Educational Attainment

As I mentioned previously, I've been simultaneously amusing and horrifying myself by delving into the world of sperm donation. Let's just say that after even a cursory level of research, I understand why couples and single women post ads on Craiglist asking for help. Before I get into this, let's start with the disclaimers: 1) I am in no way an expert on intra-uterine insemination, other than what I've been told by the man I fondly refer to as Repro Guy. He's a Reproductive Endocrinologist, so I basically trust him, even if he has a stern dislike of my ovaries and my treatment of them; 2) I have only looked into two sperm banks. I recognize that literally thousands of banks exist across the country and internationally. I base my opinions solely on these two banks, which were recommended to me by Repro Guy (see comment 1 for more info); 3) I firmly believe that everyone is entitled to make their own decisions based on what is best for their family at any given point. I am not judging or dismissing anyone.

Ok. With that being said....let's talk about sperm. I feel like I should back up and tell any new readers that I got pregnant accidentally ON THE PILL. It was an open bar at one of my friend's wedding and I was on strong antibiotics for an abscess tooth...yada yada, yada...five weeks later a very kind nurse at Planned Parenthood had the misfortune to tell me no less than four times that I was actually pregnant. I bring up this story to note that I've only ever given a fleeting nod to the importance of sperm. I mean, rationally, I knew it was there and I knew that I needed to avoid it. I'm sure that's as far as my 23 year-old mind got when it came to family planning. Hell, my 31 year-old mind hasn't gotten much farther from that until recently.

Sperm - can't carry it on your body and can't get knocked up without it.

I would need pre-washed IUI ready boys. It never occurred to me that there sperm could come in menu format: as in, "I'll have the un-washed intra-cervical sperm today and why don't you just put a four months supply on ice for me while we are at it?" Yeah. Sperm comes in three different levels and if I were more responsible, I'd be able to tell you what exactly what happens to sperm during the process of "washing", but I can't. Literally. I have no idea. I feel like I should feel bad about that, but my doc will only do one kind of insemination, so I don't feel the need to be empowered on this issue. At least not at this point. With this, as with all other areas of this process, I retain the right to change my mind later.

As a consumer, I can tell you that pre-washed IUI sperm is the most expensive. In fact, price was the first thing I noticed when I looked at the bank's websites. The sperm I need is the most expensive by about $150 - $300/vial. Just for reference, with every vial of sperm, I have approximately a 20% chance of getting pregnant provided my doc does it at exactly the right moment of ovulation, which makes me wonder, "How in the hell does anyone get pregnant accidentally anyways?" I was told to buy at least six vials of the good stuff for any serious attempt at baby making.

Even within a particular sperm category, there are hundreds of choices. I want sperm from a Caucasian man, but I really don't care about his eye color, hair color, personality traits, educational attainment, national origin, or college major. I'm completely neutral on the fact that my donor could have a Slavic or Germanic family history. I feel like I should care on behalf of my Mom since she's the family genealogist, but since she's opposed to Baby Number 2, I prefer to remain neutral. I just want to know that my sperm is free of major genetic defects and won't give me a STD. I find it hysterical, however, that the more college the donor goes to, the more his sperm costs. "Pursuing a BA" sperm is less expensive than "MD/PhD sperm" and no, I'm not kidding. "MD/PhD sperm" can cost up to $900/vial and some of the most highly sought after sperm has a waiting list. Read that again and think about that means.

Some sperm has a waiting list.

What the hell are they waiting for? For the man to make another "donation"? For the mysterious washing process to be complete? Are they simply just holding back some sperm to create demand for the product? Do men with a high degree of educational attainment get paid more for their donation? What if I really want doctor sperm, but I'm actually settling for a PhD in History or Psychology. Am I really getting the full value for my money? See...this just brings up so many questions for me, all of which I find vaguely amusing. I could go on for a long time posing hypothetical questions about this sperm. Like: What if I want full biological siblings, but I used all the sperm up on getting preggo with the first kid, do I have to wait for other women to get pregnant before I can give my kid a a biological brother or sister? What if the guy gets deployed or travels out of town or gets into a serious relationship and decides he doesn't want to be a sperm donor anymore? Then what? What if he gets a D in microbiology or chemistry and drops out of medical school, will they reclassify his sperm as "MA or MS sperm"?

But, let's face it, I'm cheap. See also: I've been poor a long time. While I have a list of things I don't care about, I care about price. If I was being really honest, I'd say that I want discount sperm. I'd like the sperm that goes on a 2-for-1 special. If Kmart sold sperm, I would find a Kmart and buy it. So, I'm mainly looking in the "Pursuing a BA" sperm categoy. I'd like to note that, "High School Dropout sperm" doesn't even exist at these two banks. There is also an option where a child can find out the donor's information when they turn 18. That sounds good, until I realize that most men pursuing a BA are probably 18 themselves. Let's imagine this: some banks don't put a limit on the number of pregnancies that can result from their sperm. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that my donor is 20. At the age of 38, do I really want my child, along with 10 or 12 other kids, to seek this man out? Does this 20 year-old man really grasp the consequences of getting paid $50 bucks for a masturbatory session?

There are just too many questions right now. I continue to remain amused, horrified, and very confused.

Welcome to my Uterus!

It's not very often that I invite people into one of my body's organs, but there has been so much activity in this particular organ that I thought it would say hello. Really, if my uterus could speak, it would say, "Get that fucking thing out of me and never go back to that doctor again!"

Let me back up. Start at the beginning, as it was. Like an egg forming in my ovary perhaps we'll get to my uterus one day (was the analogy too much? Sorry. It's all I've got. I'm a little rough around the edges with writing these days. Ever since the facebook fiasco).

I announced a while ago, in this post, that I wanted another child. I'm not sure how we got from January to now without having a post about my uterus, but all I can say is that I've been busy. It took me a while to schedule appointments with all the doctors that would weigh in on my decision to have a baby. I had to see my wonderful ObGyn in her new building, I had to get referred to a Reproductive Endocrinologist, I had to talk to my bariatric surgeon about whether my body could handle pregnancy, really, I was quite busy.

My ObGyn was very confused at first, as in "I just put this IUD in you a year ago, why are you taking it out now?" Then she looked pleased with herself when I told her I wanted another baby, like she personally would be getting me pregnant. Getting out my IUD was a momentous day. I have been on either birth control pills or intra-cervical hormones since after Zac was born. Basically, I am now hormone-free for the first time in seven years. It's been easily five years or so since I've had a period and I've had two in the past four weeks. My body rocks! Anyways, the ObGyn referred me to the Repro Guy. I didn't want to go alone to that appointment and, man, that was a mistake.

I ended up asking Clicker to go with me. The doc took one look at him, looked at me, and asked how long we had been married in his thick Turkish accent. When I told him I wasn't married to Clicker and was thinking about using donor sperm, he jerked his head sideways to Clicker and asked me in a low tone, "What's wrong with him?" I think I blushed through that entire interrogation, I mean initial consultation. I quickly assured him that we had no idea if anything was wrong with Clicker and that I hadn't made my mind up as to how I would have a child yet. He turned to his resident and was like, "Really?", then turned back to me, "And you have NO history of infertility? This is very strange." I agreed. Then, again - I couldn't even make this up if I tried - he looked at my chart on his computer and said, "You're 31, with a history of smoking, you could have 40 year-old ovaries!!! We need to look at your eggs, immediately. Like, today." I was overwhelmed and frightened. "What do you mean, today?" I asked. He said, "Right now. Get up on the table."

Flash forward to me getting my first transvaginal ultrasound and thinking the whole time, "Wow, this really is as bad as Democrats make it out to be". Repro Guy was shoving that thing so far inside me that I thought it might just pop the whole organ and take pregnancy out the window. Turns out, ovaries are like acorns, with follicles inside them. Egg-making follicles. He flattened them out, which involves pushing the wand on the ovary, to count the follicles. If I've said it one time, I've said it a thousand - internal organs are not used to being fucked with. They don't like. They fight back. It felt like someone had sucker punched my ovaries. I was horrified. Repro Guy was pleasantly pleased with the number of follicles I had and pronounced me fit for breeding.

I went back three weeks later, because apparently I enjoy punishing my uterus, for a HSG test. I could google what HSG stands for, but I'm lazy, so I'll give you the short-hand. It stands for, "OMG. My doctor has his entire hand inside me and just squired dye into my uterine cavity via my cervix. Ow. I would like to curl up into the fetal position, but first, I would need to remove Repro Guy's forearm. Oh look, now they are taking x-rays of my junk. This couldn't get any better if I tried." Then, the test was over and I, again, wondered why so many reproductive tests make me want to cry.

Ok, let me wrap this up. No baby in the uterus right now. Look forward to a post about donor sperm and how much fun I have thinking about men that are "Pursuing their BA".

Does She or Doesn't She?

I always know when someone likes me, even as a person, when they read my blog. Actually, I've had people hate me as a person for this very blog, but at least I knew they were listening. They hated me, but I least I knew they cared enough to read.

And oh! This blog and I have been through so much. So many iterations, so many times when I've wanted to start writing and haven't had the courage to hit publish.

What can I say now? Work is great, my  love life is complex at best. I just made appointments to see my ObGyn and a Reproductive Endocrinologist as a completely single woman, but then I met someone. And oh how she made me smile. She made me feel like I had been waiting for her, but then there is all the fear and insecurity. All the people that tell me it's not what I think it is and "oh grasshopper, you should slow down".

So consider me officially slowed. I'm not even answering my phone right now. I'm so slow that a slug couldn't see me. I just had a great Easter dinner with my parents, Zac, and Clicker, and now we are all almost ready to go to bed. I'm so alone it hurts. As always. Just alone....and even when I thought I was through waiting for my white knight, I find myself wondering, "Just maybe...."

Red Dress Photoshoot

Here are a sampling of the photos from my red dress photo shoot. My wonderful photographer, Trisha Fisher from Trisha Fisher Photography. It was a beautiful early spring day and I was so glad that Trisha welcomed Zac at my photoshoot.

My red dress was lovingly donated as part of the Red Dress Project (I'm not sure if she wants to be named here). The dress has already been advertised and will soon be passed on to another woman to continue the cycle of empowerment, beauty, and mystery. The basic premise of the project is: sometimes you just have to wear a red dress for no reason, just to be, for one minute or one hour, the embodiment of the person you want to be.

The day of my red dress shoot, I was definitely challenged. My friend Seven and I had a brutal fight and we stormed off the phone swearing we were never going to talk again. I was fighting back tears when I put on the dress, which had been described to me as "a stretchy size 12". Well, it was looser than the first time I tried it on, but basically very, very tight. It also had skinny straps, so I decided to wear a short-sleeve black sweater. Then to stave off any feelings of being in drag, I decided to wear my casual Merrill shoes, which I'm pretty sure Trisha frowned at when she saw. I ended up taking most of my photographs bare foot.

Zac was there the whole time, usually playing on the wooden bridges and pavilions, constantly asking, "Is it my turn to take a picture". He forced me not to take myself too seriously, especially since my hurt was still hurting from the fight I had had just minutes before putting on the dress.

Did I feel powerful, beautiful, and sexy? Did I feel like I was celebrating losing 50lbs? Yes and No. The old insecurities still plague me. Most of the photos I'm looking up because I was sensitive about my double chin. In every photo, I ask myself, "How do my arms look in that? They don't look too big do they?" But it was fun. It was fun being with Zac at a park in the late afternoon. It was fun playing with all the props that Trisha had brought in her huge duffel bag. It was fun when she would take a photo and be so happy with the result that she would show me with this knowing smile in her eyes.

I don't want the back story of the photos ruin the photos themselves. They are beautiful and have more to do with my talented photographer than me. Some of the photos thought, where I'm looking directly into the camera lens, belies some of the strength in my eyes that has come from seven years of trial. Seven years of living as a single Mom, struggling in my career, getting a masters degree, trying to make a life for myself. That shows in my eyes.

Then in contrast, there are the pictures with Zac. The pictures where I look so happy and Zac is so happy and we are such a family. It's he and I, taking on the world and we love each other so much. 6 1/2 has been such a good age. I'm so lucky to have Zac, even when his love for me astounds me, I've tried to never take it for granted. Even when I was sick and thought he would get over the loss of me and be better off with another family, I knew, deep down, that the love we share was and still is a powerful force.

He's silly and funny and charmed Trisha with his jokes about the evolution of dinosaurs. Man I love that kid and I'm so happy he got to celebrate the red dress with me.

Will This be in the Blog?

Back when I wrote on my blog every day, sometimes multiple times in a day, one of my favorite/most annoying questions was, "Are you going to write about this? Will this be in the blog?" I would usually scoff, sigh and little bit, and reassure whoever asked that contrary to popular belief, I don't post a minute-by-minute detail of my life and my thoughts on the Internet.

Then I thought, well, that would be fun. Because I am a sick blogger. I just goaded my friend Dee into writing a blog post about her new baby because I'm sick. She told me to back off which I respected because the sickness has not yet spread to my conscious. I'm only mildly ill. Anyways, I digress.

Since I can't talk about my actual work interactions or the name of where I work or even that I am affiliated in anyway with this company that may or may not be in finance (because the Lord knows, when my Compliance officer googled me, I thanked a deep sigh of relief because: 1) I don't blog about work and 2) My blog did not come up on the google search). (As a second parenthetical aside, who google searches someone while they are on the phone with them? It was like being in a weird game show with the announcer droning on, "Ladies and gentleman, let's see how many sites Google will take us to NOOOWWW with our finance professional!! Of course, I googled myself simultaneously to their google, so at least I wasn't completely surprised).

Jeez, that was such a long aside that I had to go to a new paragraph to distance myself from it. I clearly can't go by minute by minute because that would take too long and have to include horrible minutes where I picked my nose or pulled my undies down. It would be unpleasant for all of us. Here is what an hour-by-hour look at what tomorrow holds for me, with some minutes thrown in to make it spicier:

11pm - 6:30am - Sleep!

6:30am - 6:45am - Shower

6:45am - 7:20am - "Zac, stop playing around. I'm serious. We are running late. Are your socks on? What do you mean you only have one sock on? Where did the other sock go? Your Nintendo DS is in your bag. Yes, I'm sure it is fully charged. Can you please put your other sock on before I lose my mind. Hurry!!! I see the bus up the street.

7:20am - 7:40am - Get ready for work

7:40am - 8am - "Commute" to work. It only takes 20 minutes because of all the stop lights and traffic. It could be under 10 if I had a straight shot to my building.

8am - 9am - Read online news, figure out who I'm going to be calling, figure out who I called yesterday, catch up on any administrative tasks that I didn't do the day before because I got tired.

9am - 11am - Call as many strangers "cold call" or semi-strangers "warm call" as I possibly can. That can range anywhere from 40 to 150 dials.

11am - Leave for lunch seminar. Begin freaking out that no one will come to said lunch seminar.

12pm - 1pm - lunch seminar

1:30pm - 2:30pm - Finish the on-site administrative paperwork for the seminar and drive back to my suburb.

3pm - 5pm - Call as many cold and warm strangers as I can. Return phone calls from while I was out of the office. Check e-mail.

5pm - 6pm - Meet with a prospective client

6:15pm - Leave for home

6:35pm - 8:30pm - Hang out with Zac, even if he would rather play computer games than talk to me.

9pm - Read

10pm - Read some more or catch up on my favorite blogs.

11pm - Sleep

I don't usually blog too much because I've become the most boring kind of workaholic imaginable and I can't even write about my work interactions or my feelings about work. I've officially used the words "blog" and "work" too many times in this post. I'm going to end it now before I start throwing around terms that google might pick up on. Good night!

Hair Today Gone Tomorrow

I got back in the car today after my Toastmasters meeting and looked in my rear view mirror. I had pinned up part of the sides of my hair because all the rain and humidity turn my once reasonably complaint, straight hair into a mass of fly aways and bad flips. My hair looks like Farah Faucett in her hey day, but without actually giving enough of a crap to go for the full out look.

Then I looked closer into the mirror. I remembered seeing a picture of myself in Seattle last week when I was in high school. The photo had the same straight, brown hair, but there was so much more of it. Then I realized I've lost most of my hair and almost started crying.

For the uninitiated, let me just say this as a disclaimer: hair is a fickle beast. There are many things that cause hair loss, including a radical change in diet, rapid weight loss, vitamin deficiencies, hormonal changes, and straight-up "I'm going bald". Unfortunately, gastric patients often experience hair loss for one, or many, of the reasons listed above. I just didn't feel like I fit that category. I knew that I was losing a lot of hair in the shower and wrapped around my volumizing brush, but I always kind of shrugged and knew deep down, "There is more where that came from".

Then one day I woke up and I can hold up all my hair with two small clips. I have a short, bob-length cut and now I realized that even when I wear all of my hair down, you can see my neck and chin when looking at my sideways. You know. Through my hair. Because there is nothing there but the strands that have decided to stick it out with me.

I have been in denial about this for a while I think. I feel like the 40 year-old man that goes to the store to buy Rogaine because one day he woke up and his forehead had tripled in size. Last time he remembered, he was swooping his hair sideways to stay out of his eyes. Only his hair loss was infinitesimally slower than mine. His took 15 years and mine has taken just 1, but I swear I sympathize so much more now. This whole year I've been fighting a losing battle to grow my hair out. It would get to a certain length and no matter how hard I tried to pretend that it was ok, it just looked horrible and I would cut it. Let's be honest, thin hair responds to a layered bob because all the layers add volume, particularly when blow-dried and moussed and tousled.

I called my doctor's nurse today and I'm hoping she returns my call tomorrow. I'm not sure how I'm going to put in words, "I've been losing hair for the past 12 months, but now my hair is all gone and do you think you can help me?" but I'm going to give it the ol' college try. After all, my follicles deserve another chance, right? If this doesn't work, I'll be reduced to a nightly chant to my scalp, shouting, "I think I can! I think I can!" to my scalp and no one really wants that.

Six cc's and full of vigor

After the drama of the last post, I have very little dramatic news to announce. Six cc's is...shockingly normal. Not "I can eat a bacon double cheeseburger with a large french fry" normal (and all of you with a stomach that can hold a full 6 cups of food, spend a little time tonight thanking the sweet Lord that you can enjoy not one, but TWO cheeseburgers simultaneously). I'm more like, "I just ate some sweet and sour soup and a couple of beef kabobs and I don't feel like I'm going to die". THAT kind of normal.

In other, perhaps more exciting news beyond my gastrointestinal track, I finally had my red dress photo shoot. I'm waiting on confirmation from my wonderful photographer to see if I can use her name here. Until then, if you are anywhere in the Houston area, I would highly recommend her. Just e-mail me or send me a message on Facebook and I'll send over her info. At the photo shoot, I ran out of steam before she did AND she brought a duffel bag full of props. I held things. I hid behind things. She had towels at the ready for when I had to sit down on slightly damp grass next to a river. The woman thought of everything. Then there's the part where she kept saying, "You look like a model" and murmuring to herself, "Beautiful". There's that part. There is also the part where she made Zac kiss me approximately 20 times while exclaiming, "That's so great! Keep doing that Zac!" so he did and we both giggled.

I'll write more about the experience when I get the photos in a couple of weeks.

Until then, I'm neck-deep in GLBT volunteering and I'm not sure I can see the white light at the end of the tunnel. Delegate you say? Why, I would if I knew where to start. Delegating might be new favorite word. Delegate. Delegate. Delegate. Yes, it does feel good.

Not quite as good as that egg roll I just ate, but you can't have everything.