The fine print

It isn't exactly fine print but we started thinking about what it will mean to use Midwest Sperm bank. For one, it sounds like there's no guarantee we'll be able to use the same donor with each attempt. You have to fill out a form that lists your top four choices and fax it in four days before you need the sperm. They send whatever happens to be available. If it's your first choice, fantastic. Otherwise you have three back up choices. This doesn't bother me too much. The ordering four days in advance does worry me a little though. What if I order some on the assumption I'll be ovulating soon but then don't?

Then we have the second child issue. We want two kids. Do we want to use the same donor for both children? Other banks offer the option of storing donor sperm for an annual fee. That way you have it later. In fact at most other banks, if you want to use the same donor for every attempt, you have to pay storage while your trying to get pregnant. But it doesn't sound like that's an option at Midwest. Is using the same donor for both kids that important? I say no now, but how will I feel when it's time to have the second child?

Or what about "willing to be known" donors? This bank doesn't seem to offer that option. Again, I can say right now that it isn't important to go with a donor the children can contact in 20 years, but how will the kids feel in 20 years?

In the end, I think we're still going to use Midwest. At least, we're going to set up an account and start getting more information. Once we get the extended profiles we may find that some donors are willing to be known later. Or that other couples have not had a problem getting the donor they want when they need and using that donor for multiple children. These are just things we need to keep thinking about as we move forward.

Speaking of moving forward, I set up an appointment with my doctor for next Monday. When I went to him for my first physical seven years ago, he asked if I was sexual active. When I said, "yes" he asked what form of birth control I use. I said, "none". Then he started on a little speech about birth control so I interrupted him and said, "I have sex with women". I meant to say woman, but it came out women. He started stuttering, scribbled a few things on my file and then went on to his next question. As funny as that was, I'm still a little upset that he didn't give me any information on STD protection because he didn't know I was in a monogamous relationship. But other than that he's been a great doctor so I let that one go. I'm interested to see how he reacts to finding out that I need his consent to order sperm so my partner and I can do home insemination. That should be fun.

Shopping for sperm

That right, I'm still talking about sperm.

We started seriously looking into sperm banks earlier this week. It's almost like shopping for a car. Every car has a different features, every car lot has a different sales tactic. You don't really know you're getting a better deal than you would at the other lot of if you bought that other car, but you sure hope so.

There's a really great bank in California called Rainbow Flag Health Services that gives clients the names of other families who have conceived by the donor they used. They also ask that clients contact the donor by the child's first birthday. So there is no "who was my donor?" issue when the child is older. I didn't get the feeling that we could just order sperm and not mess with the other stuff though. So we looked up some other sperm banks, focusing on ones in the midwest.

Pacific Reproductive Services was promising. They aren't in the midwest but the business is run by lesbians. Unfortunately their prices were some of the highest we saw. Cryogenic Laboratories in Minnesota boasts of being the oldest sperm bank in the country, provides childhood pictures of their donors and a sperm bank comparison page. But again, really expensive. Now, we knew this wasn't going to be cheap. In fact, we were leaning towards this sperm bank, but couldn't understand most of the abbreviations (CLI Value) or figure out what fees we'd need to pay. It was just really confusing.

Then we found Midwest Sperm Bank, which had by far the least information about their sperm bank online. But it was all the stuff we needed. Everything they test the sperm for, how to set up an account, prices, services. From the looks of it they only send sperm for intrauterine insemination (IUI) so you don't have to decided between washed and unwashed sperm. In other words, if you're going to insert it directly into the uterus or on the cervix. They don't offer the choice of knowing the donor. This place has the fewest choices, the smallest donor pool and the lowest prices. I don't have to try figure out if I prefer washed or unwashed sperm, or deciding if I should pay $100 more for a donor who is will to be known when my child is 20. I don't have to go through pages of donors trying to decide who is the best of the bunch for us. It's kind of like closing your eyes and throwing a dart at the wall anyway. You just don't know what you're going to get.

When it comes right down to it, I don't want to stress out over a lot of choices. So we're probably going to go with Midwest Sperm Bank. Although I am a little afraid it's all too good to be true. Unlike many of the other banks they don't charge a registration fee or fees to view donor information. I always believe that if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. And this place sounds too good to be true. I keep waiting to find the fine print. But I checked out a few message boards and quite a few couples that used Midwest liked the place.

So it seems as though we've found the right sperm bank. Next up, I have to make an appointment with my doctor so he can sign a release form required by most sperm banks. Looks like we're finally on our way.

Turkey Baster Method

You can find anything on the internet, can't you? In case anyone is wondering...
Courtesy of Fertility Plus

Supplies needed:
Needleless syringe or oral medicine syringe
Collection cup, baggy or condom
(Optional) Saline without additives or preservatives
(Optional) Tube to attach to syringe
(Optional) Mild germicidal soap

You can ask your doctor for a needleless syringe or you can buy an oral medicine syringe at just about any drugstore or in Wal*Mart near the children's thermometers. Buy the syringe with a plunger, not a bulb end (not the mini turkey baster!). The syringes work pretty much the same way. One that is maybe 4 inches long, or longer, is probably best. The oral medicine syringes have about a half inch narrow tip on the end. You can attach a catheter (thin tube) to either kind of syringe but you don't need to and it may waste more of the semen to use one.

A) Take a clean or sterile glass or plastic cup, baggy, or collection condom and have the male ejaculate into it. You'll probably have better luck getting the semen out of a cup since you could suck the baggy or condom up to the syringe and block the opening, but you may get a larger sample with the baggy or condom. You can use a tiny bit of saline, without additives/preservatives, to help get as much sperm as possible into the syringe, but you don't need to worry too much about leaving a little behind. If you are using frozen sperm, you need to ask the sperm bank for directions on thawing.

B) Draw back on the syringe once with nothing but air, then push the air out again.

C) Draw back on the syringe again, but this time have the end of it in the semen -- the vacuum created by pulling back on the stopper will suck the semen into the syringe.

D) Try to tap out any air bubbles since you don't want to inject air into your vagina. You can do this by slowly rotating the syringe until the opening is facing up. Tap the air bubbles to the top and them push the plunger in on the catheter just a small amount -- enough to get rid of air w/o squirting semen out.

E) Get into a position where you can either stay comfortably for a half hour or can get into the position w/ minimal movement. Ideal is to either have hips raised or to lay on your side making sure your pelvis is canted (usually hips provide natural angle if you hips are wider than your waist, but if your bed, or wherever you are lying, is soft, you may want to put a pillow or two underneath your hip).

F) Slowly glide the syringe, or catheter, into the vagina until it is close to the cervix -- but do not try to get it into the cervix and do this gently. Your goal is to coat the outside of the cervix and to deposit as much sperm as possible as close the cervix as you can get it.

G) SLOWLY inject sperm. If you do it too fast, it can squirt out of the vagina or at least spray away from the cervix.

H) If you are concerned about wastage in the syringe, you can use some saline, without additives . . . add some to the syringe, shake it a bit, get the air out, and inject. This is not necessary since there probably won't be enough wastage to be of concern.

I) Try to have an orgasm -- Some suggest that using a vibrator for clitoral stimulation produces a bigger, more powerful orgasm. Use whatever method works best for you (unless it requires lots of water!). The orgasm helps the cervix dip into the vaginal pool and suck up sperm -- it helps get more sperm up there, and may speed sperm travel. Avoid penetration (as in intercourse or with vibrator). This falls in the can't hurt, might help category.

J) You can use water and a mild germicidal soap to clean your supplies if they will have time to dry completely before re-use, or run very hot water over them. Otherwise you can use saline to clean everything.

Timing for this kind of insemination is the same as for intercourse -- if possible. The best timing is the day before LH surge (as detected with an ovulation predictor kit), day of LH surge, and next 2-3 days, the last day or two being insurance. If you don't have all those options, the day of the LH surge and the day after are best.

The advantage to this method is that you don't need any fitted equipment! You don't even need a speculum (though you can use one).

The success rate is the same as with intercourse, perhaps a bit less because there are usually fewer opportunities for insemination and timing may not cover the bases as well.

Nest Egg

We did our taxes last night. Well, I did. We're lucky and can still file online. I'm sure the day will come when we have to break out the paperwork and try to figure it out, or have someone do it for us. But for now we're perfectly happy letting the computer and government ordained Web sites do all the work.

We're getting back a nice little sum of money, add in our "economic stimulus" bonus check and we'll have quite the addition to our nest egg, which has been dwindling since buying our house. So, what should we do with the money? Every year this dilemma haunts me until we've spent all the money and usually not on things we should have. Like the year we were really poor and had lots of bills but went out and spent $200 at Target. I justified it by saying that we'd been really well behaved with our money and needed a little splurge. If you don't make exceptions from time to time, you forget why you're working so hard. My problem is making sure we don't make too many exceptions.

This year, we're doing much better financially. There's still debt but it's manageable. Bill collectors aren't trying to knock down our doors. So what to do? For the tax return money I'm voting for the savings account so I can see it fat and happy for at least a few weeks. For the bonus checks, I'm voting for letting it finance an attempt or two at getting pregnant. If we're lucky George W Bush will be footing the bill for at least one insemination and personal I can't think of a better way to spend the money.

Aunt Flo must be a drag queen

My period must be a drag queen. That at least would explain why she's usually fashionably late. Ten days this time. At least she showed up and doesn't hassle me too much.

Step 3: Scope out gay guys at a party

Step 3 was somewhat of a success and a bust at the same time. It was a success in that we had a great time and finally gave in to the fact that we're going to have to try do this via sperm bank. Which is in the end the smart thing to do and where I think we both new this was heading anyway.

So obviously the bust part comes in that we didn't actually bring up the baby topic with any of the guys there. Brooke's friend, the one that she thought would at least hear us out but got too scared, was there. We're not sure if he knew who we were or not and Crys actually had a perfect opportunity to talk to him. But she didn't. She took him out to buy cigarettes because she was sober and he wasn't. She didn't have the nerve to ask if he'd given it anymore thought. So I wish I had gone too since I'd had enough to drink to be direct. Oh well. The whole thing was totally worth it though. We haven't been to a party with that many gay people in too long. So that was nice.

This experience is starting to make me wonder. If I've been so hesitant to try out a sperm bank, am I really 100% committed to having a baby? Should the phrase, "it's too expensive" be an acceptable answer to anything conception related? I've been thinking about these two questions a lot lately. Part of me wanted this to be cheap and easy, the way so many straight couples accomplish conception. Have a few too many drinks, forget the condom and there you go. But we're not straight. We can't do it that way. We need to use what's available to us, even if it is a little more expensive then we'd like. At the same time we need to be realistic. We're still young (28) and have time to build up some savings before jumping into this head first if we need to.

Waiting just isn't how we do things though. We decide to do it and jump in. We've always made it work. When we decided to buy a house we had $200 in savings, six months left on our lease and we were in no way ready to be homeowners. By the time we found a house we wanted we had over $3,000 in savings, two weeks on our lease and we were so ready to be homeowners the whole experience was positive. Besides, if we spend our lives waiting to be 100% ready for everything we want to do, we won't do anything.

Crys just interrupted me so she could read our horoscopes. Here they are:
Mandy (Virgo): Just when you were about to give up, a beneficial development occurs. Is it a miracle? Could be. Never hurts to think of it that way.

Crys (Aries): There are still a few dragons to slay, but success is in sight. Your next assignment is to protect your winnings. Don't lose more than you recently gained.

I never put too much stock in horoscopes, but those sure are interesting.

Dreams

I've been having dreams that I'm pregnant. It happens every couple of nights. Last night was one of them. Crys has been having pregnancy dreams too. I think it means we're ready for change.

A little bit about me

As I was cruising other blogs last night, I discovered that I'm not alone in my desire to be somewhat anonymous, which is nice. I also thought it would be nice to say a little more about myself (and Crys).

• I work in an administrative office for a university and my job description should be "a little bit of everything". Instead it's something strange that only kind of describes what I do.
• Crys works for the same university as a cook in one of the dorms.
• I'm going to school part time to get my masters degree. This semester isn't going well.
• If we do get pregnant I'll be taking a year off from school. The thought of taking time off scares me because there's a chance I won't go back and finish.
• We have two cats and two dogs and can always tell when the dogs are getting restless because they starting chasing the cats around the house. A lot.
• One of our dogs has an under bite so you can always see his bottom teeth. Some people think it makes him look angry. I think it looks like he is smiling all the time.
• We bought our first house over the summer and love home ownership. But we haven't had any major problems. Yet.
• My parents live in town and I have no idea how they'll react to the idea of their gay daughter having a child.
• We're fairly certain most of Crys's family will be thrilled.
• I try to be an outdoor person but would rather stay inside reading a good book.
• I studied in France for six months. It was fabulous.
• My favorite TV shows are: The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Family Guy, Heros and Dexter. This could change as soon as tomorrow.
• I ride my bike to work when the weather is nice.
• One of my pet peeves is listening to people whine about the weather multiple times everyday.

So maybe this is more about me than Crys, she'll live.

Periods

I've never been terribly concerned with my period. It comes, I take care of it, it goes away. My period and I do this ever month. Or so I thought. Tracking it is something I never really caught onto or needed for making sure I wasn't pregnant. Since we decided to have a baby I've decided to start charting, even though we don't have a sperm donor yet. Can't hurt to start that now. But I'm on week five since my last period, which doesn't surprise me too much, I never thought I was regular. But I never thought it was this irregular.

So I got to thinking. What if I'm not fertile? What if I can't get pregnant? The nice thing is I have Crys. She'd rather not be the pregnant one, but will do it if I can't. Of course when we discussed the "what if Mandy can't?" it was before it really something I was worried about. And now I'm starting to better understand some of Crys's concerns with being the other mother.

Anyway, I've known a check up with my doctor is something coming down the road, to make sure everything is okay. But now I'm a little worried about the whole thing and the possibility of finding out there's something wrong with me. We'll just have to jump off that bridge when it comes.

In other news, was I EVER wrong about the number of lesbian mom blogs out there. So I'll be adding some more to the "places I visit" section. Plus a few fun things I find online. You may have noticed I have a soft spot for Paris. I do not however like suspense. This blog is brought to you by 'I am legend', a movie I wanted to see but left Nick and Crys watching in the other room because shortly after Will Smith's character fell for the trap, I couldn't take the suspense anymore. I'm such a wimp about somethings.

Being anonymous and other things

Hi, my name is Mandy. One of the reasons this blog is relatively anonymous is because I'm not ready for everyone I know personally to know I'm trying to have a baby. And I know quite a few people who get bored and do google searches of their friends/family. We've spent the last five years telling our friends and family that children are not in our future and would rather not change that story until we're a little further along in the whole process. Like we've found a donor and actually have a shot at getting pregnant. Anyway, all the names are real. In fact, if anyone who knows me stumbled on this blog, they could figure out who I am pretty easily. But I doubt anyone I know will be searching blogs for lesbian insemination or anything related to this blog. I live in Nebraska, which is a complicating factor in all this. Lack of access to sperm banks. Which brings me to one of the other things mentioned in the title.

Crys called a fertility clinic in Omaha Nebraska yesterday. We decided to find out if the prices there would be more reasonable than what we found online. Yeah...no. They estimate the cost at $1,600 per attempt. That's almost $20,000 if it takes a year to get pregnant. We haven't completely ruled out sperm banks but while we're trying to get together the money, we're going to continue with Step 3 in finding a local donor.

We've each talked to a few friends about our problem finding sperm and I was amazed by how many of them have suggested I get some random guy drunk when I'm ovulating and have unprotected sex with him. If you think this is a reasonable suggestion, let me explain why it's not.

1. Even if it's strictly for procreation, it's still cheating on Crys. The suggestion that I should cheat on my partner is offensive.
2. STDs. That should speak for itself.
3. Would you recommend this to a straight friend with an infertile husband? Probably not.
4. I'm a lesbian. That's what got me into this mess. If I were willing to have sex with a guy, I wouldn't be trying to find sperm right now, would I?

I also discovered that I am not nearly as google savvy as I once thought. Usually Crys is the one who has no clue how to find what she needs on the Internet. But this time she out did me. In my first blog I mentioned my frustration at the lack of easily accessible stories about families like mine. In one google search Crys proved me completely wrong and found quite a few blogs that follow through the whole process of getting pregnant. Which means I'll be spending some time this week trying to find some of these blogs. I might try do some school work too. We'll see.

Excuse me...can I borrow your sperm?

Now we've ruled out Nick as the father. He won't donate sperm unless he retains parental rights and Crys doesn't want the father of our child to have parental rights. We priced a few sperm banks online and realized we can afford to try 1.5 times. Sperm banks haven't been ruled out altogether, but we're going to try Plan B first. Find a local donor. It's been suggested that we put an ad on Craig's list, but I'd rather try find someone we know through a trusted source.

Finding local sperm:
Step 1. Define your target group
In formulating Plan B we discovered that we really only know a few guys that we don't work with. And I'm taking a very strict "no dipping your pen in the company ink" policy on this one. We thought it would be a good idea to start with gay guys because they are less likely than straight guys to be thinking about starting their own families. Something that would factor into the decision. Gay boys it is.

Step 2. Send an e-mail to a friend who knows a lot of gay guys.
I've known Booke for four or five years. We go back to when we banded together against the forces of evil in the insurance industry. In other words, we worked in life insurance and management sucked. We've kept in touch on and off over the years and not too long ago I went to her birthday party where there were lots of gay boys. So what do you say in an e-mail to someone you're trying to recruit to help you in your search for sperm? This...

So talking to Crys last night about sending you this e-mail, it seemed so easy and not weird at all. But now, well it seems a little weird. Feel free to tell me I'm off my rocker and no.

Crys and I have been rethinking our "no kids" stance and decided we want to have a baby. We were going to ask a friend to be the donor and be part of the kid's life but decided we don't want the donor to be involved with the kid as a parent and that friend won't donate unless he can be a known parent. We're really only okay with the donor being at most a family friend and that just won't cut it for him. So then we looked into artificial insemination but that's too expensive and our insurance won't cover any of it. We could almost afford to try once. So now we're looking at some other options. Like finding a guy who doesn't really want kids but wouldn't mind helping us out. To me the most logical thing would be to find a nice gay guy but we don't know any. Then I got to thinking that you know a lot of gay guys (or more than I do anyway). Do you see where this is going?

Do you know any guys you think would be okay with me contacting them? You know this whole thing would be so much easier if we didn't need sperm. In fact we made a pros and cons list and "sperm
required" was at the top of my cons list.

So yeah, feel free to say no, that's just too weird. I won't be offended at all. I figure if nothing else, this email will break the monotony of your day quite nicely.

Never in my life did I think I'd be trying to find sperm. In fact I've said or written "sperm" more times in the last week than in my entire life. But that's beside the point. Brooke thought maybe she knew someone who'd hear us out. Unfortunately after sleeping on the thought of talking to us, he got scared and said no. Can't say I blame the guy. I mean, it would be difficult for me to consider donated an egg to someone in need. All this did get us an invite to a party Brooke promises to be "chock full" of gay guys. So as strange as the thought of going to a party to scope out sperm donors seems to me, we'll probably go.

Step 3. Scope out gay guys at a party.
I'll let you know how that goes.

Plan A

Plan A seemed very simple at the time. We asked our housemate and my best friend to be the father. Crys and I would have full custody and Nick would be a part time parent. Or we'd figure out the details around visitation as we went. I've always been a big fan of non traditional families and at first loved the idea of a flexible parenting arrangement that resulted in three loving parents for my child.

But the more we talked about it the more uncomfortable Crys was with the whole situation. Nick and I have big personalities, we're opinionated and Crys felt she'd be left behind in all of the parenting decisions. This was the beginning of the end of Plan A. After three long days discussing what we all wanted after work, I told Nick that we decided to put having an baby on hold until Crys could figure out what she really wanted. It was clear something wasn't right.

At the time I honestly thought we were done with baby discussions. But then Crys and I started talking about having a baby without a third parent. The more she talked about it, the more comfortable she was with having kids. And I started seeing the benefits to raising a child without a third parent too.

That was a week ago. We still haven't told Nick that we've taken having a baby off hold. He still lives in our basement and Plan B might not work out either. Sperm banks and fertility clinics are too expensive for us and insurance won't pay a dime. So we're trying to find a donor ourselves. Like everything in this process, finding a donor ourselves is turning out to be more difficult than I thought it would be.

Today's web site: http://www.gayfamilyoptions.org/. You can post ads for sperm donors, surrogates, or whatever you need parenting wise. Not sure we'll post an ad here. But it's something to think about.

Explanation

I realized I started explaining why I started this blog and never quite finished. In the two weeks we've been trying to find information online, I've found it difficult to know what information is good information. I would also like to see more stories about gay and lesbian families from start to finish. It seems that the few blogs I focus on start with a couple of posts about how exciting it is to get started by charting and picking a donor and maybe a couple of posts over insemination worries (did it take?). But nothing that follows through the pregnancy. Now this could be because I have looked hard enough and I'm still looking. But I plan to include links to sights I find, how we made certain choices and just any information I found helpful.

Today's find: Mombian. It's blog written by a lesbian mom that includes posts about parenting, politics and diversions. The resource directory provides several helpful links but not for the stage I'm at right now. I've book marked the blog and hope to explore it more.

The other reason I started this blog is trying to have a baby has consumed my every waking thought over the last few weeks. It's taken over most of my conversations with Crys. It's like the rest of our life ceased to exist. Hopefully getting some of it out, even if no one ever reads this, will help me take some of my life back.

The beginning

I started this blog because my partner and I have decided to have kids. Unfortunately I've had a hard time getting what I think is good and easy to understand information online. So I'm going to chronicle our experiences trying to get pregnant and if we're lucky, raising our child.

But first I'll start at the beginning.

We were introduced by a mutual friend nine years ago. After a week of getting to know each other we went on our first "real date" where topics covered everything from favorite movies to STDs to having kids. Not at all what I expected. At the time we agreed that having kids was something we both want to do...in the future (we were only 19 at the time). But over the next few years we started to change our minds and started thinking kids just weren't in the cards for us. We would be perfectly content being the world's coolest aunts.

We've spent the last five years telling anyone who asks that we don't want kids and planned to, once we were financial stable, travel, work on our house and focus on our careers. But lately, we both started thinking that there has to be something more. Every night we come home, maybe watch some TV or go out. I do homework (I'm working on my master degree part time), my better half does yard work or plays with our dogs. It's a nice rhythm, but we've gotten to the point where it just isn't enough. Unfortunately we were both thinking this without actually saying anything to each other about it.

It all changed a few weeks ago when my grandfather died and I spent two days playing with my cousins' kids and seeing first hand there really is more to life than work. Crys had stayed home while I made the 600 mile trip to the funeral with my brother. So I had the entire car ride home (my brother and I run out of things to talk about after 2 hours) to think about what I wanted. When we went out for dinner my first night back I decided to have a few drinks and tell Crys that I was rethinking my "no kids" stance. This isn't exactly what she'd expected from my home coming but warmed up to the idea pretty quickly.

Like the good lesbians we are, we immediately went to Barnes & Noble to pick up a few books and hashed out some of the details on the way home.

I think I'll leave it there for now.