This, like every option, carry’s a lot of weight to be considered. First and foremost; locating someone who would be affable to being hit up for semen maybe 1 or 2 times a month. Usually on the fly, too, when I have a surge in temperature and my ovulation predictor is giving us a figurative green light. This is also not going down the list of other aspects such as general weirdness. Not necessarily in the way you might think, but imagine running into this person in say, the grocery? The movies? Campus? I imagine it would go down with a very fleeting, penetrative stare in which everyone involved would be thinking "yeah, those swimmers were totally in my wife/your wife/me", followed by a seemingly stammering quick glance away. It it completely insane for me to have that scenario?
So for a week or so, hubby verbally strategized how he was going to ask, and who he was going to ask, and how it was all going to go down. During this, the part of me that wanted to pick apart the whole situation to examine all the flaws, and plan out the attack was really questioning whether this was the best plan. I'd been studying how to get one’s self pregnant using sterile syringes and sterile collection cups and the method to position yourself when performing a home insemination. All this DIY process was mapped out in my mind.
Not long after the notion came about, it was quashed when my husband came to the stark realization that the men he would be asking, are ones he sees on a daily basis, and the utter discomfort of the whole act overall was not what he wanted to endure.
So next came the next idea: Ask hubby's brother. Brother enjoys children and lives with his girlfriend, but doesn't want any children of his own. This possibility was nifty on the front that, at the more basic level, it would be a child from the 2 of our gene pools, and not from a complete stranger.
Hubby asked his brother, and since that point, hasn't brought up the scenario again. I'm postulating that this was around 3 months ago. The ensuing silence on the issue leaves me the conclusion that the answer was a "no".
I can't lie; the idea of a known donor scared the shit out of me. Parading a child around who didn't fully look like your husband, but more like his brother just seemed like a bad episode of Maury where at the end there's a shocking DNA test reveal, followed by a lot of face-slapping. Of all these options, the part of it where get got to look over the donors history and physical background was probably the most assuring.
I'd like to step outside of this tirade to explain why the medical history is so important to me. My only child is almost 5 years old, and was conceived with a man, whom for all practical purposes deposited this infant in me purely by the stroke of divine luck. I say this because my child’s biological father had suffered for years prior to me meeting him from a few non-communicable ailments that inevitably lead him to a pulmonary embolism at the age of 36. Our son was not yet 2 years old, and the two had never even met. At 18 months of age, my son developed mild persistent asthma, and has several moderate severe allergies that keep me in just enough paranoia that I have to be at a heightened level of caution that a normal mother would.
If I was given the opportunity to pick and choose when it came to my boy; without any question I wouldn't change whom he was conceived with, and how it all happened. I love him unconditionally, completely and consuming. And more every day. Period.
That being said; if I can give a child a chance to be born with the ability to remove certain health challenges out of the equation, I would like to do that for them. No person hoping to have children would ever ask for less than a health child. If we give our children nothing else in life, I hope it begins with good health, because while I have not experienced what a mother has to go through physically, emotionally and psychologically with a severely ailing child, I have still felt the panic of all-night episodes where my child and I are up every 30 minutes to few hours performing breathing treatments, and standing in hot showers together to get his airways to open up. Feeling the panic inside while trying to keep an unending ocean of calm around you so your baby won’t feel that same grip of terror.
Like I said; not even close to the horrors that some mothers have endured, and will in the future. But for the two of us, we’ve seen hard nights together.
There is the occastional insane notion, usually somewhere around the day or two before I am ovulating, that some insane and primal part of my brain that is hungry for a baby that takes a hold of my mind and fills me with crazy ideas of how I could bypass all of this bullshit and just go get someone to knock me up. I'd like to tell you that I often laugh off these passing insanities, but the arguements I seem to concoct are so surprisingly convincing, that sometimes a veil of non-reality seems to go over my eyes where the notion isn't so completely terrible anymore.
I quickly learned to A) keep it completely quiet that you're having this thought and B) Wait out your hormones for a day or so and you'll be back to your frustrated fertility-challeneged self. Safe from irreprable relationship damage and 20 years of ongoing drama.
So I close this today with this little tidbit: There's always a short cut. Mistakes aren't always regrets, but it will not mean they won't be frought with pain during the journey you're on.
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