David G. Clingensmith, Sr.
March 31, 1931 – April 21, 2008
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Psalm 91:1
We will miss you, Grandpa.
Saturday, April 26 will mark the end of 44 days straight of this:
In my never-ending struggle to produce even the most minute amount of live, straight-swimming sperm, I have tried many unusual things. Some things have helped, some have hindered, but none have done the job they were ultimately supposed to do.
This photo represents my last medical effort. Time alone will tell if this final path of modern medicine can help lead Heidi and me to the final destination that has eluded us for so long now.
Just so you know, I hate needles. I can’t tell you what a hurdle it was to stick this into my body for the first time. In case you were wondering, this shot is given intra-muscularly (meaning that I have to bury the needle to the hilt so that the fluid can be injected into the muscle). Learning to inject myself was definitely one of the biggest fear-overcoming situations in my life.
I love trying to overcome my fears, but I certainly won’t miss these needles when they’re gone.
See above.
Public speaking is not easy.
The fear of speaking in front of a group is one of the top fears in American society. Beyond simply overcoming the realization that all eyes and ears in the room are fixed on him or her (a realization that intensifies self-consciousness), a good public speaker must be interactive and engaging in order to be effective in delivering a message. Having to communicate under these circumstances can be daunting for anyone.
While I am generally comfortable around large groups of people, I am incredibly unconfident speaking in front of them. I don’t mind the publicness of speaking, I mind the fact that I am oftentimes unable to communicate the message I want at the quality I want to deliver it.
In order to learn to overcome this life-long struggle, I went today to my first-ever Toastmasters International meeting. The goal of Toastmasters is to help you “become the speaker and leader you want to be,” and these people aren’t playing around.
Without going into too much detail about the meetings, the goal is to make attendees comfortable with public speaking by making them speak publicly. Then the rest of the group goes about dissecting the speech’s content and delivery. Ultimately, the speaker gets almost immediate feedback on the shortcomings of his or her speaking ability. It can be nerve-wracking to have people pick you apart like that, but as long as you don’t take things personally and you use the critiques to better yourself for the next speech, this group really seems to help.
Even though I was a first-time guest, the group gave me the opportunity to participate in what they call table topics. During this part of the meeting, members are all given a word of the day (ours today was goad). One person is then picked to stand up at the podium. On the spot, they are given a random topic to talk about for two to three minutes and they have to find a way to incorporate the word of the day appropriately in their presentation.
I was asked to talk about my first car, and I had to find a good place to use the verb goad. I started off fairly well and was enjoying myself until I said “ummmm” for the first time. Allow me to let you in on a little Toastmasters secret: they have a person at each meeting whose only task is to listen for “filler sounds” and then hit a desk bell each time the forbidden sounds are used.
The sound of that ringing in the middle of my speech was unnerving. In three minutes, I got dinged seven times. I could tell that the poor lady ringing the bell felt bad at having to keep picking on the new guy, but she was just doing her job. I was so frazzled at the bell that I kept losing my train of thought and I even forgot to use the word of the day. They were kind enough to let me know that everyone gets dinged a lot on their first try, and that I was nowhere near the group record of 17 dings.
Either way, I have a long way to go, and I’m sure I’ll have more stories to come.
Pray for me.
I hope your Easter celebrations are a blast. Enjoy the time with family, the time to rest, and most importantly, the time you spend celebrating the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in order to make it possible for us to spend eternity with him.
He is risen indeed!
This blog is subtitled “Uncensored, but Spell-checked” for a very good reason: I am very conscious of spelling mistakes. Certain events from my past have made me this way.
I remember in first grade making a poster-sized drawing of the Statue of Liberty (complete with picture-taking stick figure tourists) for the annual school-wide art show called Reflections. On the base of my rendition of the historic American landmark, I used a permanent marker and skillfully etched the words “Stachew of Liberty”. When I showed my parents, my dad mentioned that I spelled “statue” incorrectly (for a first grader, I think I displayed great phonemic awareness with stachew). Despite my excellent sound-it-out skills, I was embarrassed to have the now unchangeable misspelling on my artwork, so I ended up cutting off the lower half of my drawing and submitted my rendition of the historic landmark from the knees up.
That’s the first time I really became aware that spelling mistakes can be embarrassing, but it didn’t make me permanently immune to the occasional misspelling. In fact, after graduating from college, I had a particularly funny Freudian-slip spelling error on the resume that I sent to various PR firms here in Phoenix. Rather than tell you the whole story, let me show you a picture I found recently that more than adequately explains the embarrassment I felt with my post-graduation spelling mistake:
Who knew that you could earn $145K – $204K per year with a BA in Pubic Relations? Talk about getting paid well for something that you love to do. If the VP makes that much, I wonder what the President makes…
After the “Beaches of Normandy” speech, he asked us questions about the things we were doing to get pregnant, and we explained which methods we tried (at least the ones we were comfortable admitting to trying). After hearing about all of our efforts, he gave us a piece of advice that is far more powerful than anything we got from any other source.
He said, “You know, so many people I see are so concerned with getting pregnant that they consume their lives with finding the magic bullet. Instead of focusing on each other, they try different methods and buy books and devices that claim to hold the secret. I always tell people that they are better off taking the money they would spend on ovulation kits, and spend every dime of it at Victoria’s Secret. Just focus on arousing each other and enjoying the intimacy, and pregnancy will come in time.”
Now, I would be lying if I said that the male side of me didn’t jump for joy at the idea of a Victoria’s Secret shopping spree, but the thing I appreciated most was that he refocused us what was most important in a marriage — intimacy. Cultivating a strong bond with your spouse is more important to a healthy marriage than getting pregnant, and we realized that we had begun to seek pregnancy at the expense of remembering to enjoy each other sexually. We made a commitment that day to remember that sex is more than a means for producing children; it also provides a special connection that runs deeper than any other bond that any two people could have.
At the end of our appointment, Heidi’s doctor asked if he could pray for us. He knew from another conversation that we were both Christians, and we gladly accepted his offer. You don’t have to be religious to know that having another person pray for you can be a very moving experience.
I can’t recall his exact words, but I remember him praying for God to prepare us for and bless us with a child. At the end of his prayer, he looked up with tears in his eyes and thanked us for helping him remember why he does what he does day after day. What an amazing experience to go into an infertility appointment with nervous insecurity, and leave with peace in our hearts and a fresh perspective on God’s provision for our lives.
I know that some of you reading this may not have the experience of having someone pray for you to have peace in this time of uncertainty, so please allow me to offer up a prayer on your behalf. My hope is that this prayer can be as meaningful to you now as Heidi’s doctor’s prayer was to us that day in his office:
God, you know the pain and the uncertainty happening in this person’s life now. I pray that you send your peace to them now and that you keep their eyes on the fact that You have a plan for their life, and for the life of any child You choose to bless them with. Bring them encouragement through people in their lives, and help them to be an encouragement to others they know who may be struggling with difficulties in getting pregnant. God, more than anything, let them know that you love them. I pray this in the name of Jesus, who showed us love that is greater than any we could ever find. Amen.
While it was fun to try out new ideas, we grew increasingly frustrated that month after month we were having no success. It seemed that so many people around us were getting pregnant with hardly any effort, and here we were spitting on microscopes and standing on our heads in the nude. After more than a year of failed experimental baby-making, we decided that we should discuss our difficulty with conceiving with Heidi’s OB/GYN.
Needless to say, we were both worried that something major was wrong with us. We began to think the doctor might tell us that we should get used to the idea that children would only know us as “Uncle Michael” and “Aunt Heidi”. Our first infertility appointment at Heidi’s OB/GYN was far more encouraging than we could have predicted.
Heidi’s doctor was a man that came very highly recommended by some friends of ours. As we sat in his office and explained our struggle with getting pregnant and our worries that we may never have kids, he listened intently. He reassured us that having no success after one year of trying was not as uncommon as we had thought. In fact, about 15% of couples are unsuccessful in getting pregnant after one year of trying. Knowing that we were in the same boat as about 7 million other American couples, definitely helped in easing our nerves.
We briefly discussed the various medical tests that would help to pinpoint any specific biological cause for our infertility. The doctor advised Heidi to begin with a simple regimen of blood tests used to evaluate the hormonal levels that affect a woman’s ability to conceive. Along with the new treatment options, he encouraged us to continue our efforts to get pregnant. He told us that many couples tend to conceive during event the most basic infertility treatments.
When we asked about the best frequency of sex (I was shamelessly hoping to resurrect the rock star sex), he gave us a very vivid analogy on how conception works. He started by saying, “You need to think of the vagina as the beaches of Normandy.”
Let me tell you, a doctor that explains medical details with World War II battle analogies is going to pique any man’s attention. I sat on the edge of my chair as he continued.
“Your goal is to take the beachhead, and you are going to need to deploy a lot of soldiers to accomplish your mission. Keep in mind that many of your soldiers will be lying dead on the beach, but all you need is one to get past the enemy lines and you have the battle won.
“Now, you don’t want to send your soldiers in a few at a time – that’s what happens when you try to have sex every day. You won’t have enough sperm to make much of an impact.”
Goodbye rock star sex.
“You need to make sure you have a good amount of sperm built up. I would say that trying every other day during ovulation is a good rule of thumb.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. My wife’s OB/GYN essentially wrote us a prescription for sex every other day during ovulation, and did it while deepening my American patriotism. This guy was good.
This post is a sample chapter of a book I’m writing (current working title: Swimming in Circles: A Sperm Story). As you have probably already figured out, its a look into the lives of Heidi and me as we continue our long-running battle with infertility. I hope one day that it will be published. I thought I would post it here for your reading enjoyment:
Baby-Making 101
Throughout our first year of trying to conceive, we were willing to try just about any “secrets of the trade” in the hopes that it would improve our chances of getting pregnant. If you know of a manufactured or homemade method that worked for you or someone you know, I can guarantee that we tried it. Anyone who came to us with advice impacted our sex life in one way or another.
Some methods were scientific:
Heidi would wake up each morning and, even before turning the alarm off, she would put a thermometer in her mouth and take her temperature. She even had a nice bedside calendar where she kept record of her early morning temperature-taking. Once she reached the appointed temperature, we would commence with the baby-making. It’s not as sexy to hear your wife say she’s hot for you when she means it literally.
We tried a device which the writers of the book The Conception Chronicles affectionately dubbed “Spitnik”. Basically, each morning Heidi rubbed a small amount of her saliva on the glass lens of a compact personal fertility microscope and set it aside for a few minutes to dry. If she saw what looks like a fern pattern through the eyepiece, it meant that we got to hop back into bed and get busy. If she saw what looks like a close-up of dried saliva, it meant that I needed to take a cold shower and get ready for work.
Other methods were word-of-mouth cures:
Heidi was told that she needed to elevate her legs over her head after sex. The naked headstands didn’t work for us.
Someone else swore by the “Be Sure and Pee Immediately After Sex” method. I personally recommend the “Take a Ten Minute Nap After Sex” method instead.
A friend of mine came up to me one day and loaned me what he said was a sure-fire cure: his old workout socks. He handed me a pair of bright blue, breathable cotton/poly blends with pictures of cartoon sperm on them. The socks had the caption, “Survival of the Fittest” sewn into them. Those beauties were what he wore while training for a marathon during the same time of year that he and his wife were trying for kids. So far, the sperm socks have done nothing but give me athlete’s foot.
My favorite approach was one I like to call the “Rock Star Sex” method, which required that we have sex every day during her ovulation period. While I knew this advice was surely the brainchild of some guy with no medical credentials whatsoever, I made sure that I supported it as a viable option each time we discussed getting pregnant. One month, my wife finally caved in. The Rock Star Sex method didn’t work one bit, but I personally found it to be the best way to fail at getting pregnant that I have ever tried.
to be continued…
Today is President’s Day and — I can’t believe I am actually admitting to this — I spent part of my day off from work watching Oprah. Before you judge me, just know that she had the voice-over cast from Horton Hears a Who (Jim Carrey, Steve Carrel, and Carol Burnett) on the show. It wasn’t an Oprah’s Book Club episode or anything.
I realized something disturbing today as I watched the show — Oprah’s fans are crazy (not fun-crazy like your best friend from college, but crazy-crazy like Robin Williams all jacked up on Ecstasy). Anyone else out there think that the people in Oprah’s audience are bizarre?
People say that religious organizations are cultish, but I have never seen anything that can compare to the following that Oprah has. These people are out of control.
What do you think?
