Saturday, 31 March 2012

Not there yet

So last month didn't go to plan, still no baby! We are only a few days from my wife's period due date so we should find out again soon.

I'm getting bored of the trying now which is getting me frustrated. Not with my wife or the donor but with the process and ultimately myself. It's getting really tedious to the point where I'm not enjoying it, we want the final product so desperately but it's getting to be really annoying.

I'm still convinced that it'll be this month or next but it's not making it any easier and until we get a positive test it won't mean anything.

In other news, I got the sex of my ex work colleague's baby right! She had a baby boy on march 3rd. Our friends have had their detailed scan but they didn't find out the sex, they're keeping it a secret so I won't find out until the little one is born.

Anyway, this was a random one. I'll do another post when we know either way about this try, fingers are crossed, hopes are high! Come on baby, we're ready for you!!

Thursday, 1 March 2012

Pregnancy Sixth Sense

We're surrently on 11DPO (days past ovulation) and for some reason it's going really slowly this time around, i feel like it's been about 6 months since my wife had her last period and it's starting to do my head in a bit. Randomly , i have really sore nipples. Now if it was my wife with the sore nipples i think we'd both be getting really excited and be finding it difficult not knowing for certain whether it had worked or not this month with such an obvious symptom. I'm hoping it's part of my sixth sense and that we are pregnant.

Which quite nicely leads into an explaination of what my pregnancy sixth sense is. Basically i can sense when friends or family are pregnant, sometimes even before they know. I know that sounds really weird but i just know, i may not know exactly who is pregnant but i'll have an overwhelming feeling that someone is. Once they're about 10 weeks pregnant i can usually sense the sex of the baby/babies too.

I'm so good at it that i haven't been wrong in about 7 years! Current guesses are that the friends i've spoken about on here are having a boy (they find out in the next few weeks) and an ex work colleague is also having a boy (she was due at the end of February so i guess we'll find out any day now)

I'm currently getting some feeling about us, 1 of 2 things is correct (i think!) so i'm writing it in my blog to see if it comes true. Either we are pregnant this month but we'll test and it'll come up negative and then we'll wait for a few days and re test to get a positive. Or it's not this month but it's either March into April or April in May. I'm just getting "you're almost there" vibes. Don't ask me why but i am.

We shall see in the next few weeks if i'm right on the first theory and the sexes of friends babies.

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Onwards

So month 3 didn't work either. We were so much more relaxed about it though and didn't even test, we just waited to see if my wife's period showed and it did.

A few days before it did we had a bit of a heart to heart and a cry about everything. We always knew what this would take but i guess neither of us ever thought that it would quite literally be fertility treatment but without the medical assistance. It can really get to you in a way that you're not expecting and you get to a point where you just want it to work so bad that not a lot else matters.

So this weekend just gone we inseminated again, this time 3 nights on the trot. We were only planning 2 nights but my wife's cycle had a mind of it's own and decided to throw a red herring in the mix which resulted in an extra night. Who knows though, by doing that we may have cracked it!

The donation and insemination process has gotten much easier, our donor comes round with his girlfriend and the awkwardness now seems to have gone, we're all getting to be quite comfortable with each other now which is a bit of a relief!

We'll chat about how we're getting on with the process and life in general for a little while then our donor with pop upstairs for a 'wafty crank' and we'll talk with his girlfriend. Once he's done they go ASAP and we get everything 'in place' as quickly as possible, we've actually got the whole process down to less than 10 minutes from production to insemination!

I'm on some conception and same sex family forums and after talking to other same sex couples i've realised just how lucky we are to have found a guy as open, honest and trustworthy (touch wood!! hang on, that sounds so wrong!!). This is a major thing you're asking of someone and ultimately that they're asking of you. There has to be a big element of trust between you all, if there isn't the trust there it's just not worth the risk.

Oh, 'watch me wank' guy text again. Mate, get the hint and piss off now, you're doing my head in!!

Hopefully i'll be back with good news in a couple of weeks, i'm going to try and do a couple of posts a months from now on whether big or small so watch this space!

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Hopes and Disappoinments

Given that we're now a couple of months on and i haven't been shouting about just how pregnant we are you can probably gather that we're not. After the first attempt we knew it would probably be a miracle if anything had happened that time around what with the spillage and the nerves.

The next time was really awkward because it fell over Christmas. Our donor was really great about it though and did his thing on Christmas Eve and the 27th. We were actually really hopeful, i got really excited about it because i was convinced it had worked but low and behold that ugly red cow showed up and it was back to the drawing board.

Since then our friends that have been going through the same thing have been successful, they're (well she) is 12 weeks pregnant today. I feel like i'm in that episode of 'Friends' where Rachel and Phoebe are talking about being happy and a little bit jealous of Chandler and Monica's engagement, they start talking about it and they 95% happy and 5% jealous then after a while it gets to almost 50/50. I honestly couldn't be happier for them but i want us to have one of our own!

This weekend just passed we decided we would do multiple donations on consecutive days. We ordered some 'PreSeed' too (sperm friendly lubricant) and used that to try and encourage the little buggers to wake up and swim towards the egg.

We're now waiting again, my wife has stopped taking her temperature in the mornings so that we're not looking for signs in that, i've sworn to leave forums well alone for the same reason and we're generally being way more relaxed about it all. We definitely got the timing good, we inseminated on Saturday and Sunday evening and my wife ovulated on Monday so hopefully by the time the sperm woke up and starting legging it towards the egg it would have been perfect time.

All in all we don't know anything and until a couple of weeks time we wont. I did give the sperm special instructions to 'swim away from the light' and 'find that bloody egg' during insemination though, hopefully they got the hint and i'll be back to report good news a couple of weeks.

Tuesday, 29 November 2011

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!!

Friday, 18 November 2011

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....