my guys!

I checked many baby project items off the checklist today, starting with: sperm vial transport.

At 9:30 this morning, I showed up at PRS to pick up my “tank.” I put it in quotes because you don’t really know what to say until it’s happening, but that seems to be the term. “Picking up?” Yes. OK, just take a seat and we’ll bring it out.

I honestly didn’t know what to picture them coming out with. A little tank? Big tank? Tank on wheels with frosty air curling up out of crevices? But when the guy brought it out, it was just a box. There was another lady in the waiting room also waiting for a tank, showing her donor’s baby photos in the waiting room binder to a woman who seemed to be a friend (“ooh, so CUTE!”)–I averted my eyes in case the donor was mine. Anyway, hilariously we both went for the box at the same time, which generated a lot of laughter about getting the wrong box. “Good luck!”

I took it outside and took a picture of it so you could see what it looked like:

Yep, just a box. A cold-ish box, and there was a little curl of frosty air coming out of the handle holes. Then I put it in the back of my car. I got in and checked the photo on my phone since it had been too bright outside, and the first thing I noticed is that it says “Keep Upright”–DUH! I jumped to the back where it was laying on its side and moved it around to be wedged behind the driver’s seat. At that precise moment, the lady from the waiting room walked by with her identical box: “Didja put a seatbelt on it?!”

Driving over to UCSF, I kept forgetting it was there, singing along to the radio and spacing out on such a beautiful day. But then I’d think–wow, there they are! The eggs are in here, the sperm are in there, and one combo is hopefully going to make a person. I recently read a SMC blog who referred to the sperm as “my guys.” I love it–we’re a team, and I’m their driver.

At UCSF, I checked in at the front desk (“Dropping off?”) and got the paperwork from Nurse Olga. She disappeared and I waited, realizing I a) really had to pee, b) was parked in a 10-min passenger loading zone, and c) had a work meeting in a few minutes. She took a while and I sat there stressing, forgetting even to be self-conscious about my giant box of sperm. Finally, I took the box with me into the bathroom (you don’t really want to be apart from that box!), and of course that’s when she came looking for me. We finished up the paperwork and dropped the box off with a lab tech who took it away and brought the tank back in the re-taped-up box, ostensibly sans vials. So, I never saw the tank. (I was a little disappointed.) Got back to my car (no ticket!) and called into my meeting.

After calling in to several meetings from home, I drove over to PRS to drop off the tank (“Dropping off?”), then headed back over to UCSF for my psych evaluation, which is a requirement for anyone using a donor. To understand “the implications.” I liked Dr. Lauri Pasch. The first thing she said was, “This is not an evaluation,” which is the only thing I was worried about (as in, could the outcome of this be that she says I’m too nuts to handle being a parent?), so that put me at ease. She also seemed to feel I had handled every single thing well already: I’m at peace with my decision, gave the donor selection process careful consideration, I know how I’d like to handle telling the story to my child, I considered a known donor and ruled it out, and I have been blessed with an enormous community of support, from friends and family to the national SMC discussion board to local SMCs to my blog. I felt like the honor student of anonymous donor inseminations! Check, check, check. Good.

Back to goin’ about my biz. Have a great weekend!