Choosing the Goods

How is it that we've been looking at donors for over six months now, but we still don't have one picked out. Well, we knew we couldn't really buy in advance and store it at home and we didn't know what kind we needed (yes, it comes in three different washed varieties!) and for awhile we thought we might be using a known donor--K's little brother. But then we ruled him out after we thought we were going with K eggs and my uterus via IVF. Plus, the more we thought about it, we wanted to try to find someone we can both use.

K really does want to have a biological child, she was just much more keen on me having it for her than having it herself!

So, it's come down to the final few weeks and we're playing "pick that sperm donor".

You can play too, by going to California Cryobank! http://www.cryobank.com

We had the perfect candidate picked out a couple of weeks ago, but he was only available in ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology also IVF) and since we aren't doing IVF now...

We needed someone with IUI (Intra-Uterine Insemination) as that is the method we are now going to try.

This is basically a process that puts the swimmers directly in the uterus instead of relying on them getting there themselves--there are no turkey basters here, folks.

It's such a hard decision and I know so many women who end up changing donors after a few cycles, or the donor retires from the program, etc and they end up trying out multiple donors. For the first time though, it's pretty mind boggling.

We are designing 50% of our offspring's genetic makeup. I thought I wanted to have a few different ethnicities in the mix, but as time has gone by, I see that it's not the best choice for us.

We had picked out someone I was totally sold on, but finally realized this child would grow up--probably exotic looking and hopefully gorgeous--but not really looking like either of us at all. We came to realize that it's going to be hard enough to have two moms, why make things any harder?

So, we are picking a donor that gives our offspring the height neither of us have, the math skills I'm sorely lacking, the artistic streaks that don't run in K and enough mechanical and athletic skills to make us both happy. Oh, and the staff said he's very attractive...um, yeah, that helped!

Basically since we both want to use the same donor, I feel like we were looking for US combined in a guy.

Who the hell knows?!

I'm excited...after months of planning and talking about it, it's starting to feel very, very REAL.