Although I lost the membership to the ‘Good Indian Girl’ club several years ago (and thank God for that!) I am on the path to expand my family like a Good Indian Girl. The Girl and I have been talking about having babies for a couple of years now. We feel like we’re finally ready to say goodbye to our sleep and freedom and welcome a little one into our lives.
We’ve been spending a lot of time with cute little babies off late & everytime I have to give them back to their parents I feel deep sorrow.
When we were in Canada, The Girl & I went to a baby planning course. Basically the course went over all the options we had – adoption, surrogacy, artificial insemination with a known donor, with an unknown donor, legalities of each option, costs etc etc etc. We also met the children of other Lesbians who were ‘graduates’ of the course. It was such an amazing experience, listening to the other lesbians talk about what they went through, talking about the pros and cons of the method they chose and above all to see the babies! It made us realise that it didn’t really matter what method we choose as long as we ended up with a healthy child.
The thing that we spent most time discussing was… sperm! Yes, really! We learned about the various avenues to procure sperm. In Canada, if you have a known sperm donor, it doesn’t matter how air tight the contract you sign with them, if the man changes his mind he has every right to joint custody of the child. We had a friend of ours who had offered to be the sperm donor but this scary fact made us change our mind about accepting his (very generous) offer.
As for an unknown sperm donor, we would have to pay about $500 for every attempt at artificial insemination. On average it takes about 2-5 attempts to get pregnant. Most sperm banks have a full medical history of the donor & the donor’s parents. They also have nationality, physical characteristics (height, weight, colour of eyes, hair, skin tone.), educational qualifications, current profession, hobbies etc. Sometimes they also have audio clips from the donor, essays on why they are donating sperm and photos of them as a baby.
We were ready to go ahead with an anonymous sperm donor and then the move to London happened, quite out of the blue, and now we’re in a new country, with new laws and no clue about how to go about this.
I’ve booked an appointment at a clinic and we’re all set to go there this weekend. Since, The Girl, is the older one between the two of us (also because I want to ease my parents into seeing me as a mother without the shock of showing up at their door, pregnant.) she is planning to carry the child.
We talked about using a sperm donor who looked Indian (someone from South Asia or the Middle East or South America or the Mediterranean) so that the child would look a little like the both of us. It hadn’t mattered to me what nationality the sperm donor would be but then The Girl put the idea in my head that we should try to get an Indian sperm donor so that the child would have atleast a partial Indian heritage. Now I can’t seem to get that thought out of my head. I think part of the reason is that my straight friends who have had children talk about how amazing it is to see themselves and their husbands in their baby and I feel this pang of sorrow that I will never have that. I would love to have a child with eyes shaped like mine and coloured like The Girls. But then I think of the children I love today, especially my best friends kid who shares no DNA with me or The Girl, but I love her with all my heart & I know that if we ever adopted a child, I’d love that child with all my heart too.
In the end, I just want us to have a healthy baby and a healthy pregnancy for The Girl. We’re still quite a few weeks away from even starting the process, but I promise to keep you posted.