So a little about me...
I'm 32 almost 33 single woman that has never found Mr. Right. I've always wanted the whole American dream thing. A wonderful husband, four kids (or even a couple more), a couple of animals, and the house with a nice big backyard for the kids and animals to play in would have been nice.
Unfortunately, life didn't work out that way. I've occasionally dated but have never gone on a date with a guy that lasted past the second date. So the husband thing so far is a bust. Plus, after over a decade of living alone and being independent, I'm not sure if I can compromise enough to be in a relationship. I've listened to too many of my friends b*tch and moan about their husbands to think of it as the fairy tale ending I used to.
Off and on over the years I've thought about kids but until recently, I could talk myself out of it. Either I wasn't ready emotionally or financially or didn't have a guy or any number of a dozen excuses. I could sit here and list them but I'm sure most people have thought of most them themselves.
Then I hit my thirties and suddenly, I was reading how women's fertility starting really going down in their thirties and then hearing the horror stories from my mom and aunts about how they hit menopause at 37 / 38. OMFG!! What? 37? But I'm 32 now. Cr*p!! I realized I couldn't procrastinate any longer. I had to make a decision on whether I really wanted kids and if it mattered whether I had biological kids.
I've always been open to the concept of adoption but have always known I can't afford it. So I've pretty much written that off unless I decide to take the chance on foster to adopt which I'm not sure I have the emotional strength to do and I'm also a really private person and really, really didn't want to have my life under a microscope so I could get approved.
That left trying to figure out how to get the other half of the equation. How to go about getting sperm when you didn't have a guy in the picture... I started seriously looking into IUI and IVF but realized that while I was fairly confident I could budget a baby into my life, I really couldn't afford the $1000 a month price tag for IUI or the $8-10,000 a month price tag for IVF. My insurance is pretty good for maternity and post partum care but does not cover any kind of fertility treatment or office visits.
And really, unless I'm the first woman in my family to do so I shouldn't need expensive medical intervention to have kids. It's pretty much a fact in my family that there has yet to be a woman marry before conception of their first child. I'm hoping I take after the rest of my family and get pregnant easily and right away. I also don't want to increase my odds for multiples. I'm single and don't think I could take care of two or more infants at the same time.... at least not without having a mental breakdown.
Anyway, so I started looking at sperm donor sites to see if maybe I could just do it myself. Surely I didn't need a doctor just to stick it inside. Unfortunately, not only are sperm banks expensive (like the cheapest I could find with an open id was $600 and about a hundred cheaper for anon. I didn't want to tell my kid I used an anon donor because it was cheaper. The shame... oh the shame...) but I only found one that would ship to me. The others required shipping to my doctor which defeated the whole purpose of trying to avoid the high costs.
For a day or two, I seriously just considered just finding a bar or club on the "good" days of the month and just seeing if I could get lucky but I wasn't willing to risk the STDs from trying that method. I don't really have any close male friends that I felt I could ask for them to be a sperm donor. Mostly because I didn't want to awkward complications to pop up.
I had just about given up when I discovered free sperm donors. One website I chose not to use because it had a fee that was higher than I was willing to spend. (I admit it, I'm a cheapskate. I don't even like paying more than $20 for jeans and complain for hours if I have to pay $24.99 for them. I really get weird about what I'll spend on certain items. Don't know why it is only certain items and then others I pay the higher prices for and don't blink an eye at.) I found a couple of yahoo groups that had listings but the only ones listed in my area preferred NI and that wasn't something I was willing to do.
Eventually I posted a profile on a site that had a couple of listings for my area only to throw a hissy fit when it wanted me to pay money to send a message. If it was a couple of bucks I would have paid it and just let it go but it was more than I was willing to spend for what they would have let me do so I went back to those yahoo groups thinking I would just have to settle for one of the guys that would ship.
Fortunately before I had time to really figure out what to do or write an awkward email asking for more info on them, I received a response on my profile from the donor website. We exchanged emails getting the basics of what we were looking for and decided to meet. He's a nice guy and our goals are in sync. I was really worried that I would have to compromise something I felt was important to get what I wanted but he wanted pretty much exactly what I wanted. To give me sperm and then just receive an occasional update on the baby.
Although, I'm really beginning to see the benefit of sperm banks. The very awkward conversation was hard to get through but I think we managed to nail down the specifics on what we wanted and get a feel for the other person. I've got no complaints about him being the donor and he has stated he's comfortable with me being a mother.
Now the waiting game starts. AF came today so I'm now waiting for that magic time of month and then we can begin the really awkward and embarrassing moments. *ugh*
Sooo... the craziness has now started and my nightly dreams are filled with babies.. and my days are filled with researching, reading other women's blogs and trying to repress the entire embarrassing and awkward situation of doing it myself.
Marielle
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