Donation Day...

So this weekend just gone we knew would be the one where my wife would be ovulating so we provisionally booked our donor and did the pee stick thing to confirm it.

My wife actually ended up with a positive test a day earlier than we anticipated so we contacted our donor and he arranged to come round that evening for the donation.

We were really nervous but got everything ready so that we weren't wasting time once he was gone. He arrived, we had a bit of a chat and explained that we were nervous about the insemination part but we knew what we needed to do etc and he went upstairs to do his thing.

He reappeared about 15 minutes later, we thanked him and were saying goodbye when he asked us about 4 times if there was anything else we need to ask before he goes. We were completely baffled until i realised that we hadn't seen his STI certificate, DO NOT FORGET THIS!!. Make sure it's definitely your donors too by checking it against some photo ID.

Anyway, we ran upstairs and started to prepare for insemination.

Donation and Insemination Checklist

• Cup for your donor to donate into (must be sterile)
• Syringe (without needle and again, must be sterile)
• Toilet roll (to deal with any spills)
• Pillows (to help keep your partners pelvis raised after insemination and to keep her comfortable whilst she lies there)
• Lubricant (if you are using lubricant, make sure it doesn't affect the sperm. Most normal lubricants will)

We ended up losing some of the sperm before it had managed to get anywhere near my wife, i was trying to clear the bubbles from the syringe and it jerked and went everywhere. luckily we had some toilet roll on hand and i know that next time, i'll do it differently!

The main piece of advise i can give is to listen to your partner and pay attention to her body language. The chances are that one of you will have a little bit of a freak out and that person will probably be the one in receipt of the sperm. I know that this was true of us, if it happens, take a couple of minutes and relax her. Don't rush it.

After insemination we lay in bed for a couple of hours (its advised that you do for at least 20 minutes afterwards) just to make sure we give it our best shot. For the couple of days since we've taken it easy, i think it'll stay this way until we know whether or not its worked.

We're giving it 3 weeks before we test, at least that way if it hasn't worked my wife will have started and we'll give it a go next month. We're trying not to get too excited but are remaining hopeful at the same time.

Establishing Contact

So, after the last post i jumped striaight back on the internet in an attempt to find a normal guy that was available to donate possibly in time for the wifes ovulation this weekend just gone.

First of all i should say that it hit me seriously seriously hard. I felt like a failure because i felt like it was my job to bring the sperm, i'm not making the baby this time round so surely i should bring the sperm? Anyway, it crushed me, i'd had a bad day up until that point and it basically pulled the rug from under me. I know that sounds melodramatic but it was horrible.

I emailed a couple of guys on one website then revisited some of the profiles we had previously liked on another. We came across the profile of a guy we had really liked a couple of months before but at that time he wasn't donating.

We emailed him and straight away got off to a fantastic start, he's funny and has the correct eye and hair colour, and seemed to be really easy to get on with. After emailing back and forth he sent us his phone number.

The next evening we called him and spoke for a good hour, laughing most of the time! It was so much better than talking to Pervy McPerv, we all got on really well. We arranged for him to come to ours for a drink a few days later to talk things over and to get to know each other a little better.

The meeting came round really really quickly, we decided to go out to a not so local pub (we're still not telling our families, we don't need the extra pressure just yet!) we talked and swapped stories for 5 hours in the end and we're very impressed with him and his reasons for donating and knew straight away that we wanted him to be our donor.

So all in all, we went from losing a donor to finding and even better one in the space of a few days! Good times!!

All isn't quite what it seems...

Well, it would appear that we didn't make the best judgement.

The guy we were hoping to meet up with and then possibly have him donate sent me a text on Tuesday. We'd not heard from or contacted him in 2 weeks. The following is EXACTLY what was sent to us.....

"Hi when you come round would you watch me produce the sample as this helps me produce more and quickly also"

Excuse my language but....What the FUCK!??! We're lesbians.....real life lesbians....not the fake I'm a lesbian because men are useless kind!

I showed my wife the message and after sitting there just staring at each other in silence we burst into hysterical laughter for a good half an hour. We were in shock.

Straight away we knew that he was no longer ever going to be our donor and we're so thankful to him for asking us instead of us actually going to see him. Can you imagine, "here's a cup, we'll wait here,"... *whips willy out* awkward.

The moral of the story is question EVERYTHING. You have to be so sure about this decision, if there's even the most minimalistic doubt you must question it and if you're still not sure it's a big fat NO!

So it's back to the drawing board for us....

Rejection and success

So, since i last blogged there's been some developments.

Firstly, the guy that looks like Mr Bean, yeah he's not taken 'no' very well. We emailed him and politely said thanks but no thanks but he's now come back to us asking if we're sure, if we've found someone, are we sure that we've found our happiness, if we're pregnant etc etc. We're not even sure if we should reply now, i don't know what else we can say.

On a good note though it looks as though we've found our donor. We changed to a new website and emailed a guy that we'd contacted before but we heard nothing back from (you needed to pay for that website though even if it was just to read emails). He emailed us back within 24 hours and we ended up having a phone chat.

So far so good, he's not too far from us, has similar features to me with the same eye and hair colour. We're going to meet face to face soon and if all goes well he's going to donate for us on the day!!

We're so so excited about it, we'd gone from being quite down beat about the process to all of a sudden having it all come together, nothing is set in stone yet but all the signs are good.

Fingers crossed now, we're hoping to meet and to possibly try in about 5-6 weeks time!

Deciding to start a family

My wife and i have been together for some time now and are finally at the point where we feel it's right to be thinking and actively looking to start a family. We've known for years that we want a family and the longer we're married and the more friends & family have kids, it makes us want it even more. We have names picked out for either sex, we have a plan as to who will carry first, we know which hospital we want to use, you name it we have an answer for it.

My wife has always been the one that we decided would go first as she is a couple of years older so it makes sense that way so it seems simple enough, all we need is some sperm and we'll be pregnant quicker than you can say 'turkey baster'.

Well that's what we thought. We have been actively persuing pregnancy since May through various routes and the only time it's simple is when you have money to throw at it, as much as £6000 per try!!! The cheapest we've found is £900 but again that's per try. You might think the NHS is a possibility but to qualify for treatment on the NHS you must be able to prove that you've had 6 unsuccessful months of trying, at best thats £5400! That's not the sort of money we want to be using to try and get pregnant, think of the nappies, clothes and food you could buy for your new child with that!

So recently we've drifted away from the private treatment route just because we want a family but we don't want to bankrupt ourselves getting there and not be able to provide for our children long term.

This has left us with a couple of options, friends and randomers on the internet.

We started browsing websites in our search for sperm thinking that there must be a relatively normal guy who looks a little like me that would be more than willing to masterbate into a sterile cup for us and be on his way but boy were we wrong!

The only people we have managed to speak to (replies are not easy to come by - something we again were not prepared for) are usually one of the following:

• Really bizarre looking and with it a little strange 
• Want money for spunking in a cup
• Will only do NI
• They are what we have aptly nicknamed "uber donors"
• They go into WAY too much detail about their home life and reasons for donating
• Easy to scare when it comes to asking questions

The really bizarre looking ones aren't too much of an issue, we've spoken to a guy who looks like Mr Bean, he's nice enough but he's not for us.

The ones that want money for their 'spunk' are not good. It's illegal to sell sperm in the UK and as soon as you know they want paying for it you know they're doing it for the wrong reasons.

NI. NI is 'natural insemination', basically sex. Now we're not being funny but if we have to sleep with a man to get pregnant and have our family then we'd rather live childless, that may sound extreme but there's so many marriage and moral boudaries being over stepped it scares us both. Plus if you're reading this and have a long term partner and are in a monogomous relationship, imagine them with someone else. Not nice is it?

Uber donors!! These guys REALLY like to spread their seed, they have anything from 10-50+ donor kids running around the UK and that SCARES me. There's a small chance that any donor child could meet and be 'intimate' with a 'sibling' in the future but these guys that have 50+ kids, you're not telling me that there's as much chance of 2 of them meeting and settling down as guys that only have a handful at most? It worries us both.

The guys that go into too much detail is a new one by us. We got talking to a guy last week, asked him lots of questions and really started to like him. He asked us a few back which we answered and when his reply came we were shocked.

This guy basically sounds like he's trapped in a bad marriage, his wife is a control freak and he has no way out. Apparently she wouldn't give him sex so he had to resort to pleasuring himself whilst watching porn (his words!!) which his wife went crazy about because he knows how she feels about porn. Then he said that he was sharing porn with one of his friends. TMI! Dude, seriously! We appreciate your honesty but we don't need to know about your porn and wanking habits!!

The most frustrating ones are the ones that run for the hills as soon as you ask basic questions. We need to know that you'd be happy with the set up we're offering before we accept your sperm so please be polite and acknowledge that, if you've changed your mind that's fine but just tell us.

The only other option is friends. We've spoken to one of our male friends who is thinking it over but other than that we don't have a lot of male friends, just a lot of male family and again, that would be so wrong!

So in closing for this opening piece, finding sperm is one of the most difficult things either of us have done before in our lives, we're convinced that we'll get there eventually but i have a feeling that it's going to be a long, long road.