Buffy, the sperm nurse

We went for our orientation at the fertility clinic today. We’re this ridiculously zealous pre-inseminating couple. We’ve still got six weeks until the sperm can come out of storage, and probably about eight weeks until we do our first IUI. But, as we’ve been waiting since last December, we’re eager to be as prepared as we can. So off we went for our first glimpse of the place where our sperm is waiting and where we’ll be inseminating. It’s a pleasant clinic. Neutral tones. Down lights. Quite glamorous really. Although the room where we’ll be inseminating looks a bit like a kitchen with a set of stirrups in it. I am planning on taking Stephanie Brill’s advice and making it our own, bringing in our insemination playlist.

Our Nurse Coordinator’s name is Buffy. I love this and loved her instantly because of it. I was imagining a funky, young dyke, but she’s actually a kindly and delightful middle aged woman, who is so neutral and non-judgemental. (Lo later tells me that Buffy is a well-known shortening for Elizabeth, but I never knew this and am still captured by the novelty of my kindly sperm nurse Buffy.)

In our last appointment with Dr Young & Funky, we decided on starting with a stimulated IUI. You can read about my grappling with whether to use drugs here. Even though most of the advice we received from other tccing lesbians was to the contrary, Lo & I have decided to go straight to stimulated IUI. I noticed that most advocates of no-drugs IUI had ended up having to ramp up their attempts to using drugs and IVF after a few unsuccessful cycles, and because time is of the essence for us, with an overseas move at the end of the year, and our sperm is frozen, thanks to known donors who are in another country, we’ve decided to go straight to what we think will work best with limited intervention and less ethical complexity than IVF. We figure that we’re not trying to recreate heterosex and would like to give this the best chance, and shortest timeframe, as possible.

So we’re going to be using Puregon, at a very low dose (50), and then a trigger shot and then something for a few days after the insemination (possibly the trigger shot or the Puregon again?). There will be a regime of blood tests and ultrasounds. I have completed all the blood tests and ultrasounds that are required before starting treatment, and just need to have my HSG (I have been waiting until closer to the time, as apparently if it’s had close to the time of insemination it increases your chances.)

Reading other blogs out there, including Vee and Jay’s staggering running total, we’re so fortunate to live in a country where our Medicare system covers most of the costs involved in this whole process. There’s a lot we had been shelling out for earlier in the process (sperm analysis, sperm storage and a plethora of tests for our donors) but thanks to the system here we’ll probably only end up out of pocket about $300 per month for over $2000 worth of treatment. Perhaps less with our health insurance on top of that.

So we’re on our way. It’s finally coming into sight. And I am so excited. There’s still mountains of administrivia before we’re home. Such as discovering a whole bunch of consent forms the clinic was meant to get our donors to sign when they deposited were not given to them to sign, meaning we are now having to send them across the world for them to sign (and find a witness for – which will be tricky for them to explain) and return. We also have to arrange their final blood tests and ensure that a third world doctor’s testing and diagnostic procedures are reliable enough to satisfy our doctor. And we do all this just to get to the starting line…

So far, our donors could not be more perfect. Lo and I are both a besotted with them. As such decent human beings. As such wonderful men. They have been so willing to go through this process so openheartedly. And for that we are grateful. Originally, our first ob/gyn (who we saw for our first appointment) said that we had to choose from one or the other and we were a bit trapped in a cycle of weighing up attributes and sperm quality. But we have since decided and told the clinic that we want to alternate between the donors each month. This was a bit of a revelation, but works for us. Because we entered into this with them as a couple. Because we equally couldn’t decide between one or the other of them, nor did we want to. Because storing two types of sperm protected us from waiting six months to find out that the sperm didn’t work so well. Because ideally we’d like for Lo to have our next baby with the other of them’s sperm. Because having this concept of a donor-couple really waters down the biology of it all. It’s our baby, but our friends are helping us. And such wonderful friends they are.

Even though I had been the original proponent of using an anonymous donor, I am so glad about how this has worked out for us so far. With the right men, known donor arrangements can work so well. As we all know, with the wrong men, they can be disastrous. I think distance always helps.

So that is where we are on a Thursday evening in June. It’s so cold outside. Lo is out for the evening. I am listening to a wonderful CD by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and contemplating a pile of dishes.

And the countdown is on.

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