Sunday 4 August 2013

Introducing the world's first Gu Chocolate Pot Baby

Well, the insemination process is complete.

And if I get pregnant, I will be writing to the Daily Mail and proclaiming it a "miracle baby."

I'm sure the Daily Mail has lots to say about people importing sperm from abroad off the internet and using it to self-impregnate.  Hell, they could even illustrate their disgust with a picture of me showing off my "bikini body" on holiday in their sidebar of shame if they wanted to.

Not that I'm going on holiday this year as cannot afford it after buying sperm off internet.

Anyway, the insemination was a bit of a disaster.

I say "a bit" because it was actually 50% a disaster.  I had ordered two straws of semen (I didn't see why you couldn't just order one, but I figured that as I was paying so much for the shipping anyway I may as well go the whole hog) and miraculously managed to get them both out of the nitrogen tank without causing injury to myself or, more importantly, the sperms.  Not that I could really be one hundred per cent sure of the latter as obviously they are microscopic.  And reader, it was EXACTLY how it looks on TV, you know when they get the semen out of the tank in the lab with a big ladle, and all the nitrogen-steam escapes.  AMAZE.  I felt like I was in a laboratory when in fact was in own bedroom.

Anyway, I then thawed all the little sperms out of their slumber and prepared the syringe.  Except that I didn't have a test tube handy (who has a TEST TUBE in their house?) to pour the sperm into, and the entire contents of the first straw ended up on the floor.  Disaster.

Fortunately, I managed to rescue the second straw by using an old "Gu" chocolate pot in lieu of a test tube, to empty the sperm into.  Forget "test tube babies," the "Gu Chocolate Pot Baby" will be a world first.  Maybe I could even get Gu to sponsor the baby's upbringing.  This is assuming that there will be a baby, however, and frankly that is looking unlikely since the content of one straw added up to no less than 0.5mls of semen.

I know they say it only takes one but that is ridiculous.  I have basically just done the turkey baster equivalent of have sex once with a man with a ludicrously low sperm count who hasn't even properly ejaculated.  No amount of lying on the bed with my lower body propped up on a cushion is going to rectify that.

Anyway, now all there is to do is send the nitrogen tank back to Denmark, forget about the whole sorry exercise and pray that all my egg sharing tests are clear so I can have IVF.  I imagine that will be a whole lot less stressful than this exercise has been.  I mean, IVF isn't stressful at all, right?

Friday 2 August 2013

Existential Crisis

OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD.  Having a proper crisis over the whole situation.

That yellow nitrogen tank is eyeballing me from the hallway and I am absolutely terrified.

What if it works?
What if the baby hates me?
What if it buggers off to Denmark to look for its father?
What if its father is awful?
What if he's a mass murderer or other class of reprobate?
What if he's-as the youngsters would put it-"butters"?
What if he doesn't know the difference between "your" and you're" and scatters apostrophes around inappropriately (or whatever equivalent Danish grammatical sin)?
What if I can't afford a baby?
What if I have to move back in with my mother?
What if I end up having to get a payday loan from Wonga and shop at BrightHouse?
What if I have to relinquish all hope of marriage and/or child with person who actually loves me?
What if I'm a terrible mother?
What if the child grows up to be a complete bounder?
What if I never fit back into my American Apparel disco pants?
What if I am hunted down and killed by Daily Mail readers?

OK, so some of those questions more worthy of consideration than others but AAAAAARRRGGGH!

Thursday 1 August 2013

Sperm Shipment Arrived: Not at all Worthy of Comment. Just a regular day for everyone.

This just arrived at my door.


It was not at all embarrassing.  NOT AT ALL.

For a start, the two concierges downstairs didn't notice anything remotely amiss.  They were not engaging in any kind of conversation with the courier from UPS about "ooh look at this, ooh it needs to be kept cold apparently!" which I could not overhear down the intercom.  Then the courier did not even bat an eyelid whilst handing the package to me, let alone chortle heartily "HERE'S YOUR BODY PARTS!"

Then, while I signed the delivery note, he did not ask any questions at all which might have suggested that this particular delivery was in any way a little bit out of the ordinary and perhaps not your average book or DVD from Amazon, such as; "IS IT ACTUALLY HUMAN THEN?  WHAT IS IT?"

Thanks, Danish sperm bank, for adding that lovely sticker with the words "TISSUES AND CELLS" and that tantalising little footnote about the case containing "human tissue."

I had images of the police turning up on my doorstep, demanding to know why I was importing human body parts and was I in fact a cannibal/mass murderer/both, so in order to avoid this, I ended up blurting out what it was.

"I don't want to say!" I protested, before realising that this made the whole enterprise sound even more dodgy.  "OK it's sperm!"  then added "from a sperm bank" just to clarify in case he thought I had got it through some dodgy means rather than through a recognised commercial enterprise that presumably conforms to international laws.  "For insemination" I then added, in case he wondered what I could possibly be doing with a load of human sperm and did I in fact have a laboratory set up in my flat, where I was running my own secret government cloning laboratory, manufacturing cloned soldiers for some future war when I am going to be a Blofeld-style Bond villain with ambitions to be Queen of the World.

"Oh right," said the courier with interest.  "So do guys come round and do that here then?"

Horrible images flashed through my mind of what that might entail.  Although to be fair, surely this was no worse than inviting round Absolute Bastard to do the deed au natrel, so to speak.

"Er, something like that."

Something which is never going to be done again.  It either works, or it's the IVF.  I am SO not going through this again.