It’s CD15, and I’m waiting and watching for ovulation. I’m still temping, started testing with OPKs on Saturday, and I’m paying attention to cm. All signs point to ovulation coming soon… We’ll see! Of course this one cycle doesn’t mean much – coming off bcp, whatever happens this month isn’t necessarily what will happen the next and the next. I’m crossing my fingers for fairly regular cycles, and of course for as little of the pain and illness I experienced pre-bcp as possible.
Our AI consult with the midwives is scheduled for about three weeks from now (wow!). That appointment on the calendar, and the chart on my nightstand are serving as reminders each day that we are close. That this is happening.
With our official start approaching, we need to make a decision about a pretty important part of the whole process – sperm. As I discussed here, what seems like a long time ago, way back when, my wife and I thought we’d like to use a known donor. We would ask a friend, draw up the necessary legal documents, and inseminate with fresh sperm at home (for the curious – you just use the kind of needleless syringe you can buy at the pharmacy for giving liquid medication to babies). This friend would not be a father, but a part of our child’s life, and as the child grew old enough to understand, they would know that this was the person who supplied half of their genetics and helped their moms get pregnant. It all seemed perfectly lovely and idyllic. But, we eventually realized that just wasn’t going to be the right path for us for a number of reasons, and decided, after much deliberation, to go the sperm bank route.
C is a redhead, and while I feel pretty certain that my dark haired, Portuguese and Italian genes would dominate her recessive redheaded, Scottish/Irish and English ones, we still want to use a redheaded donor. Luckily, our list of demands is pretty short, because that one trait alone limits our choices significantly. Other than the red hair, we just need a guy who’s healthy and has ID release (this would allow our children to try to contact him once they were older if they were curious – we’d like to give our children this option). All of the redheaded donors we’ve come across so far have similar heritage to ,u wife, so that part is easy. With just these four criteria, we are down to five potential donors (that’s nationwide), which is kind of nice because it gives us less data to sift through and consider. Having lived with my accountant wife for about 4 years now, I’ve caught her love of spreadsheets, so of course we have a running Excel file of our donor picks, arranged by criteria, price, and bank.
It’s a funny thing, choosing a donor. To us, the donor is just that – a donor. Someone who was kind enough to share the very thing we need to grow our family. Because we have the option available to us, we’d like someone that has traits similar to my wife’s. I wish we could have a baby with her eyes and her freckles, but that’s not in the cards for us, so if we can use a donor that has some physical traits in common with her, we will. Other than that and health – what really matters? Well I’ll be honest – if the bank has pictures available (some do, for a fee), I want to to see them. Maybe we’re shallow, but if we have the choice between an attractive guy and a not so attractive guy, we’re going to pick the looker. Donor profiles tell you all kinds of other information too - hobbies, interests, talents, occupation and more. Does it matter if the donor likes dogs or basketball? I don’t think so. My dad used to play hockey, and yet I’m pretty much allergic to sports. He also owned an auto mechanic shop for many years, and yet I can’t even change my oil. So we really aren’t concerned about that. We know that no donor will make our child feel more or less like our child.
At the same time, silly things make me want to cross some donors off the list. While I am a strong believer in the power of both nurture and the environment a child is raised in, genetics do count for something, and we are talking about 50% of our child’s genes. I immediately deleted one donor from the spreadsheet after I listened to an audio clip and he sounded like a moron; if a guy comes across as kind of an ass in his written interview – he’s gone. So as much as there is that doesn’t matter – there is plenty that does.
Decision time is coming, though, and someone will become our #1 choice. May the cutest healthy redhead win!
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Acronyms, Definitions & Explanations
cm – cervical mucus. Any acronym that keeps me from having to write the word mucus is a good one.
bcp – birth control pill. But you remembered that, right?
AI – alternative insemination. Blanket term for the services offered at the midwife practice where we’ll be trying to get me pregnant.
***Edited 11/1/09:***
This post was password-protected from the time it was published until 11/1/09.
