Making Our Family

One thing we always wanted was a family and this is our journey as we try to make our dream come true, the hurdles of a same sex couple finding a sperm donor and hopefully getting pregnant. #magsandbetty

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Lets have a chat...

So here we are, a very long and wet drive. We checked in…nearly in silence! Nervous was an understatement. Text messages were exchanged and before we knew it we had a plan, a venue and a time….30 mins time!!!

I wanted to look my best, sounds silly I know. But I needed my game face on. So 15mins of makeup and we were getting changed and off we went.

We knew what he looked liked thanks to the photos but nothing can prepare you for the nerve racking task of trying to identify a stranger that could make your dreams come true. And we found him outside the coffee shop! (No! I really wanted to get in and sat down before he arrived ) So we are now In a queue with ‘Stuart’ waiting to be served…awkward! We currently have nothing in common, no talking points, you can’t really start talking about sperm and ovulation in the queue!

So eventually we find a seat and we start talking about the drive and then the conversation starts flowing. We talk about his family, that he is married with children, we talk about why he does this, he is an experienced donor. He sees this a normal thing, like giving blood almost, he has something we need and that he doesn't, That puts our mind at rest, I always wonder what makes a man what to help people like us, to create children that he wont know and a situation he will gain nothing from and know we understand it more. He is so laid back about it oh and hairy!!!

We talk about STI’s, sperm count and genetic conditions. About contact, donation logistics and sibling. It was so strange but so very important to make sure we ticked all the boxes. We don't want a donor that wants to co-parent, we have nothing against it but it is not for us.We want to be the Mummies and will cross the who was my donor bridge when we get there. An hour later and we are finished talking and all agreed.

We are happy…so we signed contracts. We have been here less than two hours and goal accomplished.

This is crazy!!!!

So all that is left to do is find out when….

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Take Two

So….it early 2016…I have lost 2st in preparation for us trying for a baby but since January I have struggled to get back on the diet.

I self sabotage ALOT, and I think that starting a family seems so far away, so scary and so exciting all at the same time that I needed something to focus me. So back to the Internet we go and put our profile out there again. It feels slightly less exposing this time, know we know what to expect.

We chose a different website this time. We looked at the one we used last time but there didn’t seem to be any change in the donor pool…so that is why we jumped into a new donor pool…headfirst!

Fast forward just over a week and we get a message from a donor….surly this can’t happen twice…we can’t be found by a donor again, we had hardly started looking ….we aren’t that lucky.

Reading his messages, he is well travelled, smart and a family man. His background is science and he lives 4 hours drive away!!!!

How can this work? Logistically? I work a demanding full time job and mags works full time and shifts to take into account?

Then I realised I am back to self sabotage. If you said to me ‘Drive for 8 hours and you could have a baby’…would I do it? HELL YES! And this is no different.

Mags and I said we both have to be comfortable with any decisions we make and this is something we need to discuss in detail.

Discussion done…we are both in agreement that nothing ventured nothing gained, so now we are off to meet him….3 day trip planned…might as well enjoy some time away while we are at it.

This trip was purely to meet him no baby making cycle this time. I have to be sure. My gard is up, with what happened last time I am a little more cautious….now to make a list of questions. Its going to be a long drive with all this running through my head….

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What's the hold up....

So we are dealing with the disappointment and prospects of starting again, which I am not going to lie was pretty tough...then a job opportunity comes my way a work and I have a huge decision to make. There is a role within my company that takes alot of training and is far more in depth than my current role. I have wanted to move in this job but I would have to gain the qualifications outside of work on my own time and at my own expense, but didn't think I could do all the qualifications, to get the letters after my name, whilst doing a full-time job and making my marriage work. (I'm needy when it comes to time together, poor Mags!) So when work advertised the job with an in house qualification scheme, I had to decided do we hold off having a baby and take the job or miss out what could be a once in a work lifetime chance? Mags is super supportive and she let me make the choice that I felt was right for not only me but the both of us..... New Job, more money and a better future for our family....that is what I chose. What has followed has been the most stressful 15 months of my life. But here we are, I am qualified and doing the job but I am still finding my feet. This means... Now we start again....

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Rain on our parade.

So there we were…STD tests done, date in the Diary for our first donation and I’m afraid…What if it doesn’t work? What if it does?!

The date comes and donation is made, I don’t want to go into detail but our original plan, we will call it plan A, didn’t come together as we had hoped so plan B was set into motion. Nerves made the whole process strange, scary and oh the pressure!!!

*Donation Done

*Insemination Done

*Now Wait

I hated the waiting…we waited to get to this point and then we had to wait and see if it had worked. I didn’t hold out to much hope, the likelihood of it working first time was slim. And unfortunately it didn’t work, so we dealt with the disappointment and went to arrange our second donation but there was a problem…

Our donor was moving away and could no longer help us.

With finding a donor in the way we did, you build a relationship with them. It is hard to describe, you don’t ‘know’ this person, they are not a friend or loved one but you invest so much that you have a connection, you are invested emotionally. They are the key to your future, your happiness, your dreams.

So when he told us the news we were devastated, we grieved for the end of the relationship, for the dream that had been almost close enough to touch but had been snatched away. For the time invested and everything we had dared to let ourselves hope for.

Mags didn’t really talk about it, she’s not a big talker (hence me doing the blog and her sat on the sofa next to me watching The Big Bang Theory!) She internalised it. She doesn’t discuss our situation with her family and she didn’t really talk to me about it for sometime, eventually she opened up and it made us both feel better knowing that our reactions were valid and that we both had to deal with how we were feeling.

I dealt with it by crying, my general reaction to everything.

This pushed back our plans because we need to deal with the emotion of it all before we started looking for another donor.

There was more than just rain on our parade…it was a full blown thunderstorm…but it too like the rain passed.

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He found us...

So our details we out there...

We had looked at several profiles and sent a few messages but no replies.

And then we received a message from a donor, saying that he thought he could help us, He was semi-local, athletic and very intelligent. He had a family of his own and had donated before and wanted to help another couple.

So we exchanged emails back and forth plus photographs, it got to the point that the only thing left to do was meet.

This was the most nerve wracking thing we have ever done, We were sat in a coffee shop waiting for a stranger to come and decided if he is willing to help us make our dreams come true. It felt like we were being judged but against someone's personal standards so we had no way of knowing what he was looking for, if we were the people he would chose to help.

So we sat there, almost in silence, our nerves were showing as we waited for his arrival...the time we were due to meet came and went, ten minutes late, twenty, thirty...I had prepared myself for not meeting his 'criteria' and also not seeing eye to eye but him not showing up had never crossed my mind. We decided if he didn't show by a set time that we would leave. But then the door opened and in he walked, flustered and out of breath. His car had broken down and this is why he was late. My heart got faster, he had arrived, this was real...

So now he was here, where do we start?

Thankfully he lead the way, starting with his family and work, previous donations, we went through the information he wanted to know about us and how we would raise a child.

I wanted to know why he was donating? What was the motivation for helping us? It is rare to find someone that selfless. He likened sperm donation to donating blood - he saw it a medical process, not emotional. This was the first time I had seen it like that and it made a lot of sense. A bodily fluid that is replenished and needed by another.

So after our coffee we left, happy we had found our donor...Now we had to go through STD testing and then the scary bit....... logistics and donation.

[ustwoplusone-blog]

Finding Mr D

OK so where do we find a selfless man, willing to donate to us on demand for no personal gain?!?……The World Wide Web. ..here we come! It’s a minefield to say the least…. So what website do we use? Are they legitimate? How do we know we are doing the right thing? How can we be sure we aren’t putting ourselves in danger? So we registered our details on a few sites…some with more members that others. But most you can’t send/receive messages until you pay a subscription. We chose a site and pay our fee…. It just got very real! You are basically putting out an advert with why you would be good parents, why you are worthy of someone’s time and donations. It made us feel very exposed. I am on a website writing about Mags and Myself, I have to give enough details to let people see we are honest and real without endangering us by giving to much personal information. All the while making sure Mags is happy with all of this and involved. She really wants to have a family but finding a donor is something that I am mainly in charge of. I hope we can navigate through all this...

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What's next....

So how are we going to do this?

There is alot to consider, cost, process, reaction, who, what, where…I could go on. So let’s start at the beginning, Donor and Insemination or IVF? My BMI is to high for IVF, something i am working on, and the cost is a massive thing that we need to consider. We have some savings but the likely hood of it working first time is slim. We would be in debt before we had even started our family and heaven only knows how many tries it would take. So we moved to a Donor and insemination. This can be done in a clinic…but the same problems arise BMI and cost. If you think about the number of times it could take and the cost each time.. You could spend more than with IVF and still not have our little family. So that leads us to finding our own donor. We have sat and talked night after night about what we want from a donor. We want to be the parents of the baby and not share that responsibility with anyone else. (This would be called Co-Parenting- two people join together to create and share custody of a child) We have also decided that our Donor should not be friend or someone we would see in the local area. We were concerned that they may donate with all the best intentions but we could not be sure that feelings wouldn’t change once that baby had arrived…it could get very complicated! This is not something we wanted to risk. So we need a Donor that we don’t know, that doesn’t live to close to us, that is willing to take time out of his life to make the dreams of complete strangers come true…shouldn’t be to hard right!?!?!

[noborderlove-blog]

Mhm.

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Love is love…it is blind and consuming. Its leads us places we haven’t been and fills us with the courage to truly embrace what we want to achieve

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Where it all began...

‘I see my future in an instant….I think I found my bestfriend’ These are the two lines from our wedding song that sum us up.

Mags is my bestfriend and my whole world. When I first met her I knew that I wanted her in my life, she was the only person I have ever wanted like that, she is the only person that I have ever pursued and eventually she noticed me. To cut a long story short we have been inseparable eversince.

So how did we decided on having a family? Mags and I were out for the night, not unusual, we had only been together a few weeks and in our early twenties, we were out alot. Mags was sat next to me, she turned to me and shouted over the music ‘I have an important question to ask’ ‘It could make or break us…’ My heart was pounding, even after a few weeks I knew I was in love with her, what could she possibly be asking me. ‘Do you want to have children? ’ she asked and without flinching or hesitation I answered ‘Yes, I always have.’ She stood up and walked to the bar. I was sat in my seat, none the wiser as to whether or not it was the right answer. It felt like a lifetime before she returned, I playfully asked ‘Did I make or break us?’….trying to sound cool, like it was not a big deal but so much riding on this one question! I wouldn’t want to comprises my life long dream of being a mum but she was already so important to me, it would have been a hard decision to make. She looked into my eyes, her whole face smiled and then as cool as she is took a swig from her drink…and then I knew we were on the same page.

That was over 8 years ago now. And now we are starting on this journey to make our dream of being a family come true.