It's still gonna happen...

So, though it was quite a blow to not be able to do things the way we were planning, we have moved on. After kind of a rough few days, we started thinking about other options and ideas. And now we have a few new directions in which to head toward. We're not exactly sure which way will work out, but we know that one of them will for sure. We need to talk with our donor about some things, and if things don't work out that way, we have another plan. It will all be ok. We have been buying diapers in early preparation for our baby, and we bought some more today. As we loaded them into the car, Teal said "I love that we buy diapers, I feel like it's our way of saying to the universe 'This is going to happen one way or another". I loved it! It sums it all up perfectly. It may not be the way we had planned initially, but we are going to have a baby!

Setbacks

So, we had our first appointment with the doctor we were going to use on Tuesday. I had spoken to them four separate times, making sure to ask if the work with known donors and if there was any kind of wait to use the donor sperm. They said no problem. We got to the doctor, waited for entirely too long just to have them come out and say that they weren't aware we had a known donor. They said that they don't really work with known donors. They said they might consider it if the sperm could be frozed and stored at a cryobank for 6 months while it was tested. They weren't sure if there is a cryobank in the area that would do this however. They say it's all to do with the FDA. It doesn't really matter the reasoning though, our dreams to start a family were just pushed back another half year.

We were heartbroken. We thought we were all ready to go, ready to start trying to have a baby in the next month! Now, we are nothing short of extremely conflicted. Do we try to find a cryobank that will help us, and if one exists, wait the six months? Do we give up on using our known donor and go with an unknown frozed donor from out of state? It's been a rough week and we have some thinking to do for sure!

More history and such

We met with our wonderful donor once again to get some more history on him and talk about our next steps. We were able to see his baby book, home videos, and pictures of him growing up. We got to read and hear stories about him as a youngster, and even got to see his school grades and awards. This is just the kind of thing we would not have been able to see on an anonymous donor. It was great to be able to see what he and even his sister looked like as children, as well as get some background on him and the rest of his family. We even found out that he was 10lbs, 10oz when he was born!!

Upon seeing a regular ob/gyn to discuss our plans, they had us take a specimen cup to our donor for him to have a semenalysis. We gave him that information and he was able to get an appointment set to drop off his sample. Things were moving right along!

Waiting for an answer

Our chosen donor is a thinker. He thinks through ALL decisions, evaluating every possible option, ultimately making the best possible choice. This is an fantastic quality for a person to have, especially a person with whom you are making a life-altering decision. HOWEVER, it is a rather long process when the fate of your future rests in this person's hands. It was a looong wait, very long. He asked a few questions, we got him answers. He thought and researched, asked opinions of family and friends, and thought some more. Finally, we got the answer we had been waiting for. He said YES!!! And we made plans to meet and discuss more logistics.

Finding a donor

Teal and I felt pretty strongly about having a known donor. We wanted our children to be able to see the person who had helped bring them into the world. We did not want him to be a father, rather on the contrary, we did not want him to have any rights to the children at all. We just wanted him to be available in case our kids had any questions about where they came from. We wanted him to be there so they could look at him and say that he helped to give them life. We didn't want our donor to be some random, anonymous guy out in the world that we and our children had to imagine.
We thought of all the guys we know who might be possibilities and eliminated them one by one. At the end, we had come to the best option, a really great guy we have known for 8 years. Because we didn't want to spring it on him at random, we emailed him first to bring up the question. "What would you think about donating sperm?" We then met for lunch to discuss it. We asked each other a lot of questions, from family history to logistics to the child's future. We set a date for him to make his decision and left him to think about our request.....

Starting out

I realize blogging has been out for a while, but I have never had anything very interesting to write about. My partner, Teal, and I have always planned to have a baby together, and the time is right for us to start that process. Finding good information about this process, however, was much more difficult that we had imagined. So, we thought we would share our journey with others in hopes to possibly help other couples like us looking for the same answers. This is our story of the trials and tribulations of attempting to conceive a baby with a known sperm donor in the state of Texas.