Monday, June 2, 2008

Getting ready


We are preparing for an insemination in less than a week, and here's what's going on:

1. We should have better prepared for ordering sperm before we left. Since we have to get the authorization signed by the RE, and she's out of town, this is taking longer than anticipated. They say they can deliver the next day, so hopefully we'll have sperm in time.

2. As a nice daughter-in-law, sometimes I chat with K's mom when she calls before handing the phone over to K. I always regret it. I told her we picked a sperm donor, a nice dark-skinned Indian. She said two crazy things. First, we should have picked Afghan sperm because someone way back on K's father's side was Afghan. At Christmas, didn't she sayPakistani? I'm sure she's basing this solely on looks. I said, "Wouldn't you agree that K is mostly Indian?" and she agreed. Then she said "Oh no, don't get dark-skinned sperm. You don't want a dark-skinned baby!" She wanted us to choose somebody with light skin. I pointed out that a light skinned Indian mixed with white will just look white, and that K, her mom, and her dad are all medium to dark. She agreed that they were (K and her dad) but argued that she had the whitest legs and hoped her grandchild would also have white legs too. I handed the phone to K at this point, and her mom continued to beg K not to use dark skinned sperm. K pointed out that her mom's legs were not white, they were yellow, and probably needed to see more sun.

3. I am bigger than ever. Not sure what happened to the plan to lose weight before starting, but now here we are starting the inseminations, and I've gained weight.

4. We have a new household rule. We can only commit to one activity during the week and one on the weekend. No matter what. No matter how much fun it sounds, no matter how much we like the people. Just say no. We tried this weekend with the new rule, and ended up with four commitments (dinner with A&C, taking care of C&D's cat, volunteering at the nursury at church, and the annual church picnic) but we were much more relaxed than in the past, finally caught up on our vacation laundry, and even had time for a nap. Hopefully this rule will help with reducing the stress in our lives while trying to conceive.

5. We visited A&C and the 6-week-old K on Saturday. We asked for syringes for insemination at home. We weren't planning to do at home insemination so we are very ill-prepared. But now we have syringes. Baby-K is cute and quite big. We haven't seen him in over a month, and that's a long time in terms of baby growth.

6. A&C told us about the second-parent adoption process in MD. They needed letters of recomendation/character references for A to adopt K. The lawyer recomended getting 4 letters. K and I talked about who we would like to ask, and came up with 8 different people who represent different facets of our lives (our minister, K's family, our kid's godparents, friends of our with kids) and who would all write an excellent letter. We may narrow it down when the time comes or just ask all of them and give the judges something to read.

7. A friend in NY who we only see about once a year is having a really hard time. Her dog died and she got fired. And then she said, enough about me, how are you? I couldn't bring myself to say, oh, my life is excellent, we just got back from a fabulous vacation and now we are going to start trying to have a baby. Couldn't be better.

8. At the church picnic, we were talking to J&S and another couple came over, A&E. Both J&S and A&E have kids. We don't but we hang around with J&S's kids A LOT. A&E were talking about their neighbors and said they are a young couple who loves kids but doesn't want to have them, so they hang around with A&E's kids a lot. Then A looked at us and said, I guess that's what you guys are too, right? K said, Uh, no, we actually want to have our own one day, we just happen to really like hanging out with J&S and the kids.

So that's a wrap up of my weekend. Now I'm at work, and better get something done today. Ugh..

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