How do you afford the cost of DI?

[Satori]

I've decided to go ahead and conceive my 2nd child and would rather go the route of DI for a number of reasons but the cost seems huge when you figure the chance of conceiving is so low with frozen sperm and it may take multiple cycles. You could eat though your savings pretty easy. Also if you have a known donor did you do it at home or though a sperm bank? If at home how to you know he wont try to exert his "rights" to the child after its born? One last q How did you find a Dr willing to work with a single or lesbian mom? Around here the Dr's treat you like crap if they find out your prego and the father is not involved.

[TurboClaudia]

Some resources I found...

Some close friends of mine who are lesbian were considering becoming pregnant and since I work in the birthing community I did a little research on my own. These are the best books I found that I know will answer many of your questions:

The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: Tips and Techniques from Conception to Birth: How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself by Rachel Pepper
This book is truly awesome! I recommended it to my friends!

Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler
Although written with the straight couple in mind, it gives great information to anyone trying to achieve pregnancy and understanding your womanly body and what it does each month.

The Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth
by Kim Toevs, Stephanie A. Brill, Stephanie Brill
I have not read this particular book, but I have read articles by the individual authors and they are very well thought-out and insightful.

If you can't find them at your local library, check out www.powells.com

Warmly,
Claudia
mama-to-be in late spring 2004

p.s. Where are you at that the pregnancy care environment is not supportive of a single and/or lesbian mom-to-be?

[Sierra]

We could not afford to use frozen sperm with a bank, nor did we want to go that route. It didn't feel right to us. Right now we're in the process of ttc with a known donor. It's going to cost us a total of $850 to pay for medical lab tests that were not covered by our donor's insurance, but that is far better than $600-1000 per cycle for banked and frozen sperm with small sample sizes. We do have a little cost that results from the travel, and we also have it written in our contract that we pay our donor a very nominal fee for each sample (which he has not accepted) to emphasize the business-nature of our relationship. We drive an hour to an hour and a half for each insemination and do it at our donor's house.

There are pluses and minuses to any route you take. I think the hardest things for us have been scheduling for each insemination (any time you do anything that involves more than one person's schedule, it gets complicated...especially in a situation like this when there is no way to predict exactly when you should be scheduling), and just generally being dependent on another person. The pluses are numerous, and we're happy with our choice. As for fearing a custody battle, we've crossed our t's and dotted our i's, but of course we've also had to have some faith in all this. We did have our donor sign a thorough contract, and we are fortunate to live in a U.S. state with fairly favorable court rulings when it comes to issues like this.

In terms of finding a doctor, I haven't had that problem, though I have had problems with docs whose approach-- as a result of the fact that I am a type I diabetic-- was not one I was happy with. My advice is to interview, interview, interview...and to search far and wide. I would drive at least an hour to get to a doc I like. Where are you from anyway?

Best wishes, S

[Sierra]

Re: Some resources I found...

Originally posted by TurboClaudia
Some close friends of mine who are lesbian were considering becoming pregnant and since I work in the birthing community I did a little research on my own. These are the best books I found that I know will answer many of your questions:

The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians: Tips and Techniques from Conception to Birth: How to Stay Sane and Care for Yourself by Rachel Pepper
This book is truly awesome! I recommended it to my friends!

Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler
Although written with the straight couple in mind, it gives great information to anyone trying to achieve pregnancy and understanding your womanly body and what it does each month.

The Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy, and Birth
by Kim Toevs, Stephanie A. Brill, Stephanie Brill
I have not read this particular book, but I have read articles by the individual authors and they are very well thought-out and insightful.

Oh, and I agree that all these books are *wonderful.* There is also a book I have had for years called something like Two Of Us Make a World about single parenting. I'm not single, but I still found that book to be a very helpful resource.

S

[Satori]

Thanks to both of you I did order a copy of The Ultimate Guide to Pregnancy for Lesbians but i'm a bit nervous about TCOYF becasue its adamant that you can only ovulate 1x per cycle when I know I ovulate 2x a cycle on a pretty regular basis and now research has come out that ovulation can happen more then 1x and really does not have to match hormone levels at all so I feel like what else could be wrong with their info? I know when I ovulate so no worries there, its the how to get the actual sperm that's got me wondering how to go about this. I mean yeah I could just bed some guy but I don't feel that's right for a whole lot of reasons and I just don't care for men much any how in that dept but the cost of a bank seems outrageous to me.

[TurboClaudia]

You're welcome.

Just curious... you say you're pretty sure you ovulate more than once per cycle on a pretty regular basis. What are you basing this on? Are you charting temperature and cervical fluid? Do you get mittelschmerz pain? How far apart are the ovulations?

I was very curious about the ovulating more than once news when it was first publishes a few months ago, and was able to get a hold of the actual study they cited. Although I don't consider myself an expert by any means, it brought up a lot of questions for me. After reading it, I recongnized it was definitely reported by the mainstream news media in a very incomplete way.

Warm wishes on your journey to mamahood!

Claudia

[Satori]

I get that little cramping pain, usually once on each side about 5 days apart. I told the OB about it when I was prego with dd but he thought I was nuts but couldn't explain why there was about a weeks difference in size between the fetuses. (m/c her twin, dd was actually the smaller twin) I've also run OPK's to test my theory and although it was a bit costly it did show 2 surges.

[simcon]

I would definitely second "The Essential Guide"--it's super, super informative, and since it's by midwives, I thought it was much more comprehensive than "The Ultimate Guide" by Rachel Pepper, which I still would recommend too! But I have recommended "The Essential Guide" so many times, both to queer women and to single straight women.

We used a known donor, and had no extra costs (besides a small animal feeder syringe! oh, and a speculum to track my cervical changes--that was *key*--it was a totally clear indication of when I ovulated, unlike OPKs). But you are legally vulnerable until you can terminate rights--we are in the adoption process right now, and have a lot of trust in our donor, so I'm not concerned, but things do work out badly sometimes, so it's something to be aware of.