#our conception story

So for those following the story this is why our history with our donor was messy. Trigger warning for cutters.

When we met in college i knew I was bisexual and my wife said she was gay. She hadnt really had much dating or otherwise relationship experience, so i tried to encourage her to experiment but she was adamant she was gay and only wanted me.

Flash forward several years and at a party i confided in her that i was interested in being with both she and a friend i had a crush on intimately. Ultimately we had some fun times but it was messy and my wife got attached. A part of her was interested in us being a legit throuple with a family and this is how i learned she was truly bisexual.

After ending that and working on us after coming close to ending our marriage. We mostly shut the door on an open marriage. Then a year or so later she said she wanted me to meet a coworker of hers and his wife. After meeting them i knew she was interested in being with him and later learned he was interested in being with us both as he and his wife had an open marriage.

My wife and i discussed it privately and though i had reservations i agreed. I still struggled greatly and eventually it got messy. I was struggling with his expectations and my own fears and issues to the point i cut myself on the leg.

This lead me to counseling which led us to ending the open relationship and because of the cutting and other issues and falling out.

After a year or so i reconnected with him and we made our amends about the same time we were struggling with iui. He saw my struggles and talked with his wife and after the doctor turned us away for more iui he offered to help.

I won’t say it has been smooth sailing as it has had its rocky moments. Part of that is by not having a lawyer there were certain things we didnt know about having a baby in our state, such as how difficult it would be to put him on the birth certificate without my wife losing her parental rights. We have no issue with him being linked on papers to her but it wasnt as easy as we thought.

After nearly 3 years though we are much better and having a known donor is great and he is a good man.

Part of the reason my wife and i were interested in doing a known donor is she was adopted and felt off until she met her birth parents, and my biological father was in prison from the time i was 7 on, which left me questioning a lot about myself and we didnt want that for our child if we didnt have to.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have.

So this is for any LGBTQ person or ally interested. This is the story of how my bisexual wife and i (also bisexual, though with a higher preference for women) conceived our daughter.

Okay so now that that introduction is out of the way, ill start by saying if you are going to hate on our story - the exits that way.

So about 6ish years ago we were discussing having kids and how to go about doing it. At the time we had a few guy friends offer to help, while sobor no less. So as we were considering how to conceive we approached them about it we were turned down because as they really thought about it they werent interested. This wrecked me, each person who turned us down was like a nail in the coffin of me becoming a mom because i didnt know how we’d be able to afford iui or ivf.

We saved and finally looked into doing it through a doctor and we’re happy to find out that we had enough for a few iuis. I had to have a little procedure first to remove polyps on my uterus, then once healed we were clear to try.

We searched for a unknown donor on a sperm bank website and found someone who was similar to my wife in interests, geological sign and overall looks based off description and baby photo.

We ordered the sperm to be delivered to the doctor and began fertility drugs. First just pills and eventually injections. Each failure was like a nail in the proverbial coffin ripping my heart out as i saw my dream of becoming a mom slip away. After 7 tries and failures the doctor said he wanted us to take a break and we would revisit trying after a few months.

The holidays came and then l made it my mission to lose weight and get down to a better bmi. I didnt know if my weight contributed to our failures but i figured it couldnt hurt. After losing the weight and taking about six months off we found out the doctor was not willing to do any more iui treatments. He wanted us to move on to the more expensive ivf and with one of his colleagues. I was devastated and at a loss i knew we couldnt afford ivf. Then a friend of ours who we had a complicated history with offered to help.

My wife and i discussed it and then sat down with he and his wife to discuss it. How we would do it, what each of us expected from the whole thing, we discussed talking to a lawyer but ultimately we thought we had it all figured out and decided we had a deal. We tried the next month and it took, we conceived our daughter and soon she’ll turn 3. Our path to conception wasn’t conventional or easy but it worked for us.

I’m going to do a part two of why things with our donor were complicated for anyone interested.

Station 19 peeps you’ll want to check that one out as it really is part of my reasonings for not being 150% anti jack and open to watching the marina conception unfold.

My 2 cents:

So i didnt get to watch live this week only got to follow along with tweets and then see the tumblr ramblings. So i went into the episode already not happy about the marina/jack sperm donor possibility and what may gave happened. But then i watched the episode and i have a different opinion though i do want to say two things first. One i am not really a fan of using jack as the donor but if that happens I’ll hold final judgement until i see it play out (im hopeful if they do some of danielle’s conversations on the topic with her own life experience will come into play) and two i dont think they will, honestly believe its a misdirect.

Okay so my opinion on the episode. I had thought before the episode that they had decided to use a knowb donor and that was that. But i was happy to see they are still trying to decide whether to use a known donor or not which is very real. So them discussing in the abstract using even jack didn’t bother me because its very real. They are still considering all possibilities and may move on to discussing with a few of the guys even jack about it ( even if they only talk to jack i feel like travis would find out and offer to help as well which could open up the possibility of travis) (side note i just thought of, there will be testing for the donor to go through so what if jacks sterile).

But anyways i think we are a ways off from picking a donor and doing the procedure, so im cautiously optimistic and going to hold off judgment for now. So yea thats my two cents. Side note im going to make a post related to this without station 19 tags so if anyone is interested in understanding better my take on this click on the tag below “our conception story”