On the list of questions I never wanted to ask, this ranks pretty high. Let's be really frank here, I haven't had a whole lot experience with this topic. I had a boyfriend when I was a very young teenager, and we had sex, but that was like 15 years ago. I was also very young, so I don't really remember being super aware of anatomy and physiology, at least not in a way that is helpful to this question. That was really the last experience with male anatomy I have every had, you know, being gay and all.
If you've got ten spare minutes, go visit Mary Roach and her Ted Talk about the orgasm (if you have more time, read her book Bonk). Pay attention to the bit about how far an ejaculate goes. Now, wonder, how many friends are like that one guy able to launch his ejaculate several feet. Now our question is complicated. Is that something you ask your potential sperm donor? "Do you have a super soaker for a penis?". Do you ask this right after his sexual history, or do you open with this?
This question is important for us because we are doing a home insemination with a known donor. This person will come to our house, we'll give him some privacy, and likely get a text that we can come back with our Midwife to do the insemination. This means he will deposit his ejaculate into a bowl/cup and leave it for us to insert into a syringe that the midwife will wash and insert directly into my uterus using a catheter in a process called Intrauterine Insemination, or IUI. Because lesbian baby making is just that sexy...
So, like I have talked about before, this medicalization of conception is really hard for us. It's hard to have the ability of making a baby taken out of our hands. It hurts that we can't make a baby out of our expression of love for each other. So, we're having to recreate what baby making means. Sometimes, for us, that means focusing more on diet; creating a baby out of kale, eggs, sweet potatoes, walnuts, spinach, whole grains, cottage cheese, and every other highly nutrient dense foods. We're focusing on exercise, making a baby out of long runs. We're using essential oils to regulate my cycles; creating a baby out of massage and meditation. For us then, we're trying to eek out any measure of ceremony, making anything and everything we have control over- sacred.
In thinking about home insemination, one of the things we have control over is the receptacle to catch semen in. We also have control over music, diffusing essential oils and setting our space (making everything really comfortable). But we're already pretty set with those things, we know how to make ourselves comfortable. So, the bowl. I mean you can't just take a bowl out of the cupboard. I guess you can, but YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PUT IT BACK. Seriously, ew. So it has to be THE SPERM BOWL. We envisioned we'd have a friend throw a handmade ceramic bowl for us, and we still think we'd like to, but we decided to see how other people solved this problem.
So, we went to Google and were offered this gem (make sure your sound is on). Awful. Who ok'd that? Also, why so much?
Anyway, we really don't have any good answers. We're trying, and I guess that's all we have.
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