Round 1 begins

This week has been super exciting so far, and it's not even So You Think You Can Dance night yet.

First off, lots of excitement around my new business venture. I went live with my Red's Edits website and Facebook page yesterday, and the feedback has been so wonderful I could float away by the sheer strength of my own giddiness. Thank you, family and friends, for this powerful burst of support. It is seriously motivating.

The other source of excitement: on Monday we had our first sperm shooting appointment. As I mentioned last post, I was tracking my cycle. This means I was hastily doing several ovulation "predictor kits" every morning in the midst of my regular daily routine. Hey, the more predictor kits, the more solid the prediction, right? I mean, isn't that what they say? No?

I'm not actually so neurotic that I would go out and buy multiple predictor kits, okay? It just so happened that a good friend was kind enough to bestow two of her kits upon me. But one of them, a fancy little compute-y gadget, was already calibrated to her cycle, and the instruction booklet advised not to put all my eggs in its basket. As it were.

So Thayer went out and got me my own kit, and I continued using all three just for funzies. Plus the P-Tracker app on my iPhone, which is basically a glorified calendar.

Well. P-Tracker was convinced Sunday would be my lucky day, and what do you know -- Sunday morning all my devices were a-bling with ovulatory excitement. They were all very psyched for me, what with their double pink test lines and their digital egg graphics.

Next day, I called the doc and the fertility clinic sperm storer-thawers and told them it was game on. I went in that afternoon and picked up "THE SPECIMEN."

Half my future baby might be in there?

I know what you're thinking. "Surely they didn't just send you off with the vial all exposed and unprotected like that!"

Oh, come on. Of course they didn't.

They sent me off with the vile cradled in the safety of this foam coffee cup stuffed with tissues.

It was not actually hot, as the lid so thoughtfully cautioned.

So, off I went across the skybridge to the medical tower next door, sperm lockbox in hand. Thayer met me in the waiting room there--ten minutes late. I was so afraid the doc would come out and summon me all business business business. "We wait for no man!" she'd say. And Thayer would miss it all.

Instead, Thayer and I waited there together for another half hour or so.

Finally we were called in and the doc was friendly and supportive and sweet as pie. I hopped up on the exam table, glamorous as can be, and Thayer patted my arm while the doc proclaimed everything "gorgeous" and shot the sperm. Only slightly ouchy. Over in a flash.

And then she sent us off with sincere well wishes, but not before advising us not to start preggo testing for AT LEAST TWO WEEKS.

That's a joke, right? I'm supposed to chill out for two weeks not knowing what's going on in there? This is the year 2011, is it not? You're telling me there's no fancy robot that can tell me the verdict instantaneously? I'm calling bullsh*t.

To celebrate and calm down and divert our attention, we went out for pizza, because only pizza can solve problems such as these.

Here's happy Thayer on the drive to the pizza:

 "You're a dork," he is saying, because...

Here's happy me on the drive to the pizza:

 This upside-down thing is totes going to work, guys.

Well, dear readers, that's it for Round 1. I'll let you know how it went IN TWO WEEKS when our ancient detection methods start picking up signals.

In the meantime, I'mma see if Frank and Stu have any special animal sensing powers. I bet they do. They'll tell me for sure.

If you like it then you shoulda put a baby in it

All about babymaking.
So, my plan is to keep this blog about the process of getting preggos, but not actually make the posts public until after we're preggos. As of right now, we've told very few people that we're at the starting point. We have not told our families or most of our friends, because when the time comes, we want the news to be like BAM!

Maybe you're reading this now and feeling all irritated because why didn't we tell you?! But we've seen firsthand what it's like for a couple to dive headlong into babymaking and then... nothing. Nothing for a long, long time. And lots of people asking all the time.

So to prep ourselves for the four to eight attempts that the cryobank says is average, we've decided not to make the babymaking public knowledge. But think -- isn't it fun now that you know we're pregnant for sure and you get to find out about how we got there?

Oh, sorry, did I just skim over that whole cryobank thing? Well, that's how it all gets started on the Hayley and Thayer choo-choo train to Babyville. [Shoutout to KJ for that brilliant segue.]

If the cryobank thing threw you for a loop, our sitch is this: We will be using donor sperm. It's something we always knew we would need to do, so even though it might be news to you, it's old news to us. It's not like we just found out and are uber devastated or anything like that.

In fact, I guess you could say we can count our blessings that way. We were never under any illusion that we could make a baby together the old fashioned way, and now we're going ahead with it the way we'd always planned.

And to that, let me just say WAHOO! We are friggin' stoked. About everything. The future baby. Even the process. And let me tell you about this process. I mean, who knows: maybe you stumbled upon this blog because you're looking for info on how to have a donor baby. Well, here's how we're doing it.

There are cryobanks all over the US, even all over the world, that you can access online. We found a donor we like at a cryobank a few states away. His name is 11200. The cryobank gives info on stats like height, weight, hair, eyes, build, complexion, interests, studies, personality, heritage, AND? Celebrity look-alikes. Which... how great is that. I love that. One of 11200's celebrity look-alikes looks remarkably like Thayer. Plus, he's studying accounting and finance. Meant to be? Please. Is there any doubt?
So next, we added the sperm to our "basket" and checked out like we were buying some gadget on Amazon.com. Straightforward and easy, as online shopping should always be.

Would you like to know how much a vial of frozen sperm costs? It costs $575. And of course, this vial was not in Seattle, which didn't do us much good, being in Seattle and all. So we had to ship the vial. It costs $195 to ship the vial. Naturally.

Now you are wondering if we have a vial of sperm in our freezer, which would be hilarious, but I assure you that we do not. Luckily for us, we've got some close friends who have gone this route before us. Thus, we inherited the wisdom they gained through trial and error, and we don't have to do the trying and erring.

Their first tip? Do not try this at home.
Sure, it seems romantic, they said, to make your baby in the comfort of your own home. But really? There's no romance in thawing frozen donor sperm and amateurishly trying to get it to its final destination. Just go to the doctor and have them do what it is their job to do. Because, like... they know how. And if you do it yourself, you'll probably f*ck it up and there goes your first round of $770 and the first month of your time.
 
Hence, our next step was to get the sperm from Elsewhere to Seattle and have it stored somewhere they'd know what to do with it. So we signed up with the Pacific Northwest Fertility Clinic for a free month of storage, and they're conveniently affiliated with the Seattle doc who will be doing what I affectionately call "the sperm shooting."

It seems hella steamlined, too. How it works is: I track my cycle until I'm ovulating, I call my doc to tell her it's go time, I call the fertility clinic and they thaw and prep the sperm, and I go see doc the next day and she does the shooting.

Oh, did I tell you that to buy the sperm from the cryobank in the first place, I had to have an authorization note from my doc to ensure she was supervising the whole bit? Ridiculous, right? I mean, most people just have a free sperm supply and can do whatever they want with it without a doctor's permission. It just made me wonder... what is the cryobank afraid people are going to do with their sperm? What are people doing with $770 frozen sperm, if not trying to make babies? Ideas, anyone? Please--I'm dying for answers.

Someone suggested maybe they're afraid people will conduct their own interspecies hybrid experiments. That... sounds like a pretty legit concern, actually.

Anyway, back to human babies. Where we're at right now is: our vial of sperm is in storage in Seattle waiting for me to ovulate. In a couple of weeks, it will be go time for round one.

LET'S DO THIS.

Art

I am a very very talented artist, you see, so I wrote this haiku and drew this picture to illustrate my current state.


Period goblin
says, "Feed me chocolate and booze.
Where are my sweatpants?"