"Our Guy"

We found our donor!

Last week I was sick as hell. This is the second time in two months that J has brought home a cold, been sick for 2-3 days, then cheerfully moved on with his life while I am sucked into a two-week-long tailspin that (at least last time) ended in a round of antibiotics. I swear, next time that man gets the sniffles he’s sleeping in the car.

And all this while we were mid-donor-search. I had ordered “personal profiles” on five more guys, and had flagged a couple of them for J to look at and order medical records. I told him earlier in the week that I really needed him to go through the medicals—he’s in a lull right now and I just don’t have the time. But I was still pretty sure that I was going to have to go through them at some point. After all, it took some time for me to get him to even look at the donor lists.

So I’m sitting on the couch, drinking my “gypsy cold care” tea and watching the Bachelorette (how can Jilly not see that Wes is such a slimeball?), when J walks in and pauses my program.

“I’m done,” he announces.

“Done?” I repeat, wondering what the hell he’s talking about. I take a stab in the dark, “You mean you found our guy?”

“Found him,” he confirms smugly. “Come on, take a look. I bought his baby picture.”

And on my computer screen is this blonde, bland-ish, adorable, blue-eyed toddler staring out at me. “Wow,” I said. “Is this one of the new guys I flagged for you?”

“Yup. The doctor. His medicals are clean. And check out is profile.” And then he starts running down the highlights: kick-ass SATs, MCATs, grades. Practicing physician. All-star athletics for both high school and college.

“And look at his facial features.” J was practically bouncing on his toes. “The only one that doesn’t match me is that he doesn’t have freckles.” (I still get a little misty-eyed at this—it wasn’t until we were deep into profiles that I realized J really wanted to find someone with features similar to his.)

“Is this the guy with two kids?” I ask.

“Uh-huh,” J responded smugly. “He’s perfect.”

Then we looked to see if he was available. No ICI (which is what our RE recommended), but under IUI it said “call.” Earlier in the week J had called the cryobank to see what that meant, and had been told they list “call” (rather than ordering online) when there were fewer than 20 samples left of that donor.

We looked at each other for a moment, then both started talking at the same time:

“I’m going to e-mail [our RE] and see if IUI is okay,” I said.

“I’m going to call the cryobank,” he said.

So I sent my e-mail and then paced around impatiently while he talked to the cryobank.

“Mmm-hmm. Uh-huh. Okay. Can you do that for us?,” he said, looking across the hall at me as I sat on the bed watching him. Finally, after what seemed like a really long time, he put down the phone.

“Our guy’s pretty popular,” he said, “there was only one sample left.”

Pause.

“And they’re holding it for us.”

Yesterday J bought the sample. It’s ours. This little piece of our perfect guy is ours.

I’m so happy about how this turned out. Every time I think about it I smile. I thought this was going to be hard. I thought we would get our short list and agonize over what we found. I had envisioned a pro/con list, or a chart where we compared medicals with personality or facial features with physical abilities. I thought I would have to put hours into reviewing medical files.

And I thought that I would have to push J to make the decision.

I really wanted this to be J’s choice—I wanted him to feel like he still was providing the sperm (albeit from a vendor), that it was his contribution to our child. I should have known he’d be up to the task once he put his mind to it. He’s always been a good shopper—he just goes in and gets it done, just like that. (Which is why we don’t shop together. I drive him crazy looking at everything 10 times and he makes me feel rushed so I make bad decisions.)

And the fact that we got the last sample just makes it all that much sweeter. After all, if everyone else wants a piece of this guy we must be onto something, right?

So now I’m thinking the cryobank needs to add a new column to the search feature: the ability to sort donors by “most popular.” After all, if it works for Amazon and Zappos and Art.com, why not for sperm donors?