This is the story of mine (Leah) and my partners (Amber) journey of becoming parents.
My story all begins in 2007. Amber and I had been talking for a while about having a baby but didn’t really know how to go about it. Where would we get the sperm from? Who would want to give it to us? HOW would we even put everything where it needed to go? We had so many questions and didn’t even know where to start.
I’m not sure exactly of the details but Amber got talking to one of her friends 'S' and she knew a lesbian couple who had just had a baby. So 'S' talking to the girls 'J'and 'E' about if they knew anyone who would be interested in becoming a sperm donor and if they would be able to talk to us about how to go about everything.
Fast forward a little bit and The girls had found Donor 'P' who was also related to 'J' We went over to The girls' house one day while we were down in Perth visiting family from up north (Paraburdoo) They gave us heaps of information about how we could to do the whole insemination process at home. They explained things we would need and how to track Amber’s ovulation. We also learned that we could in fact now put both of our names on the birth certificate, That was something that was very important to me. I know this can be done if you go through a clinic or by doing it yourselves at home but I do have a feeling it’s harder if you do it at home as I think you need to somehow prove you were part of the process.
So we got in contact with 'P' by talking to him on MSN (we were back up north by now) and we talked about if he was interested, how we would go about getting him to come to Paraburdoo when we were all ready. We had decided that we would be happy to have him as our donor and he was happy to give us the donation. We had decided that if we were to become succesful he would be called ‘Uncle P’ and once the child was ready and old enough we would explain that he was actually their biological father.
In February 2008 my sister came up to Paraburdoo with my niece. At this point we had not told anybody in our families what we were up to (except Ambers sister who was living up north also and our other sister-in-law) It was so difficult not to tell my sister that the day after her going back to Perth that we were having 'P' flying up. We had a great time and on my birthday Feb 27th she flew back home.
So on Feb 28th 'P' arrived in good old Paraburdoo. We had worked out the dates that Amber was most likely to be ovulating and thought to give us the best chances we would have one attempt each day over 3 days. So in the middle of the day when both Amber and I were home from work 'P' put his ‘deposit’ in the bathroom and head out for a walk for a little while.
We had to tell our sister-in-law about what we were up to so she could get us medical supplies from work. We had specimen cups, catheters, gloves and syringes.
Without getting into too much detail and freaking everyone out, we used the medical supplies to put the sperm where it needed to be. Some of our friends have heard the story and like to have a little laugh. It wasn’t so much romantic as it was messy, me swearing and laughing! We did the procedure for the 3 days in a row. We felt that having 3 attempts would give us a better chance but really didn’t know if it would all work the first time, or even how many times it would take. 'P' flew back down to Perth and we told him we would let him know.
A couple of weeks later I heard Amber get up and go to the toilet. I could hear some noises. I assumed she had her period and dozed back off. A few minutes later Amber came into the room and jumped on the bed excitedly telling me she was pregnant.
We couldn’t believe that we were going to have a baby! And how lucky we were to get pregnant first attempt.