Queer Conceptions - December 2011 - Page 11

[rs11]

I'm sorry to hear about all the disappointments.

Carmen -good luck!

[outdoorsy]

Hi everyone. I too am sorry to hear about the disappointments of the last week. Good luck to everyone who still has a shot this cycle, and a warm welcome to Hopeful. I am CD 6 and waiting to O. Better luck to all of us in 2012!

[Cananny]

Originally Posted by invitnconceptn 

Lise: thanks for kudos.

Ok i will be january threadkeeper

Cananny: So sorry to hear about the bfn. I really dont think it gets easier seeing a neg preg test when u r so deliberate in your efforts. Good luck finding a donor. It is hard to know for sure if "he" is the one. It is so strange. I've never given guys so much thought until we started looking for a donor. Its weird how when u have the choice to pick the person who is going to supply half of the genetic makeup of your child it is easy to scrutinize every little factor...eye color... Height... Etc.

Carmen: I hope your temps go up tomorrow.

Thanks...my bfn was a while ago ....six seven weeks or something.g...but AF has been a stubborn Bitch and I'm having to take meds to make her show up last cycle we did fresh ..but no iui..my re thinks with my pcos..an iui might be better....so I'm going to try that....so that's why we have to pick a donor .....dp and I are on fence about wtbk or anon... . .. n....its a 120.00$ difference...that I feel is a bit much....being the vials are 500 already.....

Do you do wtbk or anon? What is everyone's reasoning ?

[carmen358]

My temp went up today so I think we had perfect timing :) I can officially be moved to the TWW, please! I forgot to mention yesterday that I "lost" half the sample when trying to fill up the syringe...the little rubber stopper thing popped off and the end came out. It was pretty funny but a bit annoying lol

Cananny, I know picking a donor is a very personal decision but my 2 cents is that you should absolutely go for a wtbk donor. While you might not care, your future child/children may care very, very much and to deny them the option of learning more about their donor if they choose may cause a lot of heartache for them and your family. Of course, they may not care either but I think it's extremely important to provide people with an option to know where they came from genetically - in fact, I believe it is a person's right to know. In my opinion, it is similar to adoption, and I believe several countries are making closed adoptions illegal (for various reasons).

[darthtunaqueen]

Carmen, GOOD LUCK!!!  :D

Anon vs wtbk: well, thankfully the National Lesbian Longitudinal Family Study has a article they published last year about this: http://www.nllfs.org/publications/ (scroll down, it's the 5th or 6th one).  You can make your own informed decision about your own kids.  I'm with Carmen on this one though, I don't feel that it's something I can take away from my kids.  As you can read from the study, most kids don't seem to give a rats ass, but some did.  There was recently a big showdown in BC about an adoption case, where the woman was in her 20's and her file had been ripped up years ago, and she's fighting to end all closed adoptions, as she believes children have the right to information about their biological family.  

We're using a KD for *SO* many reasons, but the most important is that we wanted to give our kids the most access to their biological roots as possible.  We really like our donor, he's so awesome and very sweet and will love and adore our kids and that's what sealed the deal for us.  In BC we're not entirely protected, but it's better than some other places.  There's no case law history in BC that awards custody to the donor.  Even though, we did a lot of research and spent a good chunk of money on having legal contracts drawn up (Carmen/Anna/other Vancouver peeps, who did you guys use, out of curiosity).

In the end though, you have to make the decision that YOU can live with.  Our families are so colourful and different and awesome (huh hello ZERO PERCENT SEXUAL ABUSED FROM LESBIAN HEADED HOUSEHOLDS!!!) and I think overall we do a great job in raising our kids to be aware of where they come from and how a family is still a family because we say it is, not because of blood relations.  Kudos people, we make better kids.  ;)

So, quick update:  DW saw our super granola-ey energy sensitive very intuitive RMT yesterday morning.  She says she's pretty sure J conceived, but that her body freaked out (thanks, stupid biliary colic... caused by Christmas) and ditched the pregnancy because it knew that the next few days were going to be very very bad (and they were).  So, I feel much better about this (and also that I'm not completely NUTS).  I ended up giving DW a boatload of narcotics and all kinds of crap to get her pain under control, and I would have NOT DONE SO if she was pregnant, rather we would have spent the night in the ER (oh fun times).  We're also hopping on a plane to Mexico mid-January for 2 weeks, which exposes you to the same amount of radiation as a chest X-Ray, and me being the crazy NICU nurse makes me EXCESSIVELY PARANOID about these kinds of things (it's easy to dismiss stats when you don't see it every day!).  We're missing our January cycle, but I think we need a vacation (and a break).  

KD is pleasantly optimistic (he's so awesome), and is happy to do whatever we need done.  

Anyways, hope for sticky uteruses for those of you in a TWW!  :D

Edited by darthtunaqueen - 12/29/11 at 9:45am

[AnnaNotherThing]

Originally Posted by Allison Graham 

Anon vs wtbk: well, thankfully the National Lesbian Longitudinal Family Study has a article they published last year about this: http://www.nllfs.org/publications/ (scroll down, it's the 5th or 6th one).  You can make your own informed decision about your own kids.  I'm with Carmen on this one though, I don't feel that it's something I can take away from my kids.  As you can read from the study, most kids don't seem to give a rats ass, but some did.  There was recently a big showdown in BC about an adoption case, where the woman was in her 20's and her file had been ripped up years ago, and she's fighting to end all closed adoptions, as she believes children have the right to information about their biological family.  

We're using a KD for *SO* many reasons, but the most important is that we wanted to give our kids the most access to their biological roots as possible.  We really like our donor, he's so awesome and very sweet and will love and adore our kids and that's what sealed the deal for us.  In BC we're not entirely protected, but it's better than some other places.  There's no case law history in BC that awards custody to the donor.  Even though, we did a lot of research and spent a good chunk of money on having legal contracts drawn up (Carmen/Anna/other Vancouver peeps, who did you guys use, out of curiosity).

I agree with everything you said there, Allison.

Anonymous vs Willing To Be Known:

I also feel very strongly that I don't want to take away my future children's ability to find out about their genetic make-up.  Or maybe it's the other way around: that access to their genetic make-up (and other 'family of origin') is something of value that may one day become important to them.

I know not everyone feels that way, but I do.  We looked at sperm banks for years and years and i just couldn't get comfortable with it. I couldn't move past this feeling that something wasn't right. It added years of waiting and frustration to our journey of starting a family, meaning we've almost run out of time.

But i couldn't get past this.

We're also lucky to have found an awesome KD who is willing to participate in the children's lives and provide information about family, etc. We're even going so far as to include his parents in the 'village'.

I realise that may be pushing it a bit for some people, but they're lovely people, and if I was a child I'd love to have them as my grandparents.  So, we're trying.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Allison Graham 

In the end though, you have to make the decision that YOU can live with.  Our families are so colourful and different and awesome (huh hello ZERO PERCENT SEXUAL ABUSED FROM LESBIAN HEADED HOUSEHOLDS!!!) and I think overall we do a great job in raising our kids to be aware of where they come from and how a family is still a family because we say it is, not because of blood relations.  Kudos people, we make better kids.  ;)

Also agree with this very much.

Whatever we decide as parents (or parents to be) as long as we make those decisions with a true heart, our children will grow up safe and confident in the knowledge that their parents made the right choices for their family.

I really can't say it any better than you did, Allison.

And yes, we also consulted a lawyer (Larry Kahn of Kahn Zack Erlich Lithwick ).  He charges a fortune. 

We saved some cash by writing our own donor contract and showing it to him.  He read it over and said 'this is fine and will hold up in court.  Save your money. I don't need to write one of these for you'... 

We think we will use him to do the Declaration of Parentage when the time comes though, to get both our names on the Birth Certificate. It's a little more expensive than the 2nd Parent Adoption, apparently, but is quicker and done within weeks of the birth.  I suspect a lot of stuff may change for all of us (esp. our KD) after the birth, so I don't want any delays...  

Call me paranoid.

Who are you using, Allison?

And carmen, did you do a 2nd Parent adoption for your daughter?

[carmen358]

Originally Posted by AnnaNotherThing 

And yes, we also consulted a lawyer (Larry Kahn of Kahn Zack Erlich Lithwick ).  He charges a fortune. 

We saved some cash by writing our own donor contract and showing it to him.  He read it over and said 'this is fine and will hold up in court.  Save your money. I don't need to write one of these for you'... 

We think we will use him to do the Declaration of Parentage when the time comes though, to get both our names on the Birth Certificate. It's a little more expensive than the 2nd Parent Adoption, apparently, but is quicker and done within weeks of the birth.  I suspect a lot of stuff may change for all of us (esp. our KD) after the birth, so I don't want any delays...  

Call me paranoid.

Who are you using, Allison?

And carmen, did you do a 2nd Parent adoption for your daughter?

Just curious, why are you planning on doing a declaration of parentage? The lawyer we consulted (queer lawyer who specialized in queer family law) said it's really only necessary if you are really worried about your KD trying for custody at the beginning....she also said it can sometimes take so long that your adoption will likely be close to being completed (at 6 months) when you receive it. We decided not to do it. Also, both my DP and I are on DD's birth certificate...it asks the sex of the "other parent" on the application. We are planning on doing a 2nd parent adoption but because we don't feel 'threatened' whatsoever by our donor in terms of custody we were going to wait until we have a 2nd child (hopefully!) and then do it together. I also believe you still have to do the adoption even if you do the declaration of parentage in the beginning.

[DesertSunsets]

Happy New Year's Eve, all!  

As this year finishes, I'm left feeling very contemplative and thankful.  I am so glad to have known you all and to have had the support of this group.  It's hard to believe that last January is when we decided to start planning out this journey.  I hope you all find yourselves with friends and/or family on this night, celebrating the end of one year and the fresh start that a new year brings.   

I've updated the roster and sent it to Invitnconceptn, she will be your Threadkeeper for January.  I'm hoping it'll be okay with everyone if I stick around here, probably mostly lurking but I would like to keep up with you guys.  I don't want to be disrespectful of anyone, so I will avoid discussion of our pregnancy, but I want you all to know that I care about you and I'm looking forward to continue reading about all of your journeys!   

Much love to you all.  

[invitnconceptn]

Hello everyone please join me for January at http://www.mothering.com/community/t/1340469/queer-conceptions-january-2012#post_16808575

[darthtunaqueen]

@Anna: we used barbara findlay (she doesn't use capitals in her name), sounds like the same one Carmen used.  She was fabulous, she does several of these KD contracts, so she just sent us a questionnaire and then filled in the blanks on her donor contract and then went over it with us.  Our KD had to have his own representation, but it was all perfectly fine.  :)  We paid for that, I think all in it was about $2500? Ish? Maybe less, I don't really remember (we finished our contract in MAY, and I have the memory of a goldfish).  

We found barbara on the Pomegranate Midwives website in the resource section.  She's bad-ass, we will be using her again.  We wrote our donor contract in such a way that it still applies to each child conceived through either of us, so we don't have to repeat the whole process for each kid (AAUGH!).  I don't think we'll be doing the declaration of parentage, unless KD suddenly starts making noise about wanting to be more involved suddenly.  We'll definitely seal our 2nd parent adoption, but by the time our baby is born, the new laws might be around that'll completely eliminate KD as any possible threat to our legal parentage (dunno if you've heard of this?).  It got kinda pushed back when the Liberals totally screwed around and Gordo stepped down, but it's here http://www.ag.gov.bc.ca/legislation/pdf/Family-Law-White-Paper.pdf, it's from 2010 though, so it's actually OVERDUE to pass. :)  But the fancy part that REALLY affects us is this:

• Birth mothers should be considered legal parents at the birth of the child, whether or not their eggs were used to conceive the child and that they can give up this parental status in two ways: adoption or surrogacy.

• The birth mother’s partner, male or female, should be presumed to be the other legal parent, unless it is proven otherwise.

• A person who donates eggs or sperm for another person’s use should not become a legal parent, even though there is a genetic link to the child. An exception to that general rule is that a person who donates genetic material can agree in advance of the child’s conception to be a legal parent, which means that in certain circumstances, a child can have more than two legal parents. For example, a lesbian couple and a male friend whose sperm is used to conceive a child can agree before the child is conceived that the donor will also be a legal parent. Responses were mixed on whether the pre-conception agreement between a donor and the parents should be sufficient to establish the donor’s status as an additional parent or whether a court declaration should be required.