In the Blog
Queer Brown Girl Trying to Get Pregnant, Part 1: The Basics
Part 1 of 4
This blog may have scenes that include coarse language, nudity, sexuality, and science jargon. Viewer Discretion is Advised.
The last 3 months I have been trying to make a baby grow in my uterus. It’s really not as easy as the movies. Moreover, I have been trying to do this without a penis or person with a penis, as it were.
So, you guys all know I’m queer, right? And my partner and I are ready to be parents together. So I have been going to a sperm bank and buying sperm and injecting it in me. Or, at least, that’s how I like to frame it when people want to know.
To be more technical about it, I am engaging in donor intra-uterine insemination. That is when you go to a sperm bank and select a donor, get it shipped to a fertility clinic and have it inseminated directly into your uterus.
FYI - When hetero, cis people have sex, the ejaculate lands inside the vaginal canal (also known as birth canal) or the deeper part of the vagina. It has to swim up through the vaginal canal, through the cervix (the entrance of the uterus), up into the uterus and into the fallopian tubes where the egg or ovum is sitting, waiting to be fertilized by the sperm.
The great thing about being queer and thus going through this process are many!
For one, I don’t have to settle for the sperm of my husband or boyfriend - I can literally choose from hundreds of donors (possibly creating a super baby). See the Creating Canadian Families website for multiple sperm banks around the world.
Further, intra-uterine insemination (IUI) gets the buggers (sperms) much closer to the goal post, meaning the sperm don’t have to swim as far.
The one drawback about these procedures is that they are not cheap. Sperm can very from $450-$700 a unit, and many fertility procedures vary in price from $400-$12 000, depending on what your procedure is.
Although I am queer, I am now relating a lot more to straight women trying to have a biological child, because wanting to be a mom is a very deep emotional feeling. It’s exciting to be on this journey but, they don’t call it a rollercoaster for nothing (i.e. there’s only one book for lesbians on pregnancy, and author Rachel Pepper calls preconception a roller coaster)!
My monthly process has been, in part, like this: on Day 1 (first day of my blood red period), I call the doctor to have my sperm delivered to the clinic. Then on Day 11, I start monitoring my cycle; getting blood work done to see how “ripe” my follicle is (the egg or ovum) and if I am surging with the lutenizing hormone (LH). Then for the next 2-3 days, I pee on a stick from a drug store, an Ovulation Predictor Kit, to see if I am surging with the LH. Then when I am, I go in to get inseminated. Insemination takes about 1-10 minutes. Quickest $400 I ever spent!
Getting inseminated is nothing like any experience I’ve had before - I imagine it’s mostly because I have never been ready to have a child until now!
Resources:
The Ultimate Guide To Pregnancy for Lesbians - Google Books
Youtube video on IUI, Reproductive drugs and multiple births
Check out the next blog on The Preconception Roller Coaster next month!
