Cleaning House

Moving to NYC in a few weeks and I really don't want to try to transport all of my IF meds through the airport.

Need something?

I've probably got it.

Reasonable $$ too.

Sperm Donation: On Donor Profiles

When you're in the market to buy sperm, anonymous or open, you can nearly always pay a fee to download a profile. California Cryobank, as of today, charges $17 to download what they call their "long profile". It contains SAT scores, medical information, and a few extra details outside of the short (free) profile.

One has to wonder how truthful these profiles really are. How many of these 20-something men really know their ethnicity or family's medical history accurately enough to convey it to women trying to conceive? These guys are being paid about $100 a shot (sorry) for their sperm and what is the incentive to spend hours filling out medical history forms in order to do this? "Grandma, I need your medical history so I can donate sperm and get $100 a load. Can you please help me out?" I'm sure these conversations rarely happen and so I have to question to validity of the data that these donors provide.

One donor, whose information I paid for, when asked why he was donating honestly said that he was doing this for the money, plain and simple. I appreciate his honesty. I really do. But I'm a prospective buyer and I would plan on buying the entire packet of information for my child, and in there my child would read that their genetic father donated sperm for money.

For money.

At least adopted children have a better story than that. So my child would be greeted with the idea that the impetus for their existence amounted to little more than a couple hundred dollars in their father's pocket?

I am sorry but no matter how good the donor looks on paper, I would never want my child to read something so base, so unfeeling as that, for the reason for their existence.

Another donor that I considered, because the clinic said that he was quite attractive, said that he had smoked pot EVERY DAY from 1999 to 2006. The profile showed that he applied to be a donor in 2007. Oh really. So he decided to stop smoking COMPLETELY in 2007 just so he could donate sperm? Seriously, we're supposed to believe this? THC, the active ingredient in pot, is absorbed by the fat in one's body, and can wreak havoc in the body for a period after one has ceased to smoke. And so when I give my child THIS donor's profile, and s/he asked, "Gee mom, why did you pick this donor when he was a druggie?" what on earth would I say? Scratch this one, too.

After reading profile after profile, paying $17 for numerous profiles, I realized what a gimmick this sperm bank crap was. They really need to do drug testing and make a subscription model so that us prospective parents can do a thorough screening of the sperm donors.

I don't trust these young men's profiles. They're being paid. They're anonymous. I question their motives. There's no accountability or liability should they have lied that known genetic mutations run amuk in their families. And most of them probably don't know the difference between Serbian and Slovakian when citing their ethnicities.

It's so scary to be in the position of having to rely on donor sperm to become a parent. Truly, it is. I applaud Sweden and other EU counties for doing away with anonymous donor sperm and only hope that the U.S. will wise up and follow suit.

The Day After: On Sperm & Psychics

So, I canceled myself yesterday and amazingly today I feel a lot better than I thought that I would. The racing pulse has diminished - not totally gone - but I am in better condition today than I thought I would be.

I have 21 days until my appointment with the doctor at the Island clinic back east. That will be after my next CD1, so I am thinking of moving the appointment forward, to before my next CD1 so that I can be prepared to get started again, if that is what I choose to do.

I don't think that I can do donor sperm unless it's totally open. So I'm not sure how this is all going to work out, or if it will.

My ex-DH's new GF, who is supposedly psychic, said that I will get my baby but...drum roll...that I am lonely. Hmm...I wonder if psychics see a snapshot, a moment of loneliness, or is it a continuum that she sees? Would any of you decide not to be a mother if you knew that the end result was loneliness? I'm not sure I believe what she says, but a girl at a company I worked for 3 companies back said that I was going to have twins: one boy and one girl. So fraternal twins at that.

Interesting stuff.

I wish I could believe. I really do.

CD6: Canceled

I've been having anxiety attacks over this cycle.

I have been waking up at 4AM many nights unable to get back to sleep. My pulse has been racing for weeks. Literally WEEKS. I'm not exaggerating either. It has been horrible. I typically have very low blood sugar and when my BP came back at 110 over 70 the other day (rather than my typical 90/65 on an empty stomach) I knew that I was just going over the edge with this.

I guess I should fess up here.

I was prepared to do this cycle with donor sperm. My last partner and I broke up and he refused to donate for me. Left without options, I reserved a vial of anonymous sperm. But in the end, I just couldn't do the anonymous thing. I grew up not knowing my father and not meeting him until I was in my 30's. I realized that I was about to potentially put a child through the same hell that I went through.

I couldn't do it.

Why this reality didn't hit me earlier? I'm not sure. But in the last few days it came crashing down on me and the stress was overwhelming me.

I woke up today and decided that I couldn't go forward with this cycle. So I called the cryogenic lab and canceled the sperm delivery. The young man (gah!) on the other phone asked me why I wasn't using their sperm. I nearly sobbed into the phone and just managed a "my cycle is being canceled". Then I phoned the IVF clinic and reached the bitch nurse and told her I'd decided to cancel this cycle. She didn't ask me any questions about "why" I'd chosen to do this. She knew. Nor did she offer me any apologies for the crap that happened (which I haven't written about because it's too terrible to write about), just a "we'll be billing you a $500 cancellation fee" and that was it.

I won't be returning to this clinic despite their great rates with women my age. I have an appointment on the East Coast at a clinic that is one notch lower than the IVF shrine of the Rocky Mountains (we all know this place, yes?). I'm meeting with a doctor there the end of April but I might move the date up a bit sooner so I can get the next cycle on board. They said they would let me cycle right up to my 46th birthday, so there is a shred of hope. A shred. I'm not done yet, I can promise you that much.

This is a very sensitive topic, anonymous sperm donation. And this cycle had a lot of twists and turns that I haven't written about and some of them will have to remain private, perhaps forever. I hate being private, I am the queen of TMI, but because this involves others I'll bite my tongue. I could write volumes on the emotional ramifications of anonymous sperm donation and I probably will at some point. But right now I am sad for the loss of this cycle, the 9 follicles that aren't going to represent any sort of hope for me to become a mother this month.

I'll dig into this another time.