Halfway through the TWW

We inseminated last week for the third TTC cycle. Things went fine – the actual process of the transfer and insem is getting easier every time – but the timing was a little difficult to predict this month, so we made our best guess and decided to err on the side of a bit early.
R has a feeling that this wasn’t the cycle for us, but she said she felt pregnant the last two times and wasn’t so I’m taking it as a good sign!
We’ve also been discussing changing KDs for the next cycle. Our current KD has had some personal (not directly related to us) changes in the last month. He hasn’t expressed that he wants to stop, but things aren’t going so incredibly well with him (his sperm analysis didn’t look great or really even good but we decided to go with him for a little while at least) and the new changes have made us both a bit uncomfortable. There is also someone else that R is thinking of asking, so we’ll see how all of that pans out for us!
In non-TTC life, it was the week before finals for R and a transitioning job week for me (definitely in a good way!), so things have been more than a little bit hectic. I worry a bit about the effect that all of that will have, but it really, really has made this last week go by faster and I’m very grateful for that.

Increasing the Odds

After just a few months of trying, I really didn’t expect to feel this antsy each month- waiting for the fertile time, trying to figure out what we can do differently. We’ve been temping and using the oral sensor on the Ovacue. Last month, we bought the vaginal sensor and started monitoring the cervix (again).
The Ovacue seems so straightforward, so scientific and error-proof, that we’ve really been relying on it pretty heavily. However, R has inconsistent cycles and changing the cycle length in the OvaCue changes the peak fertility date. Since we can’t really predict her current cycle length and we really have to get the time as close as possible, the OvaCue isn’t working out as well as we’d hoped.
BBT just doesn’t work for us – the temperature in our room changes too much at night, and our sleep schedules are so wacky that it just doesn’t give us any useful information.
Cervical monitoring is incredibly frustrating. I can tell that it is painful for R and I have a hard time finding her cervix and, well, seeing anything at all. I can usually see the cervical mucus though, so at least I feel like we are getting some information from it.
We’re going to keep up with all of this and hope that we can get some things lining up so that we can be more confident when we’re inseminating. R had a doctor’s appointment this morning and she offered to give her a prescription for metformin to help regulate her cycle a bit.
We’re learning more and more every month so hopefully it will work out for us soon!

BFN :(

R started taking pregnancy tests after the TWW was over. She told me during the wait that she inexplicably felt pregnant this time. Not one to get my hopes up, I was waiting for the BFP. We’ve since been through 4 pregnancy tests (all negative). Meanwhile, R was gaining weight (mostly in her breasts) and still felt pregnant, with the disclaimer that she doesn’t know how she can feel pregnant without ever having been pregnant before. It has been about 6 weeks since our insems and her period is about 4 weeks late. She found some websites today with women saying that some tested negative until their 8th or 10th week into pregnancy before they got a positive result. Excited by the possibility that maybe we were successful this time, I grabbed another pregnancy test on the way home.
R went to take one while I was typing this up and came out to tell me 1. the test is still negative and 2. she just got her period.
Sad news, but at least it is only a few weeks before we can try again! Reading through other couples’ experiences, I never understood how much of a roller-coaster this whole thing can be!

At-Home Insems

We got a comment a few days ago asking about inseminating at home and how we learned what to do.

Firstly, thanks for commenting, Tory! I’ll do my best to answer your question.

I talked a little bit about this the first entry. We bought The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth (seriously the best resource we’ve found). And read it more or less cover-to-cover. It has a ton of really helpful information and guides you through basically the whole process, including a bit about the logistics of home insems.

We also joined a community on livejournal for lesbian ttc. There is also Rainbow Conceptions. We found it really helpful to join groups like this because you get to learn from other people’s experiences (good and bad), and you have a group of people that are going through or have gone through what you are going through there to help out and give you pointers.

As far as I know, there’s no class on how to do at-home insems, though the more I think about it, the more I think there ought to be if there isn’t – you might have more luck if you live in San Fransisco or New York than we do here in the Midwest.

All that said, the best advice I read was to RELAX and ENJOY the experience. It is totally natural to be nervous, but things probably aren’t going to go perfectly the first time (they certainly didn’t for us!) so try to relax and enjoy the experience!  It sounds cheesy, but you are making a baby! You don’t want to be doing this magical wonderful thing and all you can think about is how many ways you can mess it up. R and I laugh and crack jokes alot during the actual process and it really helps us from getting too stressed out about the whole thing.

Best of luck to you and your partner when you start inseminating!

Third and Fourth Insem!

No, we haven’t given up on the blogging. R has longer cycles and our donor was away (far, far away) for the holidays, so we ended up missing an insem. It was really nerve-wracking for both us and the donor, since we were right on the very cusp of being able to make it but didn’t quite get the timing right.

This month we temped (although it doesn’t seem to be working for us) used the ovacue, and bought a bunch of the Clear Blue Easy Digital Ovulation Tests. Next month, we are considering buy the ovacue vaginal sensor and software so we have even more info to use. Does anyone else find that more information sort of makes things more confusing? I feel like the more things I have to pay attention to, the more stressed out I get when they don’t all line up exactly.

Last night we did insem #3, which I suppose went better than 1 or 2. We are starting to feel comfortable enough with KD that there is some chitchat, but we are mostly straight to business. I almost feel a bit bad that we have this complicating our relationship, because I think we could have been very good friends if we had met under less awkward circumstances.

Tonight we will try #4 and while I still feel nervous, it isn’t nearly as bad as the first two times! R is feeling pretty sick today, but we’ve decided to give it a go anyway.

Second Insem!

Our second insem is tonight and I am particularly optimistic because we got a + OPK and have fertile mucus! I’m hardly nervous at all, which is a huge change from last night, when I really thought I was going to throw up from the nerves!

First Insem!!

A few weeks ago, we told our donor that we were looking at mid-November for our first insem. Tuesday morning, we got up and saw that our fertility monitor said her peak fertility would be Wednesday!! We emailed and called our donor and arranged for him to arrive at about 7:30 last night. R had class until 5:30, but she got out a bit early and we went to the store for chocolate chips so I could make chocolate chip cookies (I think we wanted the place to smell nice and we’d seem maternal and then we’d have something to offer him).

It was a bit awkward (I can’t imagine it would be anything BUT awkward for anyone), but we showed him where to do his end and how to call us when he was all done and R an I went for a walk around the block. We got the phone call (“my bit’s done.”) and hurried back for thank you’s and good-byes.

The actual insem was a bit comical at first – we were in a rush, so I forgot to hide it from the light while we were getting set up. Then I forgot to take the cap off of the syringe (I didn’t even know there was a cap) so that made a bit of a mess. We finally got the cap off and everything done and we layed together reading and laughing for about two hours before getting up.

This is something we’ve been talking about for nearly two years and it still all feels so sudden! We’re keeping our fingers crossed!

First Cycle!

R’s cycle started a few days ago, so we are looking at mid-November for our first insemination! It’s nerve-wracking and very exciting.

We’ve been having a lot of discussions about me adopting the baby legal once s/he is born. Obviously, I’d really like to be able to, but OH law doesn’t allow same-sex parent adoptions. We don’t plan on staying in OH forever – to be honest, I don’t think either of us wants to live in a state that won’t legally recognize our partnership and allowus both to be legal parents. Our worst-case scenario was to give birth in CT (where my family lives) and then I could adopt the baby in CT.

After weeks of research, we couldn’t figure out whether adoption laws go by the state you live in or the state that the baby was born in. R contacted Equality Ohio to see if they could help us figure it out and they referred us to a local lawyer. I called him this morning and he spoke with me for about 20 minutes about our contract and state adoption laws. He laid most of my fears to rest and I feel mush more relaxed about this whole thing now.

Supplies

With charting underway, contracts signed and all of the logistics taken care of, we’re more or less just waiting for the right time to do our first insem.  Last week, we ordered all of the supplies we’ll need.

5 mL needleless syringe

It's so tiny!

sterilized with a wide mouth and screw caps

These area little bigger than I expected

Everything was much cheaper than I expected them to be and we ordered 12 of each, which is enough to get us through 6 months with two insems each month. We figured that was enough to feel prepared if it doesn’t happen right away, but not enough to feel like we are jinxing ourselves.

Specimen cups

Syringes

I’m getting more excited and more nervous by the day!

Sperm Banks vs. Known Donors

One of the first things we did once we decided that, yeah, we do want to have children was buy The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth. This book is fantastic and was recommended in several online groups we were reading at the time. We each read the book cover to cover and then talked about a lot of the conversation starters in the book to try to make some decisions about how and why we wanted to do this. One of the biggest discussions it sparked was where to get our sperm.

R, my partner, really liked the idea of using someone we know. Its MUCH cheaper and that way you get to see the person, talk to them about why they want to give you their genes to have babies and see if you vibe before making a decision. Fresh sperm also lives a lot longer than frozen and you usually get it in much greater quantities. On the other hand, I have a hangup about using fresh sperm from someone I’ve met. Vibing with them is great, but I worry that, once we have the baby, I will always think of them as “R and KD’s” baby and not mine. Yes, its stupid. Add that to the fact that there are way fewer legal issues when using sperm bank sperm and we decided it was worth it to go the sperm bank way.

We made an appointment at our local sperm bank but as the appointment got closer, our future (logistics-wise) started to look a little more dicey and we really weren’t sure which state we’d be living in six months down the road, so we put our plans on hold.

We’re settled into a new place and ready to get things back on track, so about two months ago, we filled out an application and sent it in to a sperm bank that is across the country.  We felt good about the place and they had a good selection of donors who sounded like they looked a bit like me.  After about two weeks and a few follow up emails we were denied because we apparently don’t make enough money.

People in our position (people without sperm readily available to them) don’t go into this lightly. We certainly aren’t wealthy, but we live comfortably and we wouldn’t be trying to have a baby if we thought that we weren’t able to be financially responsible for one. Realistically, if we could afford to buy the sperm to get pregnant, we could afford to raise a child. Who knew that the sperm bank system was so classist?

After re-discussing our options, we decided that we would try a few ads and see if anything panned out. Luckily, one of the first responses we got was from someone who sounded damn-near perfect . We also got a whole lot of way-less-than-perfect responses, sometimes complete with ‘look at my sexy, sexy abs’ pictures. Every question we asked our KD, in person and through email was answered perfectly. I wasn’t even sure what I thought was a good reason to be motivated to give your sperm to someone but when we heard his answer, I knew it was the best explanation I could have hoped for.

We’re paying him, so I’m not sure it will end up being much cheaper than a sperm bank, but it is fresh so it should go much faster and we get the benefit of actually meeting with him before we enter into this. He is as interested in making sure that he isn’t responsible for the baby as we are, so I really feel like we got the best of both worlds with him. I’m sure there will be a few awkward moments to come and until he severs parental rights, I will continue to be worried about the legal side of things, but most of all I am just excited that we found him.