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ttc wednesday
So since we finally have something to post this week I guess I will start. We had our meeting with our midwife on Monday. It seems all systems are go for us to try to get pregnant when we are ready. So if we had all our ducks in a row we could infact try this month but it would be really rushed. We still need to pick a donor and get the paper work done on that end and also make sure my medical records are sent from my Dr. Could be done but with it being the start of school and all I think we will stick with our october plan and try my next cycle. Which would make for a July baby if all went well. Not ideal but I guess one can't really plan for these things. It will happen when it happens.
So since we are deep in the donor selection process what criteria are you using and what bank do you think you will use? Also how are people feeling about donor siblings?
Re: ttc wednesday
Sam,
That is definitely exciting.
Great news about the "all systems go" news from the midwife!
To answer your questions (if Trav and I had to use a donor):
We would look for someone Irish since that is Trav's background (his dad is all Irish, his mom half Irish/half Italian). Other then that I think its mostly looking for someone healthy, maybe with artistic inclinations, and at least a college degree. And if we could get it without sacrificing other things, someone with blue eyes like Trav (although my brown eyed gene would most likely win over anyway).
We would probably also try to use the same donor for multiple kids.
As for our TTC/PCP news for the week... well we continue to work on the future nursery (ceiling is painted, priming walls tonight, and should be hanging the ceiling fan and painting the walls this weekend). Best of all, Trav has officially laid it out there that once we are done with the room we will start trying. I'm so psyched that he finally feels comfortable enough to lay it out there. I'm sure we won't be finishing in time for this cycle, but it looks like we'll be a go for October!
Just typing that makes me get all excited and wiggly in my chair. Lol.
Also, I just found out that my best friend's baby is a girl! I'm so excited to be an "Auntie" to a little girl!!!
Maybe I don't have a heightened sense of smell, but I've never smelled any vagina on my pants. -- TSD
Bloggity Blog - You know you want to...
we'll be starting with the next cycle, which will be around the end of the month/beginning of next. the big news, i suppose (to me, anyway), is that we have narrowed our donors down to 2, from a list of 60+. we're leaning toward one of them, but we're going to sit down and talk about it more when she gets back home tomorrow night.
the bank we're using is literally next door to the re's office, so it makes things much simpler and there are no shipping charges for us. the first thing we did was get rid of the ethnic donors and all the blonde hair/blue eye combo donors, since we'd like the baby to look as much like the two of us as possible. we know, blonde hair and blue eyes are recessive traits, but it was an arbitrary way to narrow down the list more quickly. we also scratched off everyone who was limited availability, and donors that were used by people we know. the bank has a limited profile and short family medical history on each donor that we could download for free, so once we had it narrowed down a bit we got those and used them to narrow it down even more. for the last five we went ahead and bought the "in your own words" essays for them, which pretty much immediately knocked off two more and gave us the final two, plus a third that we still like but we're not going to go with.
wow, wow, wow! we're going to have a TTC explosion on our hands! i'm so excited for you ladies
We're still pcp-ing over here with one big check off our list: wedding complete! up next is replacement windows then paying off andrea's car. I found out the fantastic news that we'll be recieving a $7,500 tax advance this year due to the purchase of our home. That $ should just about top off our saftey net fund and made Andrea feel confident that we'll be financially prepared to begin TTC in March-ish. which, of course, can't come soon enough. In the meantime, though, another of our friends had a baby girl (on our wedding day!) so that makes a total of 3 babies i can snuggle and spread my botb all over
have i mentioned that i'm so ready? so. ready.
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
How exciting that so many people are so close to starting!
All is well with us. I think I already told y'all that we are having a girl. She is super active and her kicks are getting stronger and stronger. We are looking into birthing classes (I will e-mail you soon Joy -- thanks!) and considering either using a doula or asking a friend of mine to be a birth attendant. I love watching W's belly grow and feeling our little girl move around. This process has been awesome!
In terms of donors, we used a known one but when we were considering anonymous, our criteria was a family health history with little or no cancer (we both have cancer in our families) and I was hoping for a Jewish donor (in the end our know donor is 1/4 Jewish by blood but not at all by experience). Also W wanted a donor over 5'9".
We narrowed down the list by ethnicity ( Carol is 100% Irish so we really wanted that in our donor) Then we went by hair and eye color so we would get a kid that looked like us. We narrowed it down to 5 that we got long profiles on. That kicked out a couple due to drug use history. We had it to two and one we really just felt drawn to. What we didn't know was that we would only get two chances on him because right after we ordered he went into retired status. So there wouldn't be any chance of a full blooded sibling, but luckily we are only planning on one, mainly due to our ages.
Good luck. You will know when you hit the right one.
~Kennedy
PCP update: Not good news on that front. We were planning to use our HELOC for the new roof we desperately need, but last week I got a letter in the mail saying they had reduced my line by $40k because they think the value of our house has tanked (down by $100k in the year since I opened the line?!). So now the obvious solution for paying for this necessary pre-ttc expense is gone, and we're trying to figure out what to do while kicking ourselves for not having a firm backup plan. I really don't want to take the roof money out of our savings or our ttc fund, but I guess we'll do whatever we have to do... sigh...
Donor q: We will probably use Fairfax because it is local, saving us shipping costs. There are not many black donors at any bank, but if we happened to find a different bank with a ton of black donors (anyone know of one?), or a donor we really liked, we'd consider using someone other than Fairfax. We'd like more than one child, and would like them to have a shared donor, but we'll decide more specifically about that when we're crossing that bridge (post #1).
IUI #3 gave us the best 2nd anniv. gift ever: 2 babies! (born 03/09/10)
Peanut and Little Man are getting so big! 2 years old already!
finally blogging again at This Will Be: An Adventure
We went with Fairfax because they are local (when we did ICIs L went and picked them up and when we did IUIs they couriered to the Drs office.) As for characteristics, we went with someone with L's coloring (blond hair/blue eyes) and without a significant medical history. Anything positive on top of that was gravy. Known ID donors weren't a big thing when we started trying (2004 - wow. has it been that long?!?!?) I think the only place that did it was California and Pacific. Ffx didn't do it.
In the end we tried 4 donors over 9 attempts. It was a good thing we never got attached to any of them as "the one." For us it was an ends to a mean - not picking out a "father" for our kids. In the end it turned out and so far, so good.
As for siblings. It is still a weird thing to me that my kids have siblings aside from each other. But I know they do. Lots of them. In searching I found a Yahoo site dedicated to the families all using the same donor we did. There are a lot of posts on the board, but I haven't joined to read them. Part of me wants to see what their siblings look like and get that information and part doesn't. I wish I could log on, look at the information, and then forget it. Does that make sense? But looking at the website is a decision that L and I need to make together. Right now, we are happy as a family of 4.
This is exactly how Andrea and I feel! We never know how to answer the question "how are you going to pick the donor?" because its just not that important to us. As long as they are relatively healthy and dont have a significant history of drug use, i'm good to go. Maybe its just because we're much more nurture over nature type people, but to me, sperm is sperm is sperm. whew, i'm relieved to hear someone else feels similarly
Blogs: Our Growing Family - CT Working Moms
Donor Question: We had very specific and rare racial and ethnic mix we were looking for. One bank has it and others that would be okay for seconds. We're planning on buying 12 vials and doing our best to get 2 kids out of it.
AFU: We keep chugging away at our primary PCP goal of saving the funds. We're about a quarter of the way there. This week I searched the message boards at the bank and found a woman's post from back in Feb. including her email that had been using the donor we want to use. I emailed her out of the blue (kinda awkward) and she emailed back saying she's 8 months pregnant and included his audio profile. She's in a same-sex relationship, so if we do use and succeed with this donor our child(ren)'s half-sibs would be raised by at least one other two mom families. My only concern is that she used IVF (which I know won't have a direct correlation with my odds of success, but still) and that she her partner are both white and her don't feel that race matters. I completely disagree and have personal issues with what could be perceived as people "creating designer babies." I'm really happy for her/them and that she's so nice, so trying to get some distance and do some more reflecting on what half-sibs raised so differently than ours will be like if/when we decide to have contact.
Anyway, so I listened to the audio (C does not want to hear it) and it only confirmed my desire to use this donor. I also think that with some detective work I could find the donor before our kids are 18 (he's an open donor), not that I'm planning to, but I think I could. I recently joined the DSR yahoo group. Although our bank has their own, DSR and the main one therefore doesn't have any listings, the listserv is an interesting way to hear about issues/discussions related to donor sperm and siblings. C's not sure if she's okay with our kids connecting with their half-sibs, I think probably make online connects and then play it by ear to see what happens as far as meetings, etc.
I'm also obsessed with checking our desired donor's available vial status. I want to not care as much but if it drops below "25+ available" I'm whipping out the credit card. The longer we wait to buy the more free storage we get, but the more risky it feels.
Thanks for reading my novella!