We’d been seeing these doctors a year, and this was the first time we’d heard about this - seeing a psychologist in person to make sure we were all on the same page.īasically, they put our donor in a room, us in a room, then asked us a bunch of questions. On what it felt like to be “evaluated.” Once we finally got to the point where we thought we could make an insemination appointment, they were like, “Oh, by the way, have you passed your psycho-social evaluation?” We were like, “Our what now?” Then they explained that my wife and I, plus our donor, needed to pass this evaluation. If we felt like the delays were accomplishing something, that would be one thing - but instead, they felt pointless. I just had this sense of my reproductive system atrophying with every minute we spent waiting. I was told that getting pregnant could be really difficult, so the sooner the better - which made all those bureaucratic rules all the more frustrating. For us, timing was important because I’d had a fibroid surgery, during which the surgeon discovered I had a bad case of endometriosis. We’d be ready to start, then come up against another hurdle. Throughout this process, no one really sat us down and explained what it was going to be like, from start to finish. It was so frustrating to know that we could have skipped that step if he were my husband or boyfriend. But we weren’t allowed to skip this step, even though he was our trusted friend. All anonymous donors do that for sperm banks, which makes sense. It takes six months to show you really don’t have any infections. Plus, they require the sperm to be quarantined for six months - again, for STI reasons. But despite all that, it was not an option.įreezing sperm is a multi-thousand-dollar process. It’s because of liability surrounding sexually transmitted infections, which I can understand, but we had already done extensive testing for both of us - and we’d already tried, six times, with his fresh sperm. We would have had to lie and say our donor was my romantic partner. For example, they won’t do an insemination with a known donor with fresh sperm, even though they will inseminate you with fresh sperm if it’s your husband. Compared to using a known donor, an anonymous sperm donor is a very well-trodden path - everything is already figured out legally and logistically. On the hurdles of using a known sperm donor. Our doctors sort of acted like we were crazy, even - I really felt like they were pushing us toward an anonymous sperm donor. Once you get doctors involved, with a known donor, it becomes a million times more complicated. We needed to go the medicalized route, to get doctors involved. He did his thing into one, and my wife inseminated me. We had dinner, a bottle of wine everything felt very exciting. It was so hopeful and naïve! We all got together, our donor, plus another good friend. On trying at home, with a bottle of wine. We knew a lot of people who’d had great success doing it themselves, “turkey-baster style.” That can be very uncomplicated and cheap - but it has to work first. But what we didn’t know was that a known donor was a lot more logistically difficult and a lot more expensive, for us, than if we’d gone with an unknown donor. We really liked the idea of going with a known donor so any child we had wouldn’t have this big mystery in their life. Then one day, out of the blue, he just emailed us and offered - he said he knew we were thinking about it and said he could help us out in the gamete department. We had one friend we both thought would be the perfect sperm donor, but we had no idea how to start the conversation. Even before we decided to get serious about having children, we’d been discussing what to do in terms of sperm. My wife and I had been together for about nine years by then. It was about four years ago, when we decided to start talking seriously about kids. On the sperm donor who offered without being asked. Carla discusses trying to get pregnant “turkey-baster style,” the extra steps in using a known versus an anonymous sperm donor, and the moment at the hospital when her wife Googled “Lamaze.” After their friend offered his sperm without even being asked, the couple was elated, and was hopeful about getting pregnant without medical intervention. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStoc/Getty ImagesĬarla and her wife had an ideal situation for becoming parents: They each wanted to experience pregnancy, and they wanted a good friend of theirs to be the known sperm donor.
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