sperm donation for father's day

i don't usually like to write a post that follows perfectly with whatever holiday we're sitting on, but this is a story that seems to be perfect for father's day. i've been thinking about writing it for ages & it finally seems like the right time.

this was us during the time this story took place.

when chris & i had been married for about 2 years we sort of decided that we were ready for kids. and by that i mean, i was frantically craving babies and he was thinking about how he liked the way our life was, but was willing to consider that maybe a baby wouldn't ruin everything. we "tried" for a few months with no offspringy results, so i went to see a doctor to see if there was something wrong with my girly bits.

as it turned out, there were some problems in me, but the doc thought we could overcome them with drugs. that didn't end up working, but before they would take the next step with me it was decided by the medical powers that be that chris needed to go through some testing of his own.

most of you probably have a mental picture of how that goes for men from seeing movies or sitcoms where some guy goes to a sperm bank donation center and provides his deposit after viewing some choice pictures or videos in a little sterile room.

that was not what happened.

we were told that they provide an easier way for the men to "deposit" by allowing a sterile cup to be taken home, filled up and returned to the clinic within 30 minutes of filling. that sounds nice, but we lived a minimum of 30 minutes from the clinic & that was barring any traffic delays. and if it took longer than 30, the process would have had to be repeated with a new cup.

we thought about that for a time, trying to figure out a way for chris to be able to do his duty and still get the cup to the clinic on time. hmmm... we had no friends who lived closer to the clinic (plus, that might be a bit much to ask of a friend). maybe we could drive part way there and pull over on the side of the highway for a car quickie. but that might contaminate the specimen as well as get us arrested. we could attempt to collect the deposit in the back of the parking lot right before our appointment time, but that didn't sound like a good plan because again, there was the risk of getting caught by security when doing such things in a public location. and i'm sure that my giggling at the situation would have been a "downer" which would not have been a good thing in that situation.

the appointment was at 8am, which is truly a stupid time for such an appointment. i mean, what man is feeling spermy and deposity at that hour of the morning? we finally decided that we would need to drive to the clinic a little bit earlier than our appointment, go into the building & find a bathroom where we could take care of business & still get the cup turned in on time.

we arrived and found a bathroom, but it was right in the lobby of this medical building. and there was no family/handicap bathroom into which we could go together in order to make it a team effort at collecting the juice of fate. so into the men's room he went, with a look of grim determination on his face. he was going to have to go it alone. no wife. no pictures. no videos. no sexy nurses. just a public bathroom stall. at 7:45am.

i waited outside the bathroom for about 20 minutes. i paced and wrung my hands, glad that there weren't many people around to give me the hairy eyeball for loitering outside the men's room.

he finally came out & plopped the little cup into my hand, lid screwed on tight. i stared at that wad as if my fate lay within it. i was trying to be like a fortune teller with tea leaves, but i was a sperm reader with a plastic cup. i checked it out from different angles, held it up to the light & then stuffed into my purse and headed for the office door where we would turn in our offering and then wait a few days, hoping for good news.

the news, in the end, was really bad. they said that with our combined issues, we had about a zero percent chance of conceiving the old fashioned way & would need to go straight to in-vitro and even then the odds weren't in our favor. we didn't have the money for such things. so i started reading about ways to naturally increase your fertility with no drugs or doctors & low & behold, it worked. we've only got the one, but she's a good one and she came about the old fashioned way after all. it took about a year of careful observation of cycles and days where booty duty was a high priority even if we weren't in the mood. but the end result was worth it.

and that is my father's day story.