My husband, Mark, has a genetic condition called Klinefelter syndrome that causes problems with sperm production and makes it difficult to have kids. Luckily, we found out about it in advance?after he got hit in the groin during a floor hockey game his doctor tested his sperm and discovered it. So when we decided we wanted to have a baby, we put our name on a waiting list for a fertility clinic.
Trying to get pregnant isn?t usually something you share with the world, but right from the moment we were referred to the fertility specialist, I started talking to friends about what we were doing. For us, having a baby would involve intracytoplasmic sperm injection, which is a type of in vitro fertilization where they put the sperm right into the egg before inserting it into me. That meant I was going to have to take medication so I could produce a lot of eggs?I joked it would turn me into a frog. Then a doctor would harvest the eggs, like 10 at once, and fertilize as many as possible. I never thought of trying to conceive as something that should be private. My husband was also very open?even more than me. I would usually say something like, ?We have fertility issues and luckily found out early.? But Mark would tell people, ?I got hit in the balls and found out I have Klinefelter?s, which makes you produce very low levels of testosterone and therefore have very low sperm count and bad sperm mobility. Now I am on testosterone which makes me sterile so I also have some frozen sper...