at a local clinic.

I assured her that everything went fine. Then she lowers her voice and asks, with concern, “It doesn’t hurt him when the people at the clinic do that to him, does it?”

Oh, my! Talk about a reverse flashback moment to the preadolescent “birds and the bees” conversation she and I had. I must say, “how sperm is collected for storage” ranks at the top of the list of Things I Never Thought I’d Have to Explain to My 71-Year-Old Mother.