And so it starts....
The quest for a child... the realisation of my long nurtured hopes..... the fulfillment of the inner ache that has refused to be silent all these years.... the unfathomable miracle of creating a person.... the joy of unconditional love for another..... I can give some rational reasons for being so keen on having a child...but mostly its a blind instinctual wanting....
and now I am taking steps on the path. Its terrifying and thrilling and really sad (that I am doing this alone) and so joyful all at once.
I have a potential donor and I am hoping to talk to him tonight about the idea... and yesterday I had my first appointment with a doctor at the fertility clinic.
There was bad news.
It seems that some legislation has changed. Women used to be able to sign a waiver exempting the clinic from the responsibility of ensuring that a known donor is HIV negative. This is no longer allowed. Seems reasonable... but the repercussion of this is that it is no longer possible to do medical insemination with unfrozen sperm from a known donor. Many of you will know that there is a 3-6 month window period in which HIV may not be detected following infection. So in order for a clinic to ensure that a sample is HIV free, it must be frozen and held for 6 months while the donor is tested at 3 months and again at 6 months. If they remain HIV negative then it can be assured that the sample taken 6 months ago was safe.
This may seem like a simple matter of patience... but it gets worse. Frozen sperm often just don't swim so well when defrosted... can't blame the poor dears really... must be a traumatic experience... bloody cold and for a really long time.... and then expected to suddenly do strenuous exercise?? In the word of Micky Blue Eyes... "forgedaboudid"...
Soooo given that I am OLD... and the poor shivering sperm... my chances of pregnancy in using this method are oooh, less than 20%. Apparently. Humph.
Sooooo here are my choices... wait 6 months and then take a slim chance.... (the only slim thing around here at the moment!)
or - wait 6 months and then do IVF.... which increases my chance to a chubbier 40%.... Buuuuut.... I cast no aspersions on others... but I am struggling to get my head around the idea of creating a dish full of little embryos and then flushing the unused ones..... just doesn't sit well in my heart....
or - use American sperm.... apparently they pay donors... so apparently college dudes are queuing around the block to disseminate their wee swimmers.... so there they can be really picky and only take...well... the cream of the crop.... roughly the top .9%.... only the super athletic little fellas who say "cold? pah, what's a bit of freezing between friends...lemme at that egg". Now I dunno about you... but I saw a show recently about college dudes queuing up to be in college porn too... and I gotta tell you.... it was not attractive. And sure - you get a photo, and they agree to be contactable when the child is 18... but seriously ? what is the chance of tracking down some yankie somewhere in America and saying hey... I am the fruit of your prodigious swimmers... tell me about yourself !! And of course... its expensive.... olympic swimmers don't come cheap (he he).
Or ... go the turkey baster at home.... as if I didn't feel alone enough in all this - now I don't even get to have a doctor holding my hand! Gees. And I gotta do all that oocky stuff myself... The lovely doctor was so clean and neat.... sigh.
So... Step one.... decision making.
Sigh. Never was good at them...
Stay tuned...
Feel free to comment....
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