I won't have a birth story to share for many months yet, but a surprisingly large number of people follow their "congrats!" upon hearing of the pregnancy with "...how does that work?" Hell, I'd be nosey about it if roles were reversed. Be warned that while there are no pictures (YOU'RE WELCOME), it is medically graphic to a degree, so feel free to skip this entry if that isn't your thing.
Teryn and I went through California Cryobankto buy sperm. As my genes are already in the mix (being that it is me who is knocked up), T did the first-pass on searching for a sperm donor who sounded at least on paper a lot like her and her family - blond curly hair, blue eyes, musical, smart, etc. She narrowed it down to six or seven donors before I joined in. At that point we looked through all of the amazing amounts of detail and medical history, talked about their differences, and re-ranked them, eventually narrowing it down to one choice who had vials available, so we made the purchase.
Meanwhile I was busy getting all of my medical stuff in order with the fertility clinic - they needed my most recent pap results, a letter from my diabetes endocrinologist approving the plan to get pregnancy, and a metric ton of blood tests. T and I also had to go to a 30-minute "session" with the fertility clinic's psychologist, a requirement of anyone using donor sperm.
Next up was a series of ultrasounds, a base-line ultrasound within the first four days of my period, a saline ultrasound around cycle day 11 where they squirted saline solution in my uterus to measure the lining (this was gross feeling, as what goes in must come out), and a third on day 18 when I should have been close to ovulation (long cycle). The last ultrasound showed I was pretty much going to ovulate any moment, so we scheduled IUI for the next morning and the morning after that.
The IUI itself was a lot like a pap. They said I might feel pressure when they did the actual insemination, but I didn't. Afterwards they had me stay laying down for ten minutes (they set a timer!) and then go about my regular day. T spend the ten minute wait wishing aloud for a sandwich, because she's classy like that. Also because I couldn't reach her from the table to swat her.
And that's really all it took. From there we went through our two-week-wait, alternately convinced I was TOTALLY PREGNANT and then TOTALLY NOT PREGNANT, because I'm very reasonable and sane like that. We were incredibly lucky that I got pregnant on the first try, so we didn't have to deal with multiple cycles. Though having it work on the first try did mean that T wasn't able to fulfill her dream of bringing a sandwich to the next set of IUI to eat during the ten minute wait. Alas.
