That Went Well....

Thursday was the first day that I had to use the Magic Egg Prediction Machine, aka the ClearBlue Fertility Monitor. For most of the month, it involves just turning the thing on but for 10-20 days a month, it involves peeing on a stick, then inserting that stick into the machine so it can determine my fertility level. I was a little apprehensive about the first day of stick peeing, though I knew there were many more days of stick peeing ahead of me so I had time to get it right.

But the day I got it right was most definitely not Thursday. Apparently, it's best to pee for a few seconds first, then aim the stick. Otherwise, you splatter pee all over the place and let me assure you that it is a very unpleasant way to wake up. Convinced that I hadn't peed correctly, I didn't really finish peeing until a couple of hours later, in case I needed to pee again.

The Magic Egg Prediction Machine later told me that I wasn't fertile yet, which I knew. But the trauma of the Great Stick Peeing Disaster of 2005 stayed with me until today, when I finally got it right.

Nobody said the road to parenthood was easy, I just didn't think it would start with the steady beeping of a thermometer every morning or the very ungraceful splashing of pee all over the place.

What The Hell Do I Do With This Thing?

My Clear Blue Fertility Monitor (aka The Magic Egg Prediction Machine, or MEPM) arrived yesterday and even though I read all the instructions, I'm still not quite sure what we're supposed to do with it. I just keep thinking "I paid how much for something this small? And with only 1 button?" But somehow, just having it makes me feel better.

What's In Progress

• I'm charting. This means that every day Andrea wakes to the lovely sound of my Special Thermometer beeping incessantly. It also means that when my temperatures aren't following the exact pattern I expected them to, she shusshes me while I cry and fret that we'll never nail down the Magic Day of Ovulation, and thus, will render us unable to conceive.
• I'm also charting Other Things that are none of your business. If you really want to know, just ask Andrea in person, she'll tell you all about it. If you don't know Andrea in person, happy reading but we won't disclose that kind of stuff.
• Waiting for The Magic Egg Machine to arrive. This little beauty involves peeing on a stick, inserting the stick in a slot and following special instructions. The end result is supposed to be the nailing down of the Magic Day of Ovulation.

For straight people or people who are not straight but are using fresh sperm, this Magic Day isn't as critical. Fresh sperm can live for up to 5 days so as long as you do the nasty (with a man, in this case) or use his fresh stuff for insemination within that window, you should be able to get knocked up.

But for nice lesbians like us who cannot imagine using fresh sperm from someone we know, that window shrinks to about 1 day for IUI (where washed, carefully selected sperm are placed directly inside the uterus), which is less 'natural' but more effective than ICI (where any old sperm is placed at the opening of the cervix, then waits for Other Things to carry it along on its magical journey), so if you don't time it right, you've wasted about $1000 and created some emotional stress.

Very Important Things

One of the biggest challenges about getting, then being pregnant for me will be dealing with all of the unsolicited advice I am already getting from strangers or childless people. Not that having a child means I'll automatically listen to you, but being childless doesn't make you, oh childfree stranger, the type of person whose advice on any of this that I'll seek out. Forgive me in advance because I don't want to be rude.

This weekend, a childfree woman I don't know asked me if I was 35 yet, because if I was 35, these 6 months we're spending preparing to get pregnant should be re-thought since well, 35 is apparently old to be having a baby. (Medically, I know full well that 35 is considered Advanced Maternal Age, I'm just talking about the Liz Scale of Parental Readiness, which states that anyone who is ready to have a kid is ready to have a kid).

I'm quickly becoming a pro at taking in the advice, being polite and moving on. I'm saving the hard, kind of gross questions for my closest friends who have actually done the childbirth thing. The polite nodding is reserved for strangers.

We Own Sperm!

Yesterday, I pretty much ruined a holiday by scheduling my 'consultation' with the Nurse Practitioner from the sperm bank. Since I have already read every word on their website, twice, most of the conversation was a re-run for me. She went through the donor selection process, how their sperm is frozen, unfrozen and eventually, chosen for participation.

I have to wonder why these guys really want to do this, aside from some sort of narcissitic glee over the idea of the world containing anonymous little versions of themselves, over the idea of giving themselves an instant license to look into the eyes of everyone they meet to see if they might be related the way I used to do with every woman of a certain age who might be my birthmother. Of course, now that I've met her, I know that those eyes are the ones I see in the mirror every day, the ones that Andrea looks into all the time because her eyes are my eyes.

So sperm banks are stocked with sperm from healthy-seeming youngish men with a desire to give something back, or whatever it is. They also seem to have an overwhelming number of college degrees -- do they really expect us to buy the fact that more than one of them has a PhD in astrophysics? Maybe he does, but it hardly seems like the type of guy who would do you-know-what in a cup for $50 every week or so. Our guy has a Master's degree and a thousand fertile sisters. He's also tall. I like tall, it may help offset the fact that I'm not.

The Nurse Lady told me that our donor is "very popular" and yes, he's very tall. His, um, donations, have helped to produce 4 live, very healthy births already. Which at first seems weird, but think about it this way -- if you're forking out a lot of money for the stuff, you want some kind of assurance that it will work. Now we have that. Woo!

At the end of the phone call, we were transferred to the front desk, where we started our family in the most traditional of ways: whipped out the credit card and bought some sperm from our very popular, healthy-birth providing, tall donor with a thousand sisters.

And now we wait until June. Because if we do this now, I'll never finish my Master's and those 5 classes I have left will sit there, taunting me for all of eternity.