I assume everyone here knows that you need a sperm and an egg to make a baby.

So in order to have our 3rd baby, my husband and I needed to make sure we were in good working condition. We had little reason to be worried about the health of my eggs, since I managed to produce two healthy young children.

However, my husband has a complicated medical history. He was sick in 2004, yet we managed to conceived our second child during that time. Then he underwent multiple, major surgeries and chemotherapy treatment, any one of which could have affected his ability to make sperm.

We decided to get his fertility checked out. He went to visit a “reproduction clinic” to get someone to look at his sperm through a microscope.

Now, you’d think that a modern clinic would have sophisticated, medical, scientific processes to obtain and examine men’s sperm. Well, no.

He’s given a small plastic jar and led to a small room with a couch — and a pile of x-rated magazines. He then has to “produce” a sample – manually – while the scientist waits outside.

I asked my husband, “So um. Did they say things like, ‘Let me know if you need any help?’ ”

After the successful “production” of the sample, my husband handed his jar to the scientist, who casually used a pipette to suck up a still-warm sample, squirted it onto a slide, threw it under a microscope, and the sperm appeared on a TV screen.

Apparently they look very cool - not like tadpoles - but like tiny black diamonds with extremely long tails.

The scientist did a quick count. The bad news is that my husband has a rather low sperm count. There aren’t many of them. Yet they’re all wriggling their tails happily – which in medical terms, means his sperm are motile. And that’s the good news! They’re POTENT!

Cool! Now all we have to do is hook them up with my girls over a bottle of red wine.

More next week!

Click here to see the evolving story of Making Baby 3.

Image from Corante.

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