We gave our proposed known donor contract agreement to BFF 4 days ago to look over and we haven’t heard anything from him since. I know, I know….he works a regular hours and yes, yes he did have guests in his home from out of town this weekend….but the suspense is killing me. What if he hates it?! What if he needs more info!? What if he thinks it will be to awkward?! What if he’s changed his mind!?
I don’t want to nag…but I want to know if this plan is a go….
Wow, 5 days in colorado and still didn’t get to see everything. Guess we’ll need to go back.
Estes Park hike to Nyph Lake, Dream Lake and Emerald Lake
Rino Art District street art
Vikings vs Broncos pre-season game
Brandi Carlile at Red Rocks. Our good friend E surprised us at the show.
Denver Botanical Gardens
We got blind sided with another pregnancy announcement from one of Megan’s friends last night. We went over for what we thought was dinner and drinks, but just turned out to be dinner….
It never gets easier, hearing this news from other people in our lives. It just pushes the dagger deeper into our hearts and the gag deeper into our throats. We shut down, become robots of obligatory congratulations and phoney celebration. Then go home and mourn…
The thing is…I WISH I could be happy for her, this particular friend (and everyone for that matter, but let’s just stay focused), but she had always said she NEVER wanted kids… This is someone Megan and I had said in the past “It would be cool to raise our kids with her…” when she told us she and her husband were no longer actively trying to prevent pregnancy.
And that…the fact they didn’t appear to even need to TRY to get pregnant makes me an embarassing shade of green. It makes me all sorts of gay shamey… like if only I had the means to do this for my wife, we’d be there already “oops, on accident…” And ( because I’m masochistic in my logical mind I guess…) that due to our gayness, we don’t deserve a child of our own and that’s why we struggle, because every straight couple we know is getting knocked up…
I try to stay positive “she’s 2 months we have time to catch up and share this pregnancy and raise our kids together”, “timed intercourse (which is close to what our current plan is with BFF) has a higher success rate when using OPKs” , “I’ve been pregnant before, my body should remember what to do…” And then the depression seeps in…
I would have been 4 months this month had I not had a chemical pregnancy/miscarriage
I just got to a point where the sight of babies didn’t gut wrenchingly rip my heart out. Or to the point that, children didn’t annoy me for the mere sake of existing. THIS ISN’T ME! I love kids, am great with them, a whisperer, I’ve been called…for what purpose? Yeah, I work with kids and my gifts come in handy there, but this offers no longevity. Neither does baby sitting or living vicariously through my imagination.
Then the doubt in our current plan sets in. We don’t know what BFFs numbers look like, motility wise. We’re basically going for a shot in the dark. We behave like this is our saving grace, but that is naive. He drinks and smokes daily…
I’m just bitter… and I’ll get over it and move on and find meaning in all of this, but damn, what a load of bricks.
Sometimes I feel/ fear we should give up this desire for a bio babe and start focusing our energy on foster/adoption… it can be beautiful, ive seen that at work and with my friends…I’m not ready to be done trying though.
We’re off to Colorado this week. I’ll do a picture post next to balance out my bitching in this one.
Our sage has been happily growing into quite the little shrub. It smells so good and looks so healthy! Yesterday as I was pruning it, I decided I was going to have a go at making my own smudge sticks with my home grown sage.
There you have it. Growing my own clarity. I can’t wait until they are dried enough to burn.
The month of June was a whirlwind of vacationing that left me spinning until around now. Megan and I are nurses and we took complete advantage of our 6 day work week and 8 day week-end and went to Ely mn at the beginning of the month of June to celebrate my birthday. At the end of the month, we went a an epic camping trip to the upper peninsula of Michigan. Not to say that other life hasn’t continued on.
As I catch up on all of your posts, I will get you caught up on what’s going on in our lives.
School
For a while Megan and I knew we needed to go back to school. We have our associate degrees in nursing giving us our RN license, but we work for a magnet hospital in our area. This means they would prefer if you had a bachelors level degree. Megan already had a bachelors so she is covered, but I don’t have a bachelors. We have been searching for a masters program which would give me my bachelors and both of us our masters degrees and we finally found one. It’s all online and we are going to (hopefully) start in September!
Garden
As you can see, our garden is out of control. We watched this master gardener program prior to planting season and it was said that “packing in the plants” is an okay thing to do with garden boxes. This has proven to be accurate, but the harvest!! It has me wondering what I am going to do with all the beans and peppers and tomatoes. I am going to need to learn some new recipes and possibly finally learn the art of canning. I even forgot that I had brussel sprouts, which btw are doing great, no sprouts yet, but the plants themselves are doing great, under the overwhelming leaves of the ONE cucumber plant. Also, my herbs are so gorgeous! I am hoping to teach myself how to make soaps so I can make a lemon verbena and patchouli soaps. I will also have plenty of sage to make my own smudge sticks and then still need to find other ways to use it. I love the garden so much. It gives me great joy.
TTC
We are still planning on moving forward with BFF as our donor and insem at home. I found the known donor registry and their sample contracts, many thanks to those who pointed me in that direction. We have taken from those contracts and picked out pieces which we feel are pertinent to us and I plan to make a much less overwhelming agreement in paragraph form. Since BFF is, well…Megan’s BFF, we don’t fear he will come after us or our future children maliciously. We just want there to be guidelines about rights and responsibilities, expectations and legalities. We are more concerned about his parents and how they will react to a child made this way, and not in a negative way, in a way that they will want to be involved in a future child’s life. We’re not opposed to that, just don’t want it to be an expectation. Our plan is to present this agreement to BFF sometime this month and start trying, alternating between Megan and myself, in September, beginning with me. All the success stories I have heard as of late about at home insemination makes me very hopeful. Something just feels “right” about having BFF as our donor.
Braces
I didn’t talk about it much here, but I have had braces the past year and a half and I FINALLY GOT THEM TAKEN OFF!!! I am still getting used to seeing my new mouth, it doesn’t seem like mine, but it looks so much better!
For the most part, I think that is where we are at. We have a couple more trips to look forward to this summer. The matriarch trip to Red Rocks in Colorado to see our favorite artist (who’s newest daughter is…. serendipitously perhaps?…. was named the same as BFF.) And a trip to the east coast to celebrate my sister’s 50th birthday. With plane ticket prices skyrocketing, we are thinking of making it a road trip and stopping by to see niagra falls!
We went on two away trips this month and now our garden looks like this!
Pole beans climbing fantastically.
Tomatos being fruitful.
Cute lil snap pea blossom.
Megan taming the ONE cucumber plant that is taking over the tomatos.
More cucumber shots.
Strawberries!!
This last cycle was a bust. We’re fed up and have lost faith in our RE. Their 13% success rate and dot phrase (generic) responses have left us with a feeling of impersonal dispondence.
As of right now. I need a break. 4 tries in a row has made me feel like a roller coaster of a nut case. I don’t really trust any of my opinions or feelings right now for fear it’s the hormones.
After a break it’s currently our plan to move forward with BFF. At home, by ourselves.
We need to have a conversation with him about the magnitude of this, draw up a contract, figure out how to make it legally binding. I’m sure there are more steps but we’ll get to them as we go.
I’m now in full on research mode for the best methods of DIY ICI. My biggest question is… How do I get the sperm from the donation container and into the syringe without damaging the swimmers? Any pointers from experienced DIY’ers are welcome.
