Yes please, I'd like to make a withdrawal.

I don't know if I should be freaking out or what, but my partner and I just had our first IUI yesterday. I might be jinxing it, but I already feel nauseous and it hasn't even been 24 hours. Hmmm....I must just be anxious, or maybe I caught a bug from the hospital yesterday.....called pregnant???!!!

Intro-Uterine-Insemination, as they call it, is done as soon as your Leutanizing Hormone (LH) levels have risen, indicating ovulation. A catheter is inserted directly into your uterus to deliver the package. Insemination, as I call it, sounds like something you learn about while studying to be a dairy farmer. The word just sounds like something you do to a giant herd of heifers to me. But yes, that literally is what it is; inseminating... with sperm from an unknown donor from thousands of miles away.

After many long nights of my girlfriend searching through different sperm banks, we finally decided to use the California Cryobank. She was amazingly diligent in her search efforts for the right bank. The website had to be perfect; user friendly and full of lots of information about the donors. I have to admit, from that point, I sort of let her roll with the sperm selection. She would ask me to sit with her and plan and pick, but I couldn't get over the dart-throwing sensation I felt. How could I prodict the outcome? And it's so cold, the act of looking through all these donors like their super-valuable sperm is on the auction block. It's like a dating website for sperm, these websites. There was no sense of personability throughout this process, or at least wasn't for me. Literally, you sign on to the website, and the first thing you notice is a pop-up stating, 'Donor #12345 is back! Supplies are limited!'

And how do they determine cost for these pricely, little vials? Some sperm was much cheaper than others (and I'm talking from the same website!) There was probably a couple hundred dollars of variation. Can you imagine the poor guy who figures out which donor number he is, then proceeds to get on the website only to find that he has cheap sperm? HA! THAT must feel good. I think it's based on number of successful pregnancies. So basically, supply and demand ladies. Get in line. First come, first served.

Many months into our serch for the golden sperm, my partner created something of a short list that we then went through together. It was so much less overwhelming for me to have five or six 'girlfriend pre-approved' options, as opposed to hundreds to search through aimlessly. After much deliberation about saving on shipping costs and having more than one child, we finally decided to buy only one vial, one chance. Perhaps it's all we need right now.