Q&A Redux Part VI

From Stacey...

When did you decide to begin TTC?

M. and I knew we wanted to have a family early on in our relationship. It's been our plan for years and years and years. We were going to start trying around 2002 but I decided to go back to school for nursing so our plans were delayed. We started planning and charting in February 2005. When I got out of school in June we knew we'd start ASAP. We asked our donor in November and started for real in January 2006.

What was the starting point?

Charting was the starting point. M. did it all. She read books and researched. I started prenatals. Then came the 'yes' from our donor, all the contract negotiations and lawyers. It was slow for years and years, then felt shockingly fast from getting the 'yes' to that first insem.

And why did you decide on a known donor?

The big question.

I'm the one who has pushed to use a KD. I feel that using a known donor is the best way to provide a truly transparent process for our future child. He/she will always know where he/she came from and who was involved. I feel using anonymous provides too many opportunities for fantasy (my dad would treat me better) and it leaves too many unanswered questions. I don't like sperm as a commodity and feel that it leaves an elephant in the room. No matter how much sperm is looked at as a product, nothing will erase the fact that that sperm is attached to a real living and breathing person. Using anonymous puts a little distance on the reality that lesbians cannot create a family that is genetically linked to both partners without outside help but it doesn't erase it. I don't want to live with that elephant and I don't want our child to live with it either.

M. loses the most by using a KD. She is the one who has to talk to, have a relationship with and genuinely, truly care about our donor who offers what she cannot. She has worked so hard and sacrificed so much. To me she has truly created our child even if she doesn't offer half of the genetic code. No sperm could do more or offer more.

Using a KD has not made this journey easy. Sometimes the idea of a frozen vial of sperm in the docs office seems attractive compared to the interpersonal landscape that we have to negotiate on a daily basis. At the same time, I love my life right now even though sometimes it feels horrible, and I love our relationship with DtD, and I'm so glad that we made the decisions we did even if they have brought pain as well as joy.

The blog has more detail. You can read it as we go through it, from my bumbling request of DtD to the snafus in contract negotiations, from the first exciting, glorious insem with all it's potential to some very dark and bitter times as we realized this was not going to be as easy as we had thought.