Many women who've had children would be at a loss to pinpoint the moment they got pregnant. A lot of people can remember only who was present and whether unreasonable amounts of wine were involved.

I, however, know the exact date and hour my daughter was conceived -- at high noon in a doctor's office in Berkeley, California. I was 42. What it lacked in romance (I've had more intimate interactions while paying for groceries) it more than made up for in results. As I write this, I'm looking at my daughter's photo tacked to my bulletin board, skinny legs and arms flying, bursting with 6-year-old giggles.

When people talk about the gayby boom -- the phenomenon of gay men and lesbians having children -- the kids seem to have just magically appeared. In the case of lesbians, one minute they're artificially inseminating (actually there's nothing artificial about it; the ingredients are all natural) and the next minute, poof, one of them's pregnant!

In reality, the odds against my partner Robin and me creating a child were daunting. We were both over 40, and we certainly didn't have all the essentials for baby-making at home. Still, there were others who had gone before us, and they'd gotten pregnant. Maybe we could too.

The choice of who would bear our then-fantasy baby was easy. I'm a bit younger than Robin, and I wanted to experience being pregnant. Next there was the issue of finding a father. We knew plenty of lesbian couples with close male friends who had fathered their children. Neither one of us had a fabulous male friend who would do that, yet we both found it painful to consciously create a child who wouldn't have a father. So, in the spring of 1994, Robin and I -- a happy, healthy lesbian couple -- went on a manhunt.

Nervous and giddy, we went to our first meeting of a Sunday brunch group in the San Francisco Bay Area fondly known as the "sperm and egg mixer." This was a group of gay men looking for lesbians to parent with, and vice versa. Here, women who normally had no interest in men physically, found themselves munching croissants and cruising the guy across the room. Hmmm. That one's cute. Is he intelligent? Reliable? Likely to afford private school?

Robin and I "dated" a pleasant, handsome guy from the group for several weeks. He wanted some connection to the child but certainly not full-time fatherhood. We got acquainted over several dinners. The three of us understood this was strange and scary, but hadn't we already gone where few had gone before just by being gay? We could do this. Or so we thought -- until Mr. Right announced, quite casually over dessert, that he was an alcoholic with one week's sobriety. He was certain, however, that his recovery from one of the world's most pernicious addictions wouldn't interfere with his becoming a brand-new dad.

We moved on. One man from the group wanted to be a half-time father with shared custody or no deal (more involvement than we had in mind); another acquaintance lived too far away to share a child. It was beginning to dawn on us that parenting was complicated enough for a couple without making it into a threesome -- or a foursome, if the guy had a partner.

The prospects were getting narrower, and I wasn't getting any younger. I sought out an ob/gyn. On my first visit I told her I wanted to get pregnant and I wanted her to be in on this venture right from the beginning.

"Great," the doctor said. "I like it when people come to me early on."

"I'm 41," I said. "It's not that early."

"Oh," she said.

On my next visit, she told me that a woman my age had about a 16 percent chance of getting pregnant the old-fashioned way. Using frozen sperm, my chances were halved, to about 8 percent. Unfortunately, we'd run out of male candidates. Despite the odds, it was time to form a lasting bond with our friendly neighborhood sperm bank.

The Sperm Bank of California opened for business in 1982 and was the first in the nation to offer sperm from "identity release" donors, men willing to be known to their offspring at the child's request after he or she turned 18. This seemed manageable and at least something to offer our potential child -- that she might meet her biological father one day if she wanted to.

At the time we became clients, the bank was housed in Oakland in a former mortuary, an irony that escaped no one. I began the process by charting my menstrual cycle, taking my basal temperature every morning to get a feel for when the moment was right. Then we started poring over the dossiers of anonymous donors.

Meanwhile, my doctor ordered tests to see if I still had the proper mix of hormones to get and stay pregnant. I did. She also ordered an HSG (hysterosalpingogram) test, in which doctors look for blockages in the fallopian tubes or uterus that would deter the sperm and eggs from meeting.

I was a daily newspaper reporter at the time, and on the day of the HSG test, I began my workday by covering a gruesome chemical plant explosion and fire east of San Francisco that had killed one man and badly burned another. That afternoon, I made a few calls, typed up my notes, and handed the story off to another reporter, who was dispatched to the hospital to cover the press conference on the surviving man's condition. The same hospital where I was to get the HSG test.

While my colleague and the rest of the press corps were getting briefed on the accident, I was just down the hall in a compromising position, getting my fallopian tubes flooded with dye. It wasn't the first time my job as a reporter had infringed on my private life, but this was getting a wee bit close.

After that, Robin and I moved right along, comparing sperm motility rates like pros. We received summary sheets of the men's characteristics, including height, weight, hair and eye color, ethnic background, and whether they were identity-release donors. After culling those, you could ask for more detailed folders that included the man's family health history as far back as his grandparents and his answers to questions about his occupation and interests.

It was a nerve-wracking choice. From their paperwork, we liked a lot of these guys. "Likes to make people laugh," Robin's notes say about a law clerk whose father died young of a heart attack. A graduate student was described by the sperm bank's director as a "wonderful guy" who wrote that he was a sperm donor because he was thrilled by the thought of helping a family. Another donor was well traveled and sounded intelligent and kind, but, alas, he had colon cancer in his family and so do I.

About this time, I went home to suburban Philadelphia for a visit, bringing my sheaf of documents on the possible donors. Sitting in my mother's living room with my younger brother and sister-in-law, who already had two sons, we discussed the possibilities self-consciously but with the detachment of people choosing a good attorney.

"I kind of like the mechanic," Mom said. "He sounds cute." (Okay, this was weird, but how many grandmothers can special-order their grandchildren's genes, anyway?) My father was a television repairman and a very intelligent man. Nonetheless, the snob in me wasn't sure. I was leaning toward the scientist.

At last, we settled on a man in his mid-20s -- neither mechanic nor scientist -- with brown hair and brown eyes whose coloring sounded a bit like Robin's. And he was willing to be known to his child. The sperm bank's director, eager to answer any questions that didn't reveal a donor's identity, described him as intelligent and handsome. I'd done all the charting I could and had already gone through countless ovulation kits at about $72 per (they've since decreased in cost). I thought I had a pretty good idea of how to calculate when my egg and Mr. Anonymous's sperm might conjoin.

In August of 1994, I picked up the equipment for the first time: two inch-high vials containing a yellowish frozen liquid (at $126 a vial, closer to $300 these days) and two syringes that were kind of like plungers for squirting them in. Robin and I let the sperm defrost as instructed and had a little fertility ceremony. Two weeks later, it was clear it hadn't worked.

In this same manner we tried four more times. For the times I would ovulate over the weekend, when the sperm bank was closed, we rented a tank on the Friday before. The metal tank, in which the sperm vials were stored in dry ice, looked something like an old-fashioned milk container you'd find on a farm. It was hard to imagine lugging it out of your car without someone saying, "Hey, whatcha got there?" One Friday I put the tank in the front passenger seat of my car, covered it with a blanket and went back to work for the afternoon.

That evening, one of my fellow reporters asked me for a ride home. He's a friend, but we weren't exactly spreading the word that right now -- today, in fact -- we were trying to get me pregnant. I told my colleague he'd have to sit in the back seat. He never asked why.

Despite our best efforts, doing this on our own wasn't working. Various recommended techniques -- including lying down afterwards, getting as close to upside down as possible so gravity would help the swimmers along, and keeping a sense of humor -- failed to deliver. We began to construct a little shrine of empty sperm vials.

I tried to be realistic about my chances. When I talked about our attempts I'd toss in lots of qualifiers like "if I'm lucky enough to get pregnant," hoping I wouldn't jinx myself by presuming it was really going to happen. In truth, though, every time I got my period it felt as though there had been a little death.

In March of 1995, we decided we'd up the ante and go for an intrauterine insemination. This is a procedure done in a doctor's office in which a thin tube containing the sperm is inserted through the cervix high into the uterus. This puts the sperm nearer to the fallopian tubes and increases the chance that one lucky one will connect with an egg.

On the morning of the IUI, Robin and I picked up my usual two vials, put them in a small cooler packed with ice, and took them to an office upstairs from my doctor's. There, they took the sperm to be "washed," that is, separated it from other components of the semen and concentrated. The woman behind the counter told us to come back in an hour.

When we returned, she handed a sealed tube to Robin. Instead of being milky yellow, the liquid in the tube was now transparent and a lovely shade of fuchsia. "Now," the woman said, "you should keep it warm until you give it to the doctor." Robin quickly tucked the precious vial in her brassiere and we headed downstairs.

My doctor wasn't available that afternoon, so I was to see someone we hadn't met. We were led into an examining room, where I changed into a gown and waited. I should mention that this medical practice had fresh sperm available to women, supplied by donors who apparently would sneak in a back door at a pre-arranged time. But we had opted not to use it because the sperm couldn't be quarantined for HIV, information on the donor was scant, and there would be no chance of the child ever meeting him.

The doctor swept into the room without looking directly at Robin or me. A nurse had set up the equipment and asked Robin for the vial. The doctor spoke only to the nurse, except for once, when he barked in the general direction of my uterus, "When are you going to quit fooling around with frozen sperm?" The procedure was over very quickly. I felt a bit of cramping, nothing more. He muttered something neither one of us understood and left the room. I lay there for a while, not knowing what to do. After a few minutes, we decided the procedure was over, and we went home.

That's how I got pregnant.

I know exactly how fortunate I am. I'm enormously grateful to my daughter's donor, whom we may never get to thank personally. We went through far less than many people, gay or straight, who try and try -- and maybe they get pregnant and maybe they don't.

Seven-years-old now, our daughter still wants one of us to stay in her room while she falls asleep. The other night it was my turn to put her to bed, and I was tired and grumpy and wished she'd just nod out so that I could have my 15 minutes of personal space, for God's sake. But when she was finally asleep, instead of bolting for freedom, I lingered beside her, holding her small hand, mystified, even though I remember every detail, about how she got here.

-- Elaine Herscher is a senior editor at Consumer Health Interactive and a former reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle.

Last updated May 29, 2009
Copyright © 2002 Consumer Health Interactive

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