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| Another BFN © Shutterbug |
The acronyms seem endless to this relative newbie…TTC, FSH, IUI, IVF, HPT, BFN, BFP, OMFG. We're still trying to gain our fertility legs.
I don't know how people do this for years, and I am beginning to understand how it can take over your life. We've been plodding through the paces for about a year and a half, and I have already wanted to throw in the towel on several occasions. I can't help but wonder if my patience is being tested in preparation for the future tests of parenthood.
There are fundamental differences in our fertility struggles compared to most, since as a same-sex couple we are aware from day one that we will require medical intervention. Nothing like having to go to your GP for a referral, and leaving with a clinical diagnosis on paper of: "in a same-sex relationship". The whole process is such an ongoing invasion of privacy, and it doesn't help that we haven't run into a single other gay couple at the fertility clinic. Sitting in waiting rooms, day after day, and feeling the eyes of other couples on you is a strange sensation. I have never felt more like a minority than I do there.
Strange, too, what people in your personal life feel it's permissible to ask. Being the last of my friends to marry, I've heard from all of them how common it is for people to question your procreation plans before the wedding cake has even been eaten. Perhaps because people know we will need assistance to make a family, the questions don't stop there for us. I can't imagine anyone asking a heterosexual couple whether they've started having unprotected sex, or how often they plan to try to make a baby, but somehow asking us questions about donor selection and inseminations is perfectly acceptable. I really need to work on some more creative responses.
In truth, our experience did start on an unusual note. We chose a donor from within our circle of friends, which seemed like an obvious and smart decision. He knew we wanted a family and offered his...ah...help, which meant we could avoid all the issues (and expenses) associated with using a donor from a sperm bank. A few months and meetings into the process, he finally opted to share the minor detail that he was, in fact, HIV-positive. What?!
Reeling from this news, we were shocked to hear he still desperately wanted us to find a way to make it work. Despite successful procedures at some clinics in Europe, Health Canada won't touch HIV-positive donors with a ten-foot turkey baster. We waited six weeks for a consultation with a specialist named Dr. Liu at the Mt. Sinai fertility clinic, only to receive this news. Apparently even healthy sperm donors have to go through rigorous, expensive, months-long testing and then a six-month quarantine on all samples, which was upsetting to hear. We were ready to pull the trigger, so to speak, and given my age we didn't want to delay the process by so many months.
With our friend most definitely out of the running, we proceeded with the mandatory consultation with a social worker at the clinic. In our opinion, it was a complete waste of time. Instead of being an impartial wealth of information, she asked repetitive, leading questions with an obvious personal bias towards using anonymous sperm donors. When we were finally able to compile some information about donor clinics, we were floored.
There are next to no Canadian sperm donors, because in Canada it is illegal to pay for samples. Without financial compensation, there are just not that many men willing to donate sperm to help infertile couples for purely altruistic reasons. There are only two major sperm banks here, and they both get samples from the same USA-based clinics. Each individual clinic restricts the number of pregnancies per donor in a geographical region…but there is no way to cross-reference which donors have donated at more than one clinic! If you want to use a donor who is willing to be contacted by future offspring (called "Open ID"), your options are reduced significantly. Lastly, the profiles available on the donors were often a single line of personal information (height, weight, hair colour) with precious little detail. It was so much to absorb, and nothing went as we imagined.
You can't know what you don't know until the knowledge gap becomes obvious. If we knew then what we know now, we would likely have handled ourselves very differently. These are major, potentially life-altering decisions we are making on an alarmingly regular basis, and at times we have felt completely, utterly alone in making them. We've learned too much to cram into one post.
More to come.
