A baby came out of me.

Well, it seems we have some catching up to do. So... I'll just go ahead and dive in.

After we returned from our trip to the UK in 2012, we started trying to have a baby again, but after our previous round of trying and succeeding and losing, I wasn't much in the mood for blogging about it. I was sort of in disbelief that it would ever actually happen—even after we got pregnant that fall. Even after we hit 12 weeks and everything looked great. It wasn't until we hit the 5-month mark that I allowed myself to start believing we'd actually have a baby at the end of it.

Still, on and on we trucked through the pregnancy, and baby ran out of fluid in my uterus during her 41st week. My doc said we needed to get the show on the road, so they started to induce, but my body decided to take it from there on its own, smart body that it is. 

As I contracted and dilated away, Thayer and I hung out in our dimly lit, wood-laminate-floored, warm-colored birthing room, ordered "room service," and watched several movies I could barely pay attention to on account of all the stabbing in my reproductive system. (For the record, the movies were The Truman Show on VHS, Adventureland, and I think The Social Network. On account of my Jesse Eisenberg problem.) The nurse finally gave me some pain meds through an IV and I blissed out instantly and couldn't keep from grinning. This labor stuff was no sweat. 

Unfortunately that bliss lasted, oh, 5 minutes before it wore off and I was cringing and huffing and puffing again. It was time for the epidural. I was stoked.

I'll pause here now and say: I had always intended to give birth in a hospital, with a doctor, with an epidural. I know it's controversial because these days everybody is really into "natural" birthing, at home, with a doula, without pain meds, with a written birth plan, etc etc. For me, though, coming up with a birth plan sounded about like my worst nightmare. My idea of the ideal birth was hanging out in a giant medical facility with a bunch of folks who had seen thousands of births and would tell me exactly what to do. Home birthing without meds? That's wonderful if that's your thing. It's not and never was my thing, though nearly everyone I spoke to during my pregnancy assumed it would be my thing and talked about it as if it were the only way to go. But I learned to perfect my closed-mouth smile, say "oh" in very interested tones, and change the subject.

And so, just as I'd planned, the tiny needle went into my back and became one of several tubes running to and from my body, and I was perfectly happy about it. So damn happy I even went to sleep. It was an oft-interrupted sleep, what with the nurse clicking away on her computer next to me and checking on me every now and then, but I daresay I slept better than Thayer did, flat on his back on the clammy, vinyl window seat they call a spouse bed. 

Seventeen-hour story short, morning rolled around, I progressed steadily, and my doc was back on duty by the time I was ready to push. Serendipity! I pushed for about an hour, and I'll go ahead and spare you the details and just say it took loads of energy and strength, but I couldn't feel any pain—again, just as I'd hoped/planned. Then, at 10:34 a.m. on June 13, Helen Kay slid on out, purple and grimacing in a silent scream that soon became audible, tiny and fragile as it was. 

My whole body convulsed in an uncontrollable sob when I saw her face and knew it had been her all along, squirming in my belly, kicking my ribs. She was as wrinkled as her 87-year-old namesake, and Thayer and I stared, dumbfounded, at her, barely able to believe she really existed, barely able to believe what we'd just done.

That was five weeks ago. She still really exists. And she's awesome.

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.