Background Babble

Ok, so here we go. It is just past 1 year since my miscarriage and what I thought was the end of my world. I am very happy to admit, I was wrong. Today I am writing to keep in touch with so many friends and family that I can barely keep track of who I talked to and who I didn’t. EVERYTHING about my life is different and I could not be happier. So this first post is a little background: I am happy, no make that ecstatic, I am healthy, I am single and I am having a baby.


I resolved to do this baby thing on my own because my age is getting the better of my oocytes (or so my doctors say) and I want (need) a baby. For those of you who have had a miscarriage before, you understand, once you feel what it is like to be growing a whole other being inside of you there is NO other priority in the world than to get that back and carry it through fruition. And I wanted a baby before that too (as so many of us do and as my long term friends and family can attest). And so it was to be…. as soon as I got my life in order… and therein lay the problem – NO ONE is ever completely ready for this, no one ever has EVERYTHING in order, and maybe somewhere there was still hope that I wouldn’t have to do this all by myself. And so I delayed, I had some self doubt, I hesitated, and I cried. Oh I cried so much, I’m surprised I didn’t die of dehydration with all of those tears. But I have the most amazing support group and they all said in their own ways, “get back up, wipe yourself off, and do this, we’re all here for you and you know it is what you want.” I can never thank all of you enough, some of you have no idea how much your stories, your encouragement, your gentle challenges affected me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I am not doing this alone, I have all of you and your love.


So I had planned on January, and that slipped away and then I kept myself busy and wasn’t talking about it and February was upon me, but my friends didn’t stop talking about it (you know who you are, again thank you) and it hit me, March was my ultimate inner deadline and I was pretty much on track to miss that. So instead of beating myself up even more, I dove in with a deadline – a very short one at that. With my new garnered strength and excitement, I went back to the webpages (I had scoured and studied them when I first decided to take this path last summer, but for legal reasons I did actually need to wait until at least January, that break was devastating to me), but March was now in my face and I did a 180.


So sperm donors – wow, have you ever even thought about the implications of selecting the perfect donor, I mean really, where do you start? So I had a list of 5 cryobanks that work with my (in)fertility clinic and I went through the websites for general ease of use and content and number of donors and blah de blah blah blah. Finally I decided which company to use (seriously, this took days, and I was afraid to talk to anyone about the process because apparently I’m indecisive and didn’t want to have to go back to one of the other sites) But there is a reason for this, see, they only have a small amount of the information on the donors available to the public, then you have to pay more for more information, even if you don’t buy anything – holy crap! So I made up my little spreadsheets and finally decided on Fairfax Cryobank. Whew, one step down.


Then I bought the extended profiles, my eyes are tired just thinking about all of the stuff I looked through. I did narrow it down quite a bit right away by only looking at donors with ID options (so if my kid wants to look this guy up when he/she is 18 they will have that option, that seems fair, I cannot imagine telling my child, “yeah, I didn’t want to spend the extra $200″ of course the extra amount is per vial…. but we’ll get to that). So now with the extended profiles, I’ve given myself a deadline and maybe I’m rushing this incredibly huge decision, but wow, I almost had a kid with my ex and it can’t be worse than that! Maybe it is better that these Cryobanks are screening the donors and selecting the best of the best, we all know my personal track record with men hasn’t been great. So with that little piece of happy enlightenment I narrow it down to a few donors and call Mom – you didn’t really think I would do this without her, did you? So I’m emailing profile information and audio files while we are talking on the phone and then we let it simmer for another day or 2. Now more than a week of painstakingly going through the details of all the tall blond or brown haired men who have finished bachelor’s degrees and have or are seeking some graduate education (you have to start with some criteria and I always pictured my baby looking like me – imagine that – and I was a litte blondie, so light hair - I always wanted to be taller so what they heck, pick a tall one – the whole idea of picking a donor on phenotype (the way they look) is kinda insane, everything about this picking the donor is insane, but I digress), anyway so now Mom and I have gone through so much information multiple times we are getting everything confused and finally we narrow it down to 2 – there were actually 3 but one wasn’t available – why do they even show you one that isn’t available! So these last 2 come down to me personally being able to get over the age thing. I know this person is a donor I will likely never meet, but selecting a donor you know is 21 or 22 years old – again I know I’m not sleeping with this guy, but it still feels a bit creepy that I’m old enough to be his mom and I want have a baby with his sperm! And why do they ask him in the interview what he thinks would be a romantic night or the perfect date – so confusing). But after getting over the whole cougar idea, I took a vote from my friend followers on this and they unanimously voted for the kid – I mean young guy. Healthier sperm + less aneuploidy = better chance of having a baby – DONE!


Ok, so do it – just order it!


Ok, but how many vials???????? So this sperm stuff is expensive (and I’m being gentle with my word choices here) but so is shipping (another $200ish) but the shipping is the same regardless of how many vials you order and the newest research suggests that a woman of my age has about a 20% chance of releasing a non-aneuploid egg each month (aneuploidy is when the chromosomes are messed up (too few or too many), this accounts for most “unsuccessful attempts” and most first trimester miscarriages – including my own anembryonic miscarriage at 10 weeks last year). So if you buy more than one you only pay one shipping fee, but then you also have to add on liquid nitrogen storage fee at your facility and if you don’t use all the sperm then you can sell it back for half price less the shipping….. do these people know what kind of torture this is for a type A person? More spreadsheets and calculations… but wait, since we are on the topic of personality – did you know you can get a personality profile (Keirsey report) from your donor and compare it to yours (all for more money mind you, although you can take your own for free at http://www.keirsey.com ). I of course took this but decided not to see if I was compatible with my donor or not – again, something about this being a sperm donor and not a dating site. Anyone want to take a guess at my personality type? Guardian provider (ESFJ) if you read about this and you know me, well, yep, dead on! And if you don’t know the report well, just look at the 2 words, guardian (needs someone or something to watch over) and provider (needs something/someone to take care of or something like that, read the website, they get a little more specific about it). But seriously, umm, yeah, I already knew I needed the baby, thank you for reminding me crazy-website-personality test that is distracting me from committing to the number of vials to order.


2 vials, somehow I decided on 2, Mom agreed and I ordered them. There were more decisions that weren’t as difficult, like the prep of the sperm, IntraCervical Insemination (ICI) which is unwashed, IntraUterine Insemination (IUI) which is washed or in vitro fertilization (IVF) which although cheaper at this level is way more expensive overall and I’m hoping not to have to go that route. I ordered ICI because it’s cheaper and my clinic is going to prep them again even if I buy them washed (most clinics do, it is a process to capacitate the sperm so they can penetrate the egg – I’m starting to think I should have a science side to this blog page thing – a side for of all the things I am now nearly an expert on, between my background and all the research I’ve done).


I ordered the sperm (from here on out more affectionately known as “the swimmers”) March 25th (yes this was as procrastinated as possible) they arrived on the 27th, I needed them by April 2


I think this is the point where we say, let the games begin.


Technically I ordered the sperm in March…