Two Lesbians Make a Baby

According to a Pew survey, 33% of adults use fertility treatments or know someone who has.

👩‍🔬 Want to know what it’s like to have a baby as a lesbian couple, including the money stuff? Here’s mine my wife Claire’s journey so far

🧪 First, you need to pick out a donor. Since Claire is carrying, I wanted an 🇮🇹 Italian donor so baby would be part 🤌 like me

Our other must-haves: healthy, smart (SAT scores), reasonably attractive (be honest, this would be on your list too). We picked a donor from California Cryobank LLC, who was described as having “prominent eyebrows,” a trait baby will share with its moms

Cost: 4 vials is $6,000. You use 1 vial per try. An additional $125 for a 3mo subscription that unlocked features like adult photos (you only get baby pics otherwise). Claire also wanted to pay an extra $25 for a voice recording. Ecomm is strong in the sperm economy.

🧫 You’ll likely work with a fertility clinic. Our OB referred us to Dr. Alin (Lina) Akopians at Southern California Reproductive Center.

Here’s the process, which is the same for anyone doing a fertility treatment:

1️⃣ Start using an ovulation test 10–14 days after the 1st day of your period
2️⃣ This test will show a hormone surge that indicates you’ll ovulate the next day
3️⃣ You take a trigger shot ($57), which guarantees your 1 🥚egg will drop
4️⃣ Next AM, head to the office. The clinic defrosts and “rinses” the sperm (30–45mins). This washes out the 🧜‍♂️ that aren’t strong swimmers. Our sample started at 58M 🧜‍♂️ w/ 65% motility; after we had 22M with 85% motility. You need a min of 10M, and I know this bc at every point in the process, Claire wanted to know if our 🧜‍♂️ were overachievers 🙃
5️⃣ We are trying Intrauterine insemination (IUI)) before IVF, aka the “turkey baister” method as it’s referred to in lesbo world (note: I could have done this at home myself, but … nope!). The dr uses a catheter to drop the 🧜‍♂️ off in the uterus to go do their thing. This takes about 3 mins, you lay down for about 10–15mins to let everything settle, and that’s it!
6️⃣ Not required, but you should probably do something like have a massive breakfast at a diner after to celebrate 🥯🧇☕️☀️

What happens next is like a very abbreviated season of the Bachelor: the 22M 🧜‍♂️ and the 1 🥚 hang out for a few days. If w/in 4–5 days, someone feels a “connection” and the egg is fertilized, it will then try to attach itself to the uterine wall. If all of these things work, voila, baby! You find out in ~12–14 days if you’re pregnant.

Cost: ~$3500 (🧜‍♂️ inclusive) per try, and fun news, in California insurance doesn’t cover any type of fertility treatments, so just an ultrasound costs $1200 on top of that 🙃

We’ll be updating everyone on our journey as we go through it, hopefully demistyfing some of this wild black hole of a process.

Here’s where else you can follow along:

My LinkedIn
My IG
My Twitter
My Medium blog

Claire’s IG
Claire’s LinkedIn