donor daze

I think we have a new donor picked out. I realize few if any of you care about all of the angst it took to get us here, having experienced similar angst yourselves so hey, stop your unoriginal whining already K, but some day I'll forget about all of the drama we went through (or so I'm told) so I'm preserving it here for all eternity. Or until the internet implodes. Whichever comes first.

I've been pouting and head-in-the-sand-ing and generally wasting time when it comes to picking a new donor, hoping we'd get a magical call from Xy.tex that would sound something like this: "We're sorry, we know we told you your chosen donor hadn't been in for his STD screening yet and then we'd still have to wait three weeks after he showed up before we'd be able to lift his quarantine but you know what? He stopped by this morning and he just looked so darn virile and healthy, we decided it would be crime not to expedite his lab results so we have them back already and he's clean as a whistle. We started calling his waiting list this afternoon and, wouldn't you know it? All five people ahead of you answered their phones on the first ring and deferred their claim to his vials which means they're all sitting right here with your name on them and I'll ship one out first thing tomorrrow morning."

The call didn't come. Shocker.

Over the weekend, the sound of the ticking clock in my head began to drown out all rational thought so we started poring over every last detail the cryobanks would give us for free. We made a list of seven or eight donors between Xy.tex, Fai.rfax and C.CB that we wanted to take on a second date.

On Monday, I talked to the nurse at my RE's office and she said it was time to call the donor sperm coordinator to get our vials ordered. Crap. I published a blog post looking for people who had already paid for unlimited access to donor information on one of these sites in hopes I could pay one of them to slip me some classified intel. Unfortunately, my blog doesn't know anyone with the necessary security clearance. Late that night, we caved and purchased the "a la carte" baby pictures for four donors at Fa.irfax as well as an unlimited membership to CC.B so we could check out three donors there. The information gathered helped us narrow the pool down to two favorites - one at C.CB and one at Fai.rfax. Then we got stuck.

On Tuesday, I was perusing C.CB donor profiles at work (shh, don't tell) and found a third candidate that I felt rivaled the two we already had on the medal podium. I showed him to M that night and she agreed. After much deliberation, we took the first C.CB donor out of the running leaving Fair.fax and C.CB2 in the race. Stuck again.

On Wednesday, I wrote an email to a friend explaining how annoying sperm shopping is and how we went from zero donors to two donors and I didn't have any confidence that we'd get it back down to one any time soon, and I wasn't sure how much longer I could blatantly disregard the nurse's instruction to get our sh*t together before they'd hunt me down. Right after I hit send, I printed out every last bit of profile information we can access on C.CB2 and Fa.irfax, read through it all once, and had The Breakthrough. I went home that night and pitched it to M who agreed and thus, the decision was made to go with C.CB2 (who is already hurting for a new blog name).

On Thursday, we sat with the decision. It held up nicely. There was a bit of a hiccup when I noticed (for the first time, because I'm totally perceptive like that) that the lovely CC.B2 has no reported pregnancies yet. Oh, for the love... Then I went and looked at all the other donors around his same number. Less than half (maybe even less than a quarter) have reported pregnancies. I think he's just too new to the program for that to be a meaningful data point. Plus, we're probably doing ICSI (because, you know, it costs more so why not?) on at least half the embryos which is kind of What They Do for less than optimal sperm, so we should be covered even if there is an issue. I'd be more worried if we were doing ICIs, which... bwahahahahahahahahahaha.

Today, I finally placed the call to the donor sperm coordinator and she told me - you knew that couldn't be the end of the story, right? - that we have until the day before our retrieval to get the sperm there. What? That's, like, 10+ days more than I thought we had. Not long enough to make any real difference, but I didn't let that stop me from trying. I emailed Xy.tex to see if maybe, just maybe, The Beatle had shown up for his STD screening and they'd be releasing vials prior to our new deadline. Turns out The Beatle is a flake (bad genes, I'm certain of it) and still hasn't even shown up. She actually went so far as to say she doesn't think he;s going to come in at all, which means those vials are as good as incinerated. So that's that.  CC.B2 it is, and I'm mostly good with that; good as I can be with an anonymous non-Beatle, I guess.

Stay tuned for the next chapter in which I over-process The Breakthrough.