Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Our future baby daddy arrives... IN A TANK!!!


God lord in heaven... what goes into selecting a future baby daddy!!!! After talking to some other lesbian couples ttc (trying to conceive- yep there's a whole new language when it comes to trying to make a baby), we decided on a bank. The lady who runs the joint is wonderful. Very friendly, informative, and helpful. So I emailed her with some donors we were interested in and she emailed us later that day with the profiles. Okay, wait, so I'm suppose to figure out who our future baby daddy is over 10 pages of information? WTF? It is amazing how my control issues were challenged during this process. I mean, can I get a first name, age, shoe size? Only teasing but seriously, it's a little freaky to think you are making this major decision and you've never met the guy. At any rate we chose donor #009, yep, that's his name #9, James Bond double 00-9, Mr. #9, 9'er 9'er. Can you tell I am still hung up on not having a first name? It is killing me.

So anyway, we ordered Mr. #9 on Wednesday and he arrived last Friday on our porch with "BIOLOGICAL SHIPPER" blasted on the package....geesh, what will the neighbors say? Anyway, we tucked him away in our dining room, while Slice (our cat), pawed at it, trying to decide what the hell was this monstrocity in his space?

By Monday, we got our +opk (ovulation predictor kit- this tells you when you are about to ovulate, thus increasing your chances of conceiving). Around midnight, Danielle was armed in her surgical gloves ready to knock me up. Not the most romantic visual but anyway, it goes with the territory.

So where am I now? I am in the dreaded two week wait (tww- I know, another abbreviation). What is the tww? Simple.... HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The two week wait is the time between ovulation and when your next cycle is due. This is the time that you notice every twinge, tingle, cramp, nudge, pain, and pregnancy symptoms known to man in hopes that you are forming a wonderful little baby in there. This is the time that you check your fertility chart 20x's a day at work, hoping that something will pop out at you and hope you are pregnant. This is the time when you avoid sushi, alcohol (damn!), and anything dangerous in case you are truly pregnant. This is the time when you can blame your moodiness on being potentially pregnant, and finally, this is the time you develop your Axis I diagnosis because you end up going nuts (can I say that if I'm a therapist? It wasn't very p.c. -oopps).

So there you have it. I will check in later with some links to all of the cool ttc sites. I will also break all boundaries I have with any of you and post my chart. Hey, if you are good little girls and boys, I will even post a picture of the tank so you can wave to our future baby daddy.

Setting the stage

We decided to try to have a baby over a year ago. I knew I wasn't getting any younger and with my biggest fear looming over my head, we decided that at age 28 we would try to have a baby. So after some decision making, we asked a friend of ours to be a donor and he readily agreed. We tried with him about 4x's but... no baby! When we would go to visit donor #1, we would stay at my friend Erica's house. Her mother once suggested to Danielle that we ask her 21 year old son. God, talk about robbing the cradle. We blew it off but on our last visit to donor #1, we lightly talked about it. The following month (or so), he agreed. He was great, he would agree to fly out to us if we needed him to and once I flew to Florida to meet up with him. I think to date, we've tried 3x's with him. Danielle loves Erica and her family (as do I) but we started to think about using frozen sperm primarily out of convenience. Because believe it or not, there is a lot that goes into trying to coordinate a baby making session. There is coordinating my schedule, his schedule, taking time off from work, buying a plane ticket, traveling, timing of ovulation, stress included with ovulating and timing, it's just a mess. So that is what led us to thinking about using a sperm bank. We had been on break for several months because of the stress, money, timing, etc and then finally, I was sitting at my desk and decided that I wanted us to try that month. Okay that week. So I emailed Danielle who agreed thought about who we wanted to use and then ordered our tank the first day.