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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 1, 2012)
by Cathy Busha & Anna deligio FAMILY In The Family Way Ohhhh Oliver welcome to the world oliver Bernard deligio-Busha! our baby was born at 1:32 am at Sunnyside Hospital and weighed 9.9 pounds! moms and baby are doing won- derfully. It was a long journey from our lives pre-pregnancy to oliver. When I was in my late 20's, my first nephew was born. Meeting his little magical self, I had the first thought that it might actually be fun to raise a child, but knew that I wasn't ready to make that big of a commitment. I shared my parenting niggling with a wise friend who told me not to have kids until I couldn't think of doing anything else because it was that com- prehensive of a life-changer. She told me the biological clock was a false deadline and that there were a many ways to be a mom if I ever got to that all-consuming place and my ovaries had shut up shop. I heeded my friend's sage wisdom and went on enjoying the role of aunt and get- ting my own self figured out. I moved to Arizona from Texas, changed careers, did graduate school for Social Work, came out, and began dating Cathy, the only person I can imagine ever wanting to co- parent with. It wasn't until a few years ago at 35 that I began to find all my thoughts drifting back to wanting to have a baby. We had just moved to Colorado from Arizona and my dad was newly diagnosed with the liver cancer that would kill him a year later. In addition to the family stress, Cathy and I weren't necessarily on the same page with wanting to parent. While we were discerning, I began doing things that honored my baby- making energy – I learned about my cycle, read lesbian parenting books, took my basal body temperature to track ovulation every morning, exer- cised, quit caffeine and drank gallons upon gallons of herbal tea uterine tonics (I still believe I have the most toned uterus around!). Shortly after that first hard year in Colorado, Cathy decided that she very much did want to be a mom and we began the work of deciding how. After weighing the different choices, we eventually chose to use an anonymous- willing-to-be-known-later sperm donor from a bank with good pricing and inclusive language. 56 Justout.com Neither of us wanted to spend too long in that process because it began to feel a little eugenic and odd. In fact, when we looked at our own fam- ily health histories, we acknowledged that we probably wouldn’t pick our own sperm. We set our non-negotiables as willing-to-be-known (so Oliver would have a chance of finding this history if he ever wants to), prior pregnancies (so we knew the sperm worked), white (because we both are) with some basic shared characteristics of Cathy (tall, fair-skinned, hazel eyes, light brown hair) and decent family medical history. We chose Intra Unterine Insemination (IUI) as our strategy. IUI is where they take the sperm concentrate (minus the fluid, slow, and dead ones) and inject it directly into your uterus via a thin catheter. This process compares to ICI, which is when you take sperm as-is and shoot it up to the cervix (some have used turkey basters for this process). By bypassing my cervix and putting them practically at the finish line, the hope was that they could shake off having been in the deep freeze and make some magic happen We did our first IUI and commenced to spend a very nerve-wracking two weeks waiting to see if it stuck. It didn't. We both cried hard that first time. From there, we went on to have five more tries with the doctor's office. Each try that resulted in my period brought us such sadness. There were a lot of tears, some fights, and lots of fears around the choices if this didn't work. We even did the county's foster-adopt train- ing during this time to try to keep the par- enting energy going, however it was going to happen. In spring of 2011, we decided to move from the doctor's office to a full-blown fertility clinic. They had me do clomid (super-ovulator - makes your ovaries fill up with eggs, increasing your chances for pregnancy - and multiples), put me on low-dose thyroid meds and switched out the progesterone supposi- tories for three shots of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Not only did that mean that Cathy (the biggest champ around) had to give me three shots of hcg in my tummy, but it meant that I flooded my body with the hormone it gives off naturally when you're pregnant, which had me feeling pregnant for two weeks. We tried once at the clinic with no success. More tears, more sadness, and more fear. At this same time, we found out that Cathy got the job she had hoped for in Oregon and we were due to move the summer of 2011. We decided to hold off on any more baby-making until Oregon because it would be easier if I September 2012
