Donor Drama

So....last month when I found out I was not pregnant, the first thing I did was go on a search for a new sperm donor. I found him and by 10am I had checked it off my list and headed to the gym.

K, at work, was fine by the choice--she generally trusts I'm making the right decision and just wants to hear the main points/highlights. It's not that she doesn't care about the details, she just hates the research and finding of the details and I love that shit. We had a great weekend together, even going so far as telling a few people that we were choosing a new donor and oh wasn't it great, joy joy.

By that Sunday night I had the novel idea that 'hey, why don't we sit down together and go over all of his information, 'audio interview, lengthy family history', you know. And once we did...all was not so rosy in donor land.

Let's just say in my haste to find something/someone to blame and solve my problem of not getting pregnant, I looked over some things because I wanted the new donor to be the one. And upon closer examination, he was not the one after all.

We then decided to have another look at our old guy, Seth (not his real name!). What was it about him that was making me want to switch? To my horror, I saw that we'd never even ordered his audio interview or baby photo?!? Was it not available then? I can't imagine how we overlooked these details other than that I was probably too cheap to spend the money on it back in February. Now...I want all the information and I'm willing to pay for it.

Well those two pieces of information paid off and won me back. We were staying with Seth. There was one more vial at the RE and 6 more on ice at CCB. Things felt good and I spent the next week secure in the knowledge that we had a donor both of us really wanted.

Later, I had a nice, long talk with the Doc and I questioned how does one know when to switch donors? Unfortunately with IUI's there's no clear data that shows switching donors increases the chances. You hear about the women who switched and got pregnant but you don't hear about the others who didn't. Plus, who is to say that they wouldn't have gotten pregnant regardless that cycle, maybe it was just their time? In short, no clear answers.

We talked about Seth's sperm, his counts, etc. He's had other pregnancies, his motility is good and the speed of his swimmers is excellent--but his counts are only average, or 'adequate' as my Doc put it gently.

But isn't that the Cryobank's fault for not given us more?? I seriously think they sell off the bare minimum because they have to guarantee 10 million. You want more? Buy another vial. We've always had the 10 million, but only as high as 16 million. That sounded great until I heard of others getting 22 million. WTF?? I feel so cheated. I've heard others here complain about the counts of their donors from CCB, so it just makes me wonder.....

If this IUI cycle doesn't work...we're not only on to IVF, but we have to find another donor. We discovered that stupidly, we'd bought 12 vials of IUI ONLY and well...we may very well need IVF. The good news is that CCB will buy back the five remaining vials at 1/2 price. My stomach almost goes into convulsions thinking of the wasted money ($1400?? Gagging now...). I hate wasting money pretty much more than anything.
There was a beacon of hope on August 12th, because our donor was coming back ONE LAST TIME and he maybe he would give off some IVF quality swimmers. I'm not quite sure how that all works...but that's what they said. I called. No IVF swimmers and now our donor has retired.

If I'm not pregnant this month, we have to change donors one way or another. The thought of going through all of that again and wasting so much money makes me crazy.
But it is what it is. Right?

This is the last weekend that K and I are home for the next six weekends so I'm feeling a little pushed for time to get everything done in regards to traveling. We have two 4-day weekends and then it's off to Indonesia.
And now, to know that come Aug. 22, I may be on a new donor search as well...argh.

I can do this. I can do this.
You know what? I'll find someone even BETTER than our current donor. And all will be right with the world...

Meditating the Anxiety Away

In preparation for the preggo test, I went to a 2-hour meditation session at the Tibet House tonight with this woman.  She was quite amazing and since she's going to be there the next couple of Tuesdays, I think I'll keep going. 

Tomorrow morning I go in for a blood test and we'll find out one way or another by mid-afternoon.

I completely do not feel pregnant (whatever that feels like!) and I've watched my temps drop for 4 days now despite being on the progesterone, so whatever.  

If it's not my time, it's not my time.  I cannot control this.

K and I had a conversation over the weekend and discussed switching donors.  How do you know when it's time to break up with your donor?  I feel so foolish to have bought so much of him without trying him out first, but what can you do?  We have two more vials of him at our Fertility Center that we won't be able to return, so we'll lose the money on those and that stings.

The rest we can do an exchange for $150--although I don't know if that's per vial or the entire switch.  Probably per vial...

Anyone out there looking for some black market sperm?  He gets other women pregnant!

We also talked about perhaps just taking the plunge and trying more drugs this next cycle.  I am super scared of multiples because of my body size.  But there's a woman in my building who is as small as me and she had twins a year ago.  I saw these twins twice this weekend and it was like the universe sending me a sign, saying,  "you can do it. If you had to do it, you could do it". God those parents look tired and haggard.  But I could do it.  We could do it.

My RE isn't putting me on fertility drugs because he knows my fears and he says it's my choice But I've only got two cycles after this before IVF looms.  Is it silly to try 6 natural IUI's and then go to IVF without trying fertility drugs?

Remember my age, I don't have time to waste.  My clock is a freaking time bomb folks.

Choosing the Goods

How is it that we've been looking at donors for over six months now, but we still don't have one picked out. Well, we knew we couldn't really buy in advance and store it at home and we didn't know what kind we needed (yes, it comes in three different washed varieties!) and for awhile we thought we might be using a known donor--K's little brother. But then we ruled him out after we thought we were going with K eggs and my uterus via IVF. Plus, the more we thought about it, we wanted to try to find someone we can both use.

K really does want to have a biological child, she was just much more keen on me having it for her than having it herself!

So, it's come down to the final few weeks and we're playing "pick that sperm donor".

You can play too, by going to California Cryobank! http://www.cryobank.com

We had the perfect candidate picked out a couple of weeks ago, but he was only available in ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology also IVF) and since we aren't doing IVF now...

We needed someone with IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination) as that is the method we are now going to try.

This is basically a process that puts the swimmers directly in the uterus instead of relying on them getting there themselves--there are no turkey basters here, folks.

It's such a hard decision and I know so many women who end up changing donors after a few cycles, or the donor retires from the program, etc and they end up trying out multiple donors. For the first time though, it's pretty mind boggling.

We are designing 50% of our offspring's genetic makeup. I thought I wanted to have a few different ethnicities in the mix, but as time has gone by, I see that it's not the best choice for us.

We had picked out someone I was totally sold on, but finally realized this child would grow up--probably exotic looking and hopefully gorgeous--but not really looking like either of us at all. We came to realize that it's going to be hard enough to have two moms, why make things any harder?

So, we are picking a donor that gives our offspring the height neither of us have, the math skills I'm sorely lacking, the artistic streaks that don't run in K and enough mechanical and athletic skills to make us both happy. Oh, and the staff said he's very attractive...um, yeah, that helped!

Basically since we both want to use the same donor, I feel like we were looking for US combined in a guy.

Who the hell knows?!

I'm excited...after months of planning and talking about it, it's starting to feel very, very REAL.