Special Gift

As everyone might have guessed and read about before, we didn't make Nugget the natural way. It's not just the age-old, romantic story of "2 women fall in love, and that love makes a baby". We have gotten by pretty well without a man, but we needed one for this.

We went through a sperm bank to find an unknown donor. At first, it was about finding a donor who looked like me, didn't have crazy in his family and had attributes we liked. We got about 15 profiles that were 21 pages each. We sorted and prioritized, looking at hobbies, jobs, height, weight, handwriting, grammar, the interviewer's interpretation, everything.

After 2 months, priorities shifted. The rollcoaster of emotion was already getting to us. We decided we wanted a donor that was successful, thinking we'd have a better chance. There was a particular profile we liked who had been successful, but he was always "unavailable". There are a lot of great things about his profile. He's described by the interviewer as the "ideal donor". One part in particular got us (like most women, I would think). In the profile, there is a section asking, "If you could send a message to the recipient(s) of your semen, what would that message be?" Most men would read that as a message to the parents, but he read it differently. He wrote the message to the child. He started his answer, "Welcome to the world!" How cute is that? He goes on to say some wonderful things that made us melt. Too bad he was always unavailable...

...except for the month we got pregnant. He happened to be available the day we needed to order and we jumped. We gave our credit card info, got the tank in the mail and...well, the rest is history. Not the history of where most other babies come from, but its our Nugget's history.

Nickie made this and it's hanging right above the crib. It has a copy of the donor's answer to the question we loved so much. When she's old enough to ask what it is, we'll tell her. Nugget will know where she came from (well, as much as we know). She'll know she was wanted and the donor wanted her too, for us: Our Special Gift.