Taking a short break

On our trip to Missouri we had a lot of time in the car to discuss next steps in our baby making process.  We looked at donor profiles on the iPhone (don't worry Jennie read them while I drove), we narrowed down a list of top picks, we discussed timing of our pregnancy and potential delivery--we know we won't have total control over that piece.

After our weekend away we decided that we would take the next couple of months off from trying to conceive and pick things up again in either December or January.  The biggest reason for this decision is our photography business, Green Blossom Photography.  If Jennie were to get pregnant right now she would be due to deliver right in the middle of wedding season.  Since we're such a new business and still trying to get things off the ground we decided that since we had some control in the situation it would be best to plan the delivery date for later in the year, after wedding season is over.  We're hoping for our busiest wedding season yet next year and don't want to be out of commission for too long.

That being said, the blog might be a bit quiet for a while as we focus on other aspects of life and the holidays come around.

Thanks again for all of your support and kind words.

The third time wasn't the charm we were hoping for...

Well we're not pregnant...

For some reason the third attempt not working is really taking a toll on me today.  Again, I kept telling myself not to get excited and that these things take time, but that is a hard thing to do! With so much love and positive vibes/thoughts/feelings/prayers around the conception of this baby, I was hoping we could just will it into existence :)

I think part of why it hurt so much today is this month there has seemed to be an explosion of pregnancy announcements in our life. Friends from college, people on Facebook, colleagues, and family are all sharing their great news and we just keep crossing our fingers that this will be the month.  I'm trying not to get too bitter and I know we're not alone in this struggle, but it's definitely getting harder to not be pregnant each month.

Alas, we'll continue trying until it does work and continue to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason and maybe the timing wasn't right this month (after all Jennie didn't want to share her birthday month with our kid anyway).  Although now we will have to start going through the sperm donor profiles again because we only had 3 vials of the last guy's stuff.

Anyway, we're flying to Missouri this weekend to shoot a wedding so we'll have plenty of trip time to talk about our next steps.

Keep sending those positive thoughts up into the Universe and we love you all.

Here's hoping the third time really is a charm

Sad to report that attempt number two at home was also unsuccessful. We made our second attempt in the month of July. I am happy to report this time though that we had all of the right equipment, finding Jennie's cervix only took a minute and finding the opening of the cervix was even easy.  The only snafu was I wasn't able to get the catheter into the cervical opening, so again no IUI.  But we placed the sperm right at the opening of the cervix and crossed our fingers and toes that it would make it's way into the cervix on it's own.  It didn't.  We're not too entirely shocked by this because the type of sperm we bought was washed sperm and designed for IUI, which means it doesn't have any of the special fluids that help it get into and through the cervix.  Needless to say, again we weren't too shocked when Jennie started her period 14 days later.  Although the second failed attempt was a bit harder to swallow.  We tried not to get our hopes up, but it happens.

Just after our first at home attempt we talked with some lesbian friends of ours in the area who told us they got pregnant the first try with an OB/GYN in the area. We were super excited for them and it opened our eyes that we might be able to go to an OB/GYN instead of a Reproductive Endocronologist, which makes sense because there's not really anything wrong with Jennie's reproductive organs. So we decided since our second attempt was unsuccessful maybe we should think about going to this OB/GYN with our third and final vial of this donor (he sold out before we could buy more). As we were approaching the time of the month in August when Jennie was going to ovulate we decided that we should try and get an appointment with the doctor to have her do the IUI.  Unfortunately, they couldn't get us in soon enough so we decided to skip trying in the month of August. We went in for a consultation meeting with the doctor and Jennie had some screening blood tests done to test if she was a carrier for some different hereditary conditions (she isn't, and I can't even remember what she was screened for...).  We loved the doctor, she was really friendly and down to earth.  Basically the instructions were for us to call the day we get a positive on the ovulation predictor test strip and they would get us in the next day to do the insemination. 

As I said before our schedule has been busy with work and photographing weddings, so we crossed our fingers that ovulation wouldn't fall on a day when Jennie had to shoot a wedding.  We were lucky that she didn't ovulate on a day she was shooting a wedding, but she did end up ovulating while I was presenting at a conference for work in Breckenridge. I kept getting text updates from Jennie while I was at the conference, which was exciting. Texts like "I just picked up the sperm" and my favorite text "The sperm is in!!! She said it was excellent sperm with great swimmers and she thought I had an excellent chance of getting pregnant". I feel good that the doctor was excited about the quality of our sperm--I guess we picked well! And I am really hopeful that we are successful this go round and that the third time really is the charm. I also kind of hope that the insemination happening while I was presenting on LGBTQ inclusion in public health had to create some good karma :)

Anyway, we'll know in 14 days if this worked or not.  If not, we'll be back at square one and having to find a new donor that we like.  Think positive baby thoughts for us! And thank you to all of you for the positive prayers, thoughts, and high fives.

Our story was featured on CNN Money!

Sorry it's been so long since I updated, but life has been busy! We've added a new four-legged addition to the Crate clan. He is the first boy to live in our house too! His name is Remington "Remi" for short, and we adopted him from the Longmont Humane Society.  He is a pitbull mix. I am super excited to have another furry baby and also a bigger dog is a fun new adventure--although it did take a couple weeks for Jennie to adjust to how dog-y he is. If you've had the privilege of meeting our other pup Berkeley, you know she is much more like her older cat sisters than a typical dog.  We've also been super busy in the full swing of wedding season. Our photography business is doing pretty well and we're continuing to grow the business. Lastly, as you've all probably seen Boulder County has had some major flooding! Luckily, our house is far enough East that we weren't affected. However, I'm currently squatting in a different office space because my office in Longmont still does not have power and the roads are closed around it. Although I haven't updated, we've still been working on the baby making project and I will try and update more frequently!

I forgot to post about this two months ago when it actually happened, but our story was featured on CNN Money in an article about Crowdfunding for adoption and fertitility treatments.  Six different couples using crowdfunding were featured and we were one of them.  You can check it out here! We were really excited to share our story and hopefully inspire other LGBTQ couples out there to possibly turn to crowdfudning to start families if they want to.

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!