History
There are about as many ways decide what to do about making babies as there are couples who want the babies. Over our 10-year relationship, we've courted many ideas:
- Use Mr. Mom's brother's sperm and my egg.
- Use Friend A's sperm.
- Use Friend B's sperm.
- Use Friend .....'s sperm (maybe you get the idea here?)
As the years went by, our conversation focused more on two primary concerns: Mr. Mom was uncomfortable with the legal and emotional ramifications of using a known donor; I was uncomfortable with the idea of some stranger's jizz in my yahoo (I know, so mature, butamiright?). Eventually, I decided that it would be an appropriate compromise to accept Mr. Mom's wishes, since she had less biological say in the matter, and I wanted for us to both feel like equal partners in the decision-making.
Once we settled on finding an anonymous donor, we did some tentative searches online (there's nothing like a google search for "spermbank" to give a lesbian the heebie-jeebies). We realized there were a few cryobank options, but life intervened and we never really made any decisions. Fast forward a few years, now we're married, I'm turning 30 this year, and the end of my cushy and flexible grad school years are around the corner.
"Honey, maybe we should get real about baby making."
It was clear to us when we did some more serious searching for donors that one bank seemed to have the best selection of open donors (I'll address our thoughts on open donors in another post). In fact, we were both surprised that one donor stood out among the rest - to both of us. He met our criteria (matching Mr. Mom's country origins, complexion) and was a refreshing alternative to the aspiring-actor-donors (the bank we chose is in LA, so I guess that's to be expected?).
As an admitted shopaholic, it was actually a pretty familiar-feeling process, and the decision came easily. This is not what we expected. I hope you're all as lucky as we were in easily finding the right baby-daddy.
