Just waitin...

So, usually the clinic that we go through is really good about getting back to me but for some reason it has taken them almost a week to get back to me with our re-enrollment appointments. I have all the bloodwork and other tests done so we're really just waiting on those appointments (and then for the right time -- when I'm ovulating) to get started.

And oh yeah, we'll have to choose a new donor. As I mentioned in the comments on my other post, Nate was literally from the last vial of sperm from his donor. The donor's donations were in 2004 (at least the vials we saw were from then) and since then he has unenrolled from the sperm bank's program so they won't contact him. Which is fine. I was an egg donor twice and at this point I wouldn't want to be contacted to be a donor again, I'm busy having my own babies. :)

But that does mean that we have to choose a new one. And while it's sort of as simple as choosing a donor who has the characteristics that we want, there are a bunch of things to keep in mind. We like to choose someone who has a similar ethnicity to Jen but we focus first on Italian. So the first donor we tried was Italian and Irish, but after 3 tries with him, he was out for the time being so we tried a new one (Italian and Polish) and we got pregnant with Jonathan right away and then on the 2nd try with Nathaniel. We also can only choose donors who have IUI vials ready.

There are IUI vials and ICI vials. IUI is what we do because we do it at the doctors office so they use sterile equipment and can do intra-uterine inseminations. If we were doing home inseminations, we could choose someon with ICI (intra cervical insemination) vials because we would be inserting the sperm before the cervix. (Go ahead and Google those terms if I'm not being graphic enough; I know people from work sometimes read my blog so I'm trying to be sensitive to that).

Also, we have to pick a donor who is CMV negative because I am CMV negative. CMV is one of those things that doesn't matter if you get it when you're healthy and you probably wouldn't even notice, but if you get it when you're pregnant, it's a big deal. And if I'm negative and use a donor who is positive, there is a possibility that I could contract CMV from the spermies and that wouldn't be a good thing.

And finally, we chose a donor who was not a release of identity donor for Nathaniel so we want to choose another non-release of identity donor for any subsequent children.

So, until we hear back from the clinic (hopefully tomorrow) we can browse the donor catalog at the sperm bank and figure out which donors we may go with for our next tries.

Nate learned how to slurp spaghetti this weekend: