Is it really different?

I've been afraid to post. I'm afraid to talk about what is happening in ttc because things have been going so smoothly that it seems all too simple right now. I guess, after 5 1/2 years of fertility angst, I feel I might jinx any smooth sailing we have. If I manage to get pregnant I'm guessing I will feel this even more. But I'm trying to embrace the positive so here is what is up in our queer ttc-land.

I healed up from my polyp removal procedure very well. I had my post-op check up four weeks after the surgery and the doc cleared me to start trying again. With in a week I was hunting for a new known donor. Last week we met with a finalist on our potential donors and by the end of the meeting we were setting up the first insemination date..which happened to be less than a week later. That was this past Monday. Wednesday was the second insem. Timing was perfect and I ovulated Thursday.

Now for a bit about Mr Donor. He prefers to be pretty quiet about all this but I can say that we are only his second donor experience. The first couple he worked with was last month and they got pregnant on the first try after a long time trying with frozen. He is kind of Conservative which is a little strange but he seems to be a bit Libertarain leaning so the whole "live and let live" thing makes him okay with us being queer, poly, tattooed and pierced weirdos. His only rule is he wants to know the relationship is solid and stable. Well, Monkey and I have been together for 12+ years so we passed that requirement. :) He met Author and, after some questions about how we structure our family, he said he thought it was unique. That was it.

Every donor brings a unique and often hilarious situations. Mr Donor prefers to keep exchanges during working hours and in public places. This is so it doesn't take time away from his family. As a result, we are doing the sperm pass-off at a local mall food court. Yes, really. As long as there is less than an hour between creation and insemination, and is in a dark jar with a lid and kept warm, it is still viable. Author has decided that if I get pregnant the belly name will be "mall rat".

So I'm back in it! Next cycle I'll be doing a Clomid challenge test with lots of blood work and insems with Mr. Donor. I'm on the last leg of my ttc journey. I either get pregnant or I accept a new future without children. Now I just have to wait to find out which one it is.

The Bee is cleared for flight.

The test results are back! That was really fast. It took less than 24 hours from blood draw to results. I'm impressed. Bee is clean, as we figured he would be since his risk factors are way low. So, now, it appears I have a donor. He will be coming over for tea and snacks on Sunday to sign the contract, talk details and setup our first inseminations.

My period is due in three days or so. This has lined up so perfectly I'm a little freaked out by it. I'm a little weirded out by feeling optimistic. After all this time, all these attempts, I still find myself feeling hopeful again with a new donor. It is true that I have more to be optimistic about this time. As I mentioned, I'm healthier in so many ways this time. That can't hurt.

So here I am, 4 1/2 years since that first ttc cycle. I have a new donor...again. Time to jump back in.

Donor karma

I feel like I've done something very good and am getting rewarded by our, soon to be, new donor. Maybe I've just burned off all my bad karma by having to weed through some really asshats to find this guy.

I think I'm going to call him Bee because he is both a "busy bee" and a "worker bee" in the project. Plus there is the whole "Birds & the Bees" thing that amuses me. (Though I guess with me it would be the Bears and the Bees!) So Bee is, hopefully, our new donor. Pending testing, which is in the works starting today. He should be getting the blood draws today and then it is just a matter of waiting for the results. I don't think there will be any problems but you have to check. Due diligence and all that.

Bee reminds me of my first donor. Eager, invested, accommodating and engaged. This makes me very happy. A little part of me is still waiting for it to all fall apart. I won't entirely believe this is worked out until he shows up for the first insemination. I do think that the decreased stress I felt about our first donor contributed to the one pregnancy that I managed to have, however briefly. Monkey is over the moon about Bee and is suddenly very optimistic again that I will be pregnant soon. I'm definitely more optimistic about the donor but that hasn't carried over to it actually working. We'll see though. I'm healthier than I've ever been, both mentally and physically. That certainly won't hurt our chances. I'm older and Bee is older than any other donor we've had but neither of us are completely out of the realm of likelihood to produce a child.

If the tests go as planned, as I expect they will, we will be starting next cycle. Since my cycle is due to start in a week that is right around the corner!

Pleasantly surpised

Well, pending std testing, it would appear we have a very eager and communicative donor set up. I'm still a little shocked. He is very communicative, engaged and thoughtful. He has a sense of humor about the process. He was curious about our poly situation and our gender identity but was respectful and open-minded. He wanted to know some basics about our family life and poly with kids stuff. He feels that if he is to participate in creating a child he has a responsibility to make sure the family is a good one. I can respect that. His only requirement is that he get a picture of the kid, however, he is open to being more involved if we are comfortable with it. We are leaving that open for now.

A strange thing, he sets off all of our gaydar something fierce but he has been very careful not to let on to his sexuality. We are confused by this but have chosen not to ask about it. I mean, if anyone is going to be accepting of this it is us. If he is gay/bi/queer he doesn't want to talk about it and that is fine with us. We respect his choice to keep sexual identity out of the donor relationship.

He is currently waiting for us to set up his tests. He has already asked "because I'm a planner!" when my next fertile window may be so he can mark it on his calendar.

I am pleasantly, cautiously hopeful that this will work out. If the test results get back in time we may be inseminating at the end of July.

I've got to figure out a blog name for him.

The hunt

The time has come. Monkey is no longer working 50 hr weeks. He is down to just his full time job. The cold he came down with while stressed to his limits is starting to fade away. His first real weekend in about 3 months starts tomorrow night.

It is time to hunt for a new sperm donor.

Monkey and Author are my sperm wranglers. Well, Monkey is the wrangler and Author helps with separating the good from the bad. We consider this a division of labor. He deals with the sperm and I will deal with..well..the labor ::chuckle:: plus everything else that goes along with the whole pregnancy package. As a result of this deal I'm not involved in the first few screenings of potential donors. When we use frozen we have so little control that we actually don't care who we get as long as they have a history of pregnancies. Known donors are a lot more complicated but there are other advantages. The one time I actually did get pregnant (I miscarried) was with a known donor. I wish we still had access to him. Damn dream job offer in the UAE. Pttht.

Anyway, Monkey is on the lookout again starting this weekend. We aren't counting on finding some one for summer inseminations so I have a back up plan. We have two Clo.mid cycles left with my NP. She will only do them if I go for monitoring and do a trigger shot. I think it is time we took those last couple tries. We'll use frozen and do the IUI at home. (Yay for having a nurse practitioner for a partner!) I'm aiming for the cycle in mid-July. August has too many concerts and out of town things so that will be my rest cycle between medicated cycles. If by some amazing chance we have a donor by then, well, we may just do one anyway but with fresh.

I'm so tired of this. I just wish I knew what the result would be. I wish some one could tell me "Keep trying! You will be a mama bear yet!" Or "It is time to hang up the speculum and move on to accepting that you won't have a baby." I guess since I'm not so tired of ttc to give up then all I can do is keep trying until I get that pregnancy.

Getting impatient.

After 4 1/2 years of trying to get pregnant I think I'm finally getting impatient.

That isn't entirely true. I haven't really been patient by choice during that time. If we had the resources to get my ass into a fertility clinic I think we would have. If our insurance covered more infertility treatments/IVF or we could have gotten into a study. We could have the resources if we wanted to change our lifestyle and choice in work. Monkey could go work for some private clinic than only takes rich or over-insured people. I could go back to work full or part time to bring in more cash. But we like the way we live and what we do. Some people will pay any price, monetarily or emotionally, for a shot at having a baby. I guess Monkey and I have lower line. Life is too short and too unpredictable for us to make choices that would mean we'd be miserable.

Anyway, back to the main subject. Impatience. I'm ready to give those last two Clo.mid/monitor/trigger/IUI cycles a try. This isn't much of a big deal to a lot of infertility people but for me it is big. This will be the most intense thing I've done. I've done 4 Clo.mid/IUI cycles before but we didn't monitor or trigger. We plan on doing it in July/August.

We keep looking for a known donor. Well, we are kind of on hold until Monkey stops working 50+ hours a week. That should happen in 2 weeks. He'll get back to it again then. The summer cycles will likely be frozen sperm though.

::sigh:: I'm feeling a little hopeless...and very, very impatient.

New Possibilities

Monkey and Author met with a potential donor last night. I will call him "Fixer," not only because he is an engineer, but because fixing problems seems to be a core of his identity. Fixer's wife was a surrogate for a couple they are friends with. He was very inspired by her gift to them and decided he should become a sperm donor. He also recently took a class on gender and sexuality that opened his mind to all that queer people have to deal with in a straight-based society so he decided that helping a queer family would be where his help was most needed. This is a problem he could help "fix."

It is actually kind of a sweet motivation and one that makes sense to me. The fact that he participated in helping his wife go through the surrogacy means he has seen the kind of legal hoops that are not nearly as involved as ours would be. Our sex and std rules all make perfect sense to him, as does our contract and our legal needs. (He loves our contract. Everything is spelled out. It is pretty detailed.) He is older than our past donors, early 40's, but in good health. I think this is why he isn't just donating to a sperm bank. They can pretty narrow on the age thing. For me age matters less. I always put the line at 50 because that is pretty standard. After that you really see a statistical spike in issues. He has kids, his youngest is about 6, so it hasn't been that long since he produced a kid.

Monkey and Author think this has an 80%-85% chance of working out. He doesn't live locally but is in our city every weekday and will happily commit to a schedule. He is very enthusiastic about this and very positive that this will work for us. I've decided to be hopeful.

So here is to hoping that next cycle I'll have a new donor and, hopefully, a positive pregnancy test not long after.

On a lighter note...

As sad and painful as the subject of my last post was my life goes on. I worked hard for this life so I'm going to enjoy the little happy things when I have them.

So, on a lighter note...

I'm lighter again! I've reached my latest weight loss goal. I have now lost 10% of my starting body weight. Studies have shown that, if you are overweight or obese losing 5%-10% of your body weight results in markedly improved health. Even if I stopped here I will have added years to my life. Of course, I'm not stopping here. I'm on a roll! I'll never be what is considered "optimal" weight for my height/age, I've done too much damage to myself to get that low again, but I can get much closer than I am now.

It is crazy how much my life has changed over the last six months. The proper medication treatment for my depression and anxiety have given me a completely different quality of life than I ever thought possible. My cognitive behavioral therapy program for my disordered eating has worked better than I could imagine. The WW program has been simple to adjust to and given better results that I expected. My family is doing well. My pets are healthy. We have some good potential donors and, if those don't work out, I can still go back to my old donor boy. I keep looking around in awe at how freaking good my life is. Some of it is chance, dumb luck, but some of it I've worked damn hard on to change. I'm proud of myself. ::does a happy little bear dance::

::whispering:: shhhh...i don't want to say this too loud or think about this too much but i also know that, sometimes, losing 10% of your body weight if obese results in increased fertility. there are a lot of studies showing that unexplained infertility in obese women mysteriously resolve when they lose about 10% of the original weight. could i be that lucky? could this actually make the difference that we can't seem to find any other way? this isn't why i chose to lose weight but it would be the best unexpected side effect. ::crossing fingers::

Donor Disappointment

There is nothing that drags me down like looking for a known donor. Every time we do it we have to wade through a swamp of horrid responses but those aren't the worst. The really terrible responses are actually kind of entertaining and, at the very least, are easy to spot and discard. Next are the responses who are outside our, clearly mentioned, age range (20-45) or are not in our area. Then we usually are down to a handful of people we will actually contact.

This is where I really end up getting my faith in people tested. There is always one who thinks that asking if some one is disease-free equals practicing safer sex. Then there is one who is just now realizing that the part of the ad where we say "you must be willing to sign a legal document to relinquish your parental rights to the child so the non-bio partner can do a second-parent adoption" that we really do mean you are expected to sign a legal document...with your name. No, you can't just not tell me your name. My kid needs support and health insurance that Monkey can provide but only if he is allowed to adopt the damn kid and he can't do that unless you sign away your claim of parental rights! (Can you tell this last issue is the one that we ran into last night?) These two are the most common issues we run into. Usually, it wipes the list clean and we have to start all over again. However, things can get stranger. I had one potential donor crossed off because we go.o.gled him (yes, we go.o.gle all our donors) and found out he was convicted of a felony and lots of shady dealings.

::Sigh:: There are still a few guys on the list that might pan out. I'm not terribly hopeful.

This is our last cycle out of the game. If we don't have a new donor by my next CD1 then we are going back to donor boy and his severe lack of communication and very limited schedule. I suppose I should be thankful I even have that. I just really miss my first known donor.

A break is as good as a rest.

I've found this ttc break to be exactly what I needed.

TTC fatigue is real, ask anyone who's been trying to get pregnant for more than a year (more than 4 years in my case.) You just get to this "fuck it" point where all the extra things you've been doing to supposedly help the process (but isn't obviously) becomes too much. Every prenatal pill that you've been taking for years without being, you know, actually prenatal becomes a reminder of failure. Other supplements, pills and potions are some sort of infertility punishment rather than hope. Every decaf latte you drowsily sip becomes a futile attempt to pretend you could be pregnant...this time, but you don't really believe it.

But, of course, you still do it. You keep swallowing those prenatals. You keep taking Chaste Tree Extract, False Unicorn Root, extra iron, DHA, Ume Plum Pills and anything else that seems to help some one else get pregnant. You keep ordering your coffee "decaf" and avoiding booze at least the second half of the cycle, if not entirely.

Taking a break relieves you of all that responsibility. You can stop taking all those vitamins and extracts. You can have a double mocha. You can have a glass of wine, a rum & coke, a martini without checking which cycle day you're on.

For the last 3 weeks I've been on a ttc break. I've had booze and caffeine. I didn't take my prenatals and skipped my extracts. I was so very much on break that I thought my period was due this weekend. I was shocked to check my tracker and find that I still wasn't due for another week! It felt so good to not be counting down the days from ovulation to period. I plan on taking next cycle off as well.

The funny thing about taking a break is, now that I've had a few weeks, I have found myself starting up with the prenatals, extracts and pills again. I still go for the caffeine-filled coffee and you better believe that a martini will be made this weekend but I don't feel as bogged down by the rest of the routine. It just seems usual.

I'm hoping that, when we start up again, I will have a feeling of newness. It will be fully spring, I'll be healthier than I have been before in body and mind, we will (hopefully) have a new local donor and Monkey will be in a new, less stressful job. Maybe we will get new results. Who knows! Stranger things have happened.