Attempt Number 1

We attempted our first at home IUI last month---and we totally botched it! Ha.

This may have been the most stressful day of my life!  Jennie tested her ovulation on a Saturday morning and the little test strip said that she was going to ovulate soon, so we had to call the sperm bank and get an emergency/after hours pick up because they are closed on Saturdays. We were instructed to bring a lunch size cooler with 5 pounds of dry ice in it to keep the little vial frozen. Our first question was "where the hell do we get dry ice?!" Apparently, you can buy it from the meat department at the grocery store.  So we drove up to Loveland, swung by the King Soopers on the way for the dry ice, and arrived at the sperm bank.

When we arrived it was pretty painless. The nurse got the vial, put it in the dry ice, and told us the thawing instructions. So here is where the story starts to go south. Everything I had read online from the other lesbians out there doing at home insemination said that their sperm bank gave them the syringe to do the insemination. Well guess what, ours didn't!  We asked about a syringe and were informed that we had to get that from a doctor.  Oh no, what the hell were we going to do, it was Saturday! We collected ourselves and figured we could try and find an oral syringe at a store instead and all would be well.

As a side note, it was kind of funny driving with a vial of sperm in the back seat, I kept thinking should we seat belt it in? It was like we were already driving home with precious cargo in the car, I mean that little thing did cost a lot of money!

We took the cooler home and found it a nice spot in the bedroom to hang out until we needed it later that night and then headed out to try and find a syringe. At our first stop the pharmacy was closed so there was no one to ask about a syringe. We didn't end up finding anything we could use. So again we ended up at King Soopers. We did find an oral syringe in the medicine area and were definitely relieved that we found what we needed!

So fast forward a few hours and it was baby making time! I had all of my supplies ready and my space sterile and we were ready to get this insemination under way. We took the little vile out of the dry ice (don't worry I wore gardening gloves!) and set the timer on my iPhone for 20 minutes so it could thaw while Jennie got all situated and ready to go. The timer went off and it was time to get the party started! So I opened the syringe and opened the catheter to put it on the end of the syringe--it didn't fit!  The syringe was way too big!

So naturally I start panicking, what the hell are we going to do! So we decide, maybe we can tape it together with electrical tape to make it air tight and it will still work (I know such lesbian problem solvers!), so I run to the spare room closet where we keep all of the tools and such and tear everything apart and of course can't find the electrical tape!  Next best answer, duct tape! I find the duct tape, squeeze the catheter onto the very tip of the syringe and tape it up and voila! Surprise, it wasn't air tight, so the syringe wouldn't suck the little sperms up into the catheter. As if I wasn't panicking enough already I start freaking out, what the hell are we going to do! Now I can't use the syringe because it has duct tape gunk on the end. I had an epiphany, I think we actually have an unopened oral syringe in our closet with a bunch of other toiletries so I run in there and find it. We then have a new, clean syringe and we'll just have to forget the IUI and just get the sperm right outside of the cervix and hope it works.

I'm starting to calm down at this point since we're almost ready to inseminate. So I pick up the syringe and the vial and we have a problem. The syringe is way too big to fit into the vial so panic sets in all over again! What the hell am I going to do...I tried to tip the vial and suck up the sperm that way, but then I was afraid I was going to spill it everywhere--I didn't want to waste a bunch of money. So I ran downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed a tiny little Tupperware container.  I poured the sperm into the Tupperware and then sucked it into the syringe.  FINALLY, we were ready to inseminate.

THE MOST STRESSFUL NIGHT OF MY LIFE!

Needless to say, we were not too shocked when Jennie started her period 14 days later, right on schedule. So we now have the proper equipment and a syringe small enough to fit the catheter.  We are hoping that our second attempt will be the one--but we know it can take a while.

What does DOMA mean for us?

Credit: Google Images

So it was pretty exciting when DOMA and Prop 8 were ruled on by the Supreme Court! We celebrated and jumped for joy at such a huge step forward for equality and our families rights.

Now that some time has passed we find ourselves wondering, but what does this really mean for us? It's unclear if those of us who are legally married same-sex couples, but living in a state that does not recognize us as married will have access to most of the Federal benefits allowed to married couples.  It seems that many of the departments, such as the IRS, use the state's definition of marriage in deciding whether a couple has access to married benefits. So although we were legally married in D.C. and are recognized as married in Washington, California, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland, we are not recognized in Colorado.

It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. Although the Supreme Court rulings were a huge victory, there is still a long way to go to reach full equality.

The HRC along with some other groups put together a bunch of fact sheets on the federal benefits that I'll be checking out to try and piece together what all of this means. If you're interested you can find them here.

No more second parent adoption!

It seems that in the state of Colorado with the new passage of Civil Unions that we will be able to list both Jennie and I on our child's birth certificate! This means that we won't have to do a second parent adoption and spend all of the unnecessary money on a home study or legal fees. It seems that the law is slightly unclear about whether they have to put both parents, but as we plan on delivering at a birthing center with a midwife I don't think they'll have a problem.

There are some people who are still going to go through with second parent adoptions even though they could put both parents on the birth certificate. We don't feel this is necessary, because even if we're travelling in a state, like Virginia, that doesn't recognize us, they still have to recognize our child's birth certificate, which will have both of our names listed as parents.

This was a news story recently about one of the first lesbian couples to deliver a baby in Colorado and to both be listed as his mother's since the passage of Civil Unions.

Hooray for both of us being recognized as parents!