Baby Daddy

We have finally decided on our sperm bank and potential donor. Originally we thought we would use a friend that looks eerily like Bud. We talked about it jokingly for a year with him and then he moved away. While I still think he would seriously consider doing it, we have decided to go with an anon. Being in a state with virtually no family protection and rights makes me nervous to have a third party involved.

We were shocked at the small number of banks and donors available though. For some reason I just pictured men lined up around America donating. That is certainly NOT the case. The bank we chose had 289 donors... of which 190 were available...of which 34 were African American (like me)...of which 13 were active participants! So after spending 200$ just to cyber creep on these potential baby daddies we only had 13 to look at. I felt a little gypped. We looked at 3 other banks of which only 1 had African american donors and decided to stick with the bank closest to us.

The process of picking was exciting but scary. Looking at personality profiles and pictures and reading essays made it way more stressful. How can you judge a personality on paper? How well do we know ourselves really? If you had to write a description of yourself and let everyone you knew read it, would they agree with it? Probably not. Not to mention, these boys are young...I think in 10 years they will look at these profiles and laugh at themselves. So with that in mind we looked at the profiles separately  and wrote down our top 5 and gave each other our picks. We then looked at the ones that matched first and went from there. We narrowed it down to 2 and finally chose "the one" last week! At least one big step is out of the way.

My partner is worried our kids will want to meet their donor when they are older. She doesn't want that, but I am open to it when they are adults. I think it's perfectly normal to want to know where you come from whether you're adopted or an IVF baby or even come from a "normal" nuclear family. I come from a "nuclear" family of four but when I hit my late 20's I found myself more curious about my ancestry beyond my grandparents and began searching. I didn't find many answers on either side and felt like my family tree must have looked like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I felt like I needed to know more about where I came from. I was super upset with my mom and dad for not having answers. My mom said that her and my dad would just have to be enough for me. And guess what? It turns out they are. The donor is willing to be contacted when the child turns 18, I guess it is a bridge we will have to cross when we come to it.

We go next week for our first appointment to prepare for a mock transfer! Sooooo excited to get this show on the road!

Baby Maybe?

So this is our big debut! My wife and I have been together four years and finally tied the knot in August. We have talked about starting a family for over a year, but with both of us in school it never seemed like the right time. Now that we have both finished and have jobs with our feet firmly set on the ground, we have decided to take that next step.  My partner Bud (a loving nickname short for Rosebud) and I had no clue where to begin. I posted a couple of times on our local lezzie group page to see if anyone had advice/suggestions. NOT A SINGLE RESPONSE.  I was sad and disappointed. I was really hoping to find support from local families that were going through the same thing.  I feel as if there is a secret community we don't know about. We finally met another lesbian couple(fast forward 6 months) that was going through IUI and were more than willing to share their ups and downs.

We set up an appointment in October to visit their clinic and went to a free seminar. We were the only same sex couple. After the seminar we met with the staff, who were more than friendly to us and made us feel at home.   I must admit though, at first it felt a bit like when I bought my first car and was signing papers willy nilly.  We made an appointment to come in for an evaluation that next week. We met with the doctor (forgive me and my layman terms and lack of IVF abbreviations-i'll catch on soon enough) and it was a whirlwind of an appointment. She started right in on IUI without us getting a word in. When she finally finished, I softly whispered "what about IVF?" For some reason I thought we would have to start with IUI and IVF wouldn't even be an option yet. However, she was more than excited we were ready to jump right in. She even suggested that we do reciprocal IVF! I was sooo happy. We have decided to wait until the March 2013 cycle to start but will be getting tests and workups starting in January. Since I am the carrier, I will do a mock transfer in January and Bud (donor) will start the retrieval process in March.

 I started BC this month and it feels so strange to think that the process of having a baby for us begins with taking pills to prevent babies. I gotta tell ya that this whole thing is overwhelming. I was trying to read a blog and couldn't get through it without having to stop to look up DP, RE,  &POAS! I had no clue that it was so serious! I am going to attempt to reach out to as many of you as I can because we have no idea what we are doing and would just love as much suppport as possible through this journey. I look forward to sharing with you and hopefully by the end of all of this, help another couple that might feel like they are just as in the dark as we are.