Here we go again…

Things fall apart.

WonderSperm called. He’s definitely not our donor. We could’ve kept him on the back burner if we decided to have more children later, but now we definitely won’t. He’s HIV+ and starts the cocktail tomorrow. He tells the rest of Fil’s family tomorrow too. Which means her grandmother WILL be calling us to yell at Fil some.

You see, Fil’s grandmother pushes for babies. She wants us to have kids so bad that every time she calls Fil, she has to ask “so… how’s it coming… you know… babies” which is kind of amazingly sweet because it reaffirms in my head that she won’t treat the children I birth any differently from the way she treats Monster.

Oh god, poor WonderSperm.

Makes me even more sad that we lost Michael, because he would’ve looked perfectly like Fil and I.

Oh well. We’ll take our loss, mourn it a bit, and move forward.

In other news: I just started school. It’s fun, but annoying as I have to travel ALL OVER the place just to take classes.

And then

I am so, SO sick right now it’s not even funny. But I’m so awake and jittery because we only have Exced*rine for headaches.

But a much better reason is that Fil got a promotion!

She called me hours ago (from the bathroom) saying she got a managers position. She’ll be working days, a solid 40 hours, insurance, vacation time, salary pay. We’ll have more money, we’ll probably have our own apartment, we’ll be .. better, maybe.

There is no real baby news. WonderSperm is almost 100% out of the running. It’d be almost a year before we’d know if he is really HIV free, and even then, we can never be truly sure. Fil doesn’t want to risk infecting me and the baby and then possibly the whole family just because we want him/her to look like Fil.

So, naturally, I’m hurting a little.

Last night, after sex, I laid my head on Fil’s chest and cried. Hard. I let it go – all my fears of her not loving the baby if we use donor sperm, of the baby not feeling like it belongs with her and Monster because we used a donor, of Fil hating me if we use donor sperm. Everything. I was shaking, wet-tear-coughing and everything. And then Fil was crying, and I was crying, and we were both sweaty and tired and just done.

Bless her for dealing with me.

Set backs and steps forward

Fil is wonderful. She’s amazing, actually.

After some rethinking, Fil came home from work with wonderful news. She’s trying to get more hours and has a back up job lined up in case she can’t get any more hours. Yay!

With the possibility that WonderSperm has more than the Syph (read: HIV) I’ve been checking out some cryobanks, the usual, Fairfax and California. There happens to be a branch here in Austin where we could do all the counseling and paperwork and have the sperm sent from the main holding tanks. I’m not sure if our Fairfax collects, but I’m thinking it’s just a holding facility. Fil worked tonight, so I haven’t been able to run anything by her yet. But tomorrow we’ll have a discussion about WonderSperm and the Whatifs (interesting band name…).

Another setback…

You know, the miscarriage was a pretty huge set back. I had to go on birth control for a few cycles to regulate, I was in both mental and physical pain for a while and there was really no end in sight.

Another set back just occurred today. Fil and I were having some alone time when we wandered into the living room to help Monster with video game issues. After that WonderSperm, our sperm donor, called. We thought it was kind of funny since we were just talking about his, er, donation not moments before. Since the big day is coming up in a couple of days WonderSperm went in for his pre-donor screening. Something came up for the first time, syphillis! We were gobsmacked. Apparently, his partner for 12+ years couldn’t stand it and cheated on him! Holy cow that was out of left field!

Now he has to go through a 10 day antibiotic treatment and he can’t be screened for another 30 days. That tacks on another month.

And we all want to just get this started, Fil does so badly and Monster wants a little sibling (actually a brother) so bad.

Fil is determined to get us pregnant. As am I. It will happen, and this is just a temporary set back. Just relax. Just breathe.

The S Word

I still have yet to make my OB/GYN appointment. I should hop on that. As well as a regular doctor. But the good news is? My health care plan TOTALLY covers maternity. Pre and in hospital care. I get 48 hrs in the hospital for vaginal and 96 for C-Section. This is all neat and stuff but what I worry about is putting the baby on Medicaid or CHIP. But that’s  a ways off.

WonderSperm should be coming down here in under a week and I don’t know what Fil is thinking. She’s like a vault on this topic. I’ve gone to great lengths with prying it out of her too. We spent half of dinner last week picking out names. They’re good ones, at least to us they are, and they’re sure to get some interesting reactions out of our family.

I’m dizzy with excitment over our donor coming down so soon, but I’m also so nervous something might go wrong it’s not even funny.

Anatomy of [this] Blog

One of the last things on my mind right now is pregnancy. Well, not really, but everything else clouds that by a lot. Like how am I going to fix my wife’s MP3 player because I think I broke it and all I really did was turn it on. It smells like burning plastic and that makes me nervous. Also, like how we just moved into a house and our room is the size of our roommates’ closet and our son shares a room with Big B, who is 5, did I mention that? How we might have to move out in a few weeks because Monster deserves his own bedroom and our roommates might think otherwise. Like how Monster is gonna be in the 4th grade and I don’t think I’m ready for him to grow up any more or how I am so not ready to jump into college or how our hamster stinks and how much I’d love to live with Nefi, have an available room for the baby and sleep in a room that’s bigger than our bed.

Suffice to say I’m pretty sure this journal shouldn’t be strictly ovulation charts and cervical mucosa (ew!) but about our journey, our lives and life together. About Monster and Big B and our future niece or nephew. All the crazy components that make up our existence are so vital in our TTC journey and everything that is us.

Onto the matchbox sized room.

We own so many things. Our room really is the smallest in the house. And that’s kind of messed up because we’ve been sleeping in a 5×5 space and we deserve to have space to stretch our legs in. But, then again, it’s freaking awesome to have a door and a bed off of the floor. But Monster is sharing his space with a 5 year old who takes everything and spills soda on the floor and that’s just not fair. Hopefully we’re wrong about our roommates and they plan on upgrading to the 4 bedroom at the end of August. Hopefully. We spent a good 12 hours building this entertainment centre we bought at IKEA (what a good place for a starting family to shop, right?). That f’er took forever to build. It fell apart twice, and in the end we were so glad to be DONE we left two pieces on the upper shelf out.

We finally got the stamina to clean out Billy’s cage, that’s our stinky hamster. I put together our desk and plugged Fil’s MP3 player into my iSoundSpa and it started to smell of burnt plastic from its charging bay. That can’t be good, right? I think I’ll just leave it on the air vent for the evening and check on it in the morning. Maybe it’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll have to take it to Best Buy and get a new one or get that one fixed. Something we don’t have the money for, but then we’re BOTH missing our MP3 players (I left mine on an airplane going to Paris).

Monster and I rented Antz and had dinner on our kitchen floor. With the water being cut off at noon today, I couldn’t function. I couldn’t make the kids Ramen, or make Kool-Aid or bathe Big B or take my own shower or do the laundry, dishes, anything. My whole daily routine was just off from the being in a new house thing and now the water thing just turned my brain to malfunctioning mush. I had to take the kids to the store and buy drinks and some stuff to make in the microwave/toaster because they were hungry but everything they wanted required water. So I bought cereal and pop-tarts. And there aren’t any bowls so I was going to wash some. Oh wait, no water. Crap.

I woke up Fil and we went into town and paid to have the water transfered. $125 that our roommates should’ve paid. That’s what summer day care was for. So we could afford to transfer all of our utilities before we moved. But this didn’t happen, and the water got cut off and we had to do it ourselves. We had dinner at Cracker Barrel and came home so Fil and I could shower and relax before she had to go to work.

So as Monster is about to die (again) in San Andreas and I’m getting sleepy, I think I’ll go off and worry about the MP3 player later.