Switching it up this week! I want to hear from YOU!

Hi all!  

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer heat we are having on the East Coast.  This week, I’ve decided to switch things up a bit.  Instead of me writing an entry, I am going to flip the switch and put the creative writing out there to you all!  I’d like to hear from my readers and have you share some of your experiences with me!  It can be anything from TTC to actually giving birth and all things in between.  You know me, nothing is off limits (within reason—don’t get too gory on me!)  You can keep your story anonymous or share your identity if you wish.  I will pick my favorite story and will post it on the blog next week!  I also welcome people to share with me any ideas for future blog posts they would like to see!  If you have questions, feedback, or anything at all, please let me know!  You can send your entries, questions, and feedback to my email, stephanie@thesemenette.com.   I can’t wait to hear from you and thanks again for being a reader and supporter!

Could it be?!

This is our actual positive pregnancy stick.

I’ll never forget the morning when my wife told me she was pregnant.  It was what I thought would be a typical day.  My wife was out of bed before me getting ready for work and I was still sound asleep.  I usually hear her getting ready but for some reason on this morning, I was passed out.  This was only until I heard our bathroom door open and my wife said, “Steph, look!”  In a daze of being abruptly woken up, I slowly opened my eyes to see a white stick with purple cap being handed to me.  As I continued to try and focus on what’s being handed to me, I see the word “pregnant”.  I paused, looked at her, and in disbelief, I rubbed my eyes thinking I was not seeing things correctly or this was some sort of dream.  I looked again, closer this time, and it still said “pregnant”.  Holy shit.  It worked.  Could it be?!   After many months of trying to regulate her hormones, picking up sperm from our baby daddy, inseminating in the most bizarre of places, and then finally being able to use the Semenette® to try and get pregnant, and then, it freaking worked?!  I was in total dismay and shock.  She burst out, “We are pregnant!!”  It was an overwhelming feeling of emotions that flooded me.  It was happiness, relief, and freaking the fuck out.  We hugged for a brief moment and then the wheels started turning.  What do we do??  Do we call our moms?  Do we call the doctor?  So many thoughts and things all happening all at once and I’m still in my damn pajamas.  I was NOT prepared for this but god damn, I am excited!

  

We both took a breath and decided we should call our moms first since they had to hear about every try that wasn’t successful thus far.  It was about time we were able to give the new grandmas to be the good news.  We called my wife’s mom first since her mom had basically been asking us for grandkids since the day we got married.  It was very early in the morning so we knew she would be suspicious of our call but it was so worth it.  We had her on speaker phone and when she answered she was nervous and wondering why we were calling so early and my wife said we had something to tell her and that was all it took.  She knew.  She said, “OMG you’re pregnant?!”  We all shared an overjoyed moment together.  We called my mom next who was also eager to have her first grandchild.  My mom is very intuitive and since I work with her on a daily basis, she knows something is weird when I call her that early in the morning.  And as I guessed, we called her and said we had something to tell her and she said, “I knew it!  I knew it was going to work!”  It was the best 10 minutes in my life in a long time and on this long journey.  After sharing the news with our parents and siblings, we had to get our shit together because we both still had to go to work that day!  I literally could not contain my excitement and just wanted to hug and hold on to my wife as tight as possible.  We were really going to have a baby! 

In this day and age, anytime there is big news we all typically take to our social media, mainly Facebook, to share news like this with everyone.  As tempting as it was (and boy was it tempting as hell), we obviously did not want to share the news publicly until we knew the pregnancy was confirmed by our doctor and of course, there was the ever dreaded 3 month waiting period of time that you have to wait until it’s statistically “safe” to tell everyone your with child.  It’s as if they don’t make you wait long enough with this whole process, then you finally have success and you have to wait more.  This doesn’t even include all of the different waiting you will do throughout the pregnancy.  Shoot, you have to wait close to 10 months to meet the baby let alone everything before that!  We made a pact despite how hard it would be not to tell everyone, we would wait.  We certainly didn’t want to jinx anything.  The next challenge for us would be figuring out how to explain why my wife wouldn’t be drinking when we were out with our friends (my wife is irish and loves her red wine so it would look VERY weird if she didn’t have a drink for no explainable reason).  We would encounter this several times over the next 3 months and it was VERY difficult not spilling the beans to some of our close friends, some of which we had to tell because they were so suspicious and wouldn’t let it go.  After we got confirmation from the blood test, we knew this was really happening and it was time to start navigating through the first trimester!  Here we come tiredness and weird smell aversions….

Our Last Ditch Effort

I wanted to start off by saying how much I appreciate all of the support for my blog and for my product, The Semenette®.  I really appreciate everyone’s feedback, suggestions, and support. 

Back to our journey…

When I developed the idea for The Semenette®, I was able to execute a prototype a lot faster than I ever expected.  In midst of working on a prototype, the journey to conceive did not stop; in fact, being able to actually test prototypes with my wife was the best product research anyone could ask for.  However, since my wife and I had been unsuccessful getting pregnant at this point, we decided it was time to talk to a doctor to see what our options really were.  It was NOT what we wanted to do, but we still felt it was the right move to at least talk to a doctor and then go from there.  We knew we weren’t going to be forced into anything, so that was the reassuring factor.  We met with one doctor first and did not like him at all.  We explained our situation and asked about coverage for IUI’s and he said insurance companies require same sex couples to do 6 IUI’s not covered by insurance and then they would begin to cover it.  The overall experience with the first doctor was not a pleasant one so we decided to try a doctor at Beth Israel Hospital.  I knew that facility had a good reputation for ART and thought it would be a good place for us to start.  When we met with the doctor, we explained our situation and how we were using our known donor.  He was extremely kind and open to our situation unlike the first doctor.  He began to explain that if my wife and our donor had come into his office and simply told him that they had been trying to conceive for almost a year and had not been successful, that he could apply to the insurance company for them to cover IUI’s for us immediately.  In the state of Massachusetts, if a heterosexual couple has been trying to conceive for a year unsuccessfully, they are entitled to some insurance coverage unlike same sex couples who have to do 6 IUI’s with no insurance coverage.  Yet another of the injustices of being a gay person in our country!  Don’t get me started on that!  Anyways, we decided to take his advice and he said he would pretend we never came into his office.  We then had our donor and my wife go back and make a long story short, we got full coverage for 3 IUI’s.  Here was the tricky part, we were still really adamant about trying to make this happen at home but having those 3 IUI’s in our back pocket was a HUGE sigh of relief and comfort. 

The doctor also suggested that they do a hysterosalpingogram (HSG) which basically means they shoot dye into my wife’s fallopian tubes to make sure there were no blockages or anything prohibiting us from getting pregnant.  He said this would be the last test needed to make sure there was no medical reason we were not having success at home.  We were both in agreement that was a good next step and my wife had the procedure that week.  As we awaited the results, Kiersten was also eggulating.  It was that time to do our monthly inseminations.  We mutually decided this would be our last ditch effort of home inseminations.  We had both somewhat reached our breaking point of desperately wanting to conceive and decided if it didn’t happen this month, we would move to IUI’s with the doctor. 

The Semenette is here!

Coincidentally, I had my 2^nd prototype of The Semenette® in my hands and we of course were eager to try it!  With The Semenette® in hand, we did 3 inseminations that month.  We decided if we were going to stop here, we might as well go all out and down in a blaze of sperm glory!  We successfully did 2 inseminations before getting a call from the doctor telling us that my wife’s HSG came back normal and it was now our decision to either continue at home or proceed with the IUI’s.  We explained we were doing our last efforts at home and would be in touch next month.  We did one last insemination that night and felt content with our efforts.  Might I add that our experience with The Semenette® was fantastic!  It exceeded my expectations and I knew I needed to share this with the world.  Anyways, our journey of trying to conceive at home was now all in the hands of the baby making gods!  I’m going to make you wait until the next week to find out what happens.  Until then…. 

If you are in the Boston area, please come check out my booth at Boston Pride.  And, more importantly, HAPPY PRIDE!!! 

Finally, a Better Option

It’s hard to fathom how many same sex couples actually go through all of the trials and tribulations that I talk about here and then some, just in the hopes of starting a family.  I don’t want this blog post to be salesy in anyway, but I do feel it’s important to share with you a little about my background and how I got to where I am today, personally and professionally.

YAY GAY!

I am a 33 year old lesbian woman that “came out” when I was 21 years old.  I had a later start in my career as a lesbian.  When I graduated college, the only experience I had with a girl was with a best friend of mine.  Imagine my shock when I realized I actually enjoyed being with girls more than boys.  My “coming out” is another story in itself but I’ll save that for another time.  Once I was able to admit to myself that I was in fact a lesbian, I knew my life would be quite different from what I had originally thought.  There wasn’t going to be the traditional wedding or family like I had intended…or would there be?   When I came out, it was already over 10 years ago.  It’s amazing to me to look back and see how much things have changed (for the better) since then.  Gay marriage was not recognized when I came out, you couldn’t comfortably walk down the street holding hands with your partner, and forget options for having kids…those were still in the ice ages.   But things have definitely come a longggggg way since then.  There are currently 19 states that allow and recognize gay marriage.  Hell, there was the first transgender woman on the cover of Time Magazine this past month!  We are making progress!  

HECK YES

 Over those 10 years, I spent my entire professional career working for my family business, which specializes in women’s reproductive health.  The family business, Sepal Reproductive International, distributes Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART)/devices and tests to doctors and patients all over the world.  AKA, we help couples make babies in a clinical sense.  I take pride in the fact that I have spent countless hours on the phone with women and couples, guiding them, giving friendly advice, or even just providing a listening ear to the emotionally taxing experience of trying to conceive.  I was recently asked in a radio interview if I take my work home with me or if I can leave it all behind?  This was a very simple question for me.  When I talk to a patient on the phone, it is impossible for me not to become invested in them and in their successes and failures.  Their success is my success, and I am constantly making myself available after work hours and thinking about these people all the time, hoping and wishing they have success in their journey of trying to conceive.  Now let me bring this all full circle for you…

As I mentioned, I came out when I was 21 years old.  At that time, I was not really thinking seriously about having a family of my own or how I would have a family when that time actually came.  Well, as you have read, the time did in fact come for me and my wife and you have seen how difficult and horrible the options we had to try and conceive at home were.  Being in the industry of helping couples get pregnant and also being a lesbian woman, I clearly had realized how few options there were for same sex couples to try and get pregnant at home and not have it be the most clinical and medicinal experience ever.  I have always had the desire to create something better for same sex couples and then one day, after another insemination of my wife with a damn needless syringe, I decided to take action.  I was sick and tired of everything my wife and I were going through and not to mention, my only involvement was squirting a stupid syringe into her vagina…NOT romantic or sexy at all.  I didn’t want to have to tell my kid someday that mommy and mama made him or her with a syringe.  It just didn’t seem right.  And the wheels began turning…

 

I have been told a dozen times how many people had the idea to make a dildo that would allow same sex couples to have sex and allow them to try and get pregnant so when I started researching it and saw that no one had actually ever created it, I was shocked and stunned.  I didn’t invent the most earth shattering thing like a Chia Pet or the Sham Wow (insert laughter), however, I did decide that it was time for someone to actually make this inseminating dildo a reality.  So I did, and the birth of The Semenette® happened. 

My pride and joy :)

The Semenette® was invented and designed to be a novelty sex toy that would allow couples to have intercourse and also mimic an ejaculation, therefore allowing them to use this to try and get pregnant at home in a romantic, private, fun and affordable way.  It was everything and more that I had wanted for my wife and I all along.  I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be able to make this idea a reality and here I am today, a year and a half later with my new business, my product The Semenette®, and most importantly, my greatest success story to date, my daughter.

I continue to work for the family business while I also run my new venture and promote my product, The Semenette®.  I have an even greater appreciation and passion for what I do.  I used to be able to say that I provided women and couples with advice and the medical tools to help them get pregnant but the doctors were always the ones that made it happen and now, I am beyond proud to say that I am providing something that women and couples can use in the privacy of their own home to try and conceive.  What makes it even better is seeing the many success stories along with my own.  Being able to give people something that helps their dream of having a family come true is the most rewarding thing in the world.  

I recently did a radio interview that I mentioned earlier in this entry and I welcome you to check it out.  It’s my favorite interview thus far and will give you more insight into my life and my story about The Semenette®.  You can listen to it here, http://spikefishradio.com/the-semenette/.  You can also check out my website, www.thesemenette.com.  It is my ultimate goal and hope that women and couples will be able to use The Semenette® not only to try and conceive but to have a little fun in the process as well.  Lord knows we all could something better than a damn turkey baster!    

Headlamps and Headstands

If only this was my actual hand...

I’ve talked many times thus far about how “unsexy” the home insemination process had been for my wife and I.  Well, I’m about to delve into the most unsexy part of our journey in our quest to conceive.  As if the turkey baster or syringe wasn’t unsexy enough, my wife and I were learning more and more with each insemination we performed and realizing things we could do differently and things that were missing and needed as well.  One of the major problems I would run into as the “inseminator” was not having enough hands for everything.  My wife would be laying back, legs open and ready to receive, and I would be there hovering over her, trying to prepare the syringe, speculum, sperm, lube, etc…  They also say it’s a good idea to try and use a flashlight so you can actually see what you are doing.  Essentially, I was supposed to be able to do all of the above while also inserting my fingers to find the opening of the cervix and then being able to do the insemination.  Legit, I needed 4 sets of hands in order to achieve all of this and that clearly wasn't an option.  So, we started thinking about which things we could make “hands free”.  You ready for this one?  Well, I wasn't.  We were out shopping one day and came across these headlamps.  They were very industrial looking, probably since we were at home depot (homo depot as I like to call it).  There was a 3 pack special on these headlamps and we thought it would be a good purchase to have at the house in case the power ever went out or we needed to go in the basement.  When we purchased these, we NEVER intended them to be used for what I'm about to use them for.  One afternoon at the house, after several unsuccessful inseminations and me wishing I had 15 hands, I saw the head lamps in a drawer.  I jokingly put one on and said to my wife “babe, look how sexy this is!”  We both chuckled and she said, “you should wear that when you inseminate me!”  At first, we both laughed again, but then I started thinking to myself how that wasn't actually a bad idea. 

SO NOT SEXY

Fast forward to our next insemination and we were packing our “goody bag” and I said, “I’m going to bring the head lamp, just in case”, not really thinking I would actually stoop so low as to wear it.  Well, desperate times call for desperate measures.  As I once again, fumbled around, needing way more hands than I had, I proceeded to put that hideously ugly head lamp around my head and turned it on.  It was like Christmas morning.  I didn't even care how ridiculous I looked and how my wife was laughing at me.  I felt like I had a new lease on life and a new set of hands to help!  Not to mention, it really did help having the light and being able to see better as to what I was doing.  As I look back and think about this, I often wonder how my wife can still actually find me sexy.  I mean, the thought of having to wear a headlamp while inseminating your wife truly is as awful as it sounds. 

This doesn't even do it justice

When I had those moments of wondering how my wife could still find me sexy, I started thinking how she probably felt the same way.  Although, I find her sexy no matter what, all day, every day, I can imagine she doubts that sitting there spread eagle while I accost her vagina looking for your cervix isn’t the sexiest thing in the world.  And then there were the headstands.  Yes, instead of propping her butt up onto a pillow (which we also did after each insemination), my wife was determined to take it to the next level and make those spermies swim to where they needed to go.  So after I inseminated her, she would have me put a pillow down on the ground, she would fly up off the bed and plop onto her head into a head stand against the nearest wall.  Sounds funny, right?  Looking back, I can certainly see the humor, but at the time, it was miz for shiz.  Having to watch my wife strain her neck and all the blood rushing to her head just so the damn sperm would swim to where it needed to go, it wasn’t a laughing matter. This wasn't pretty like a nice relaxing yoga class, this was some real shit. We obviously tried to make the best of it and would laugh at each other, but imagine the embarrassment when really thinking about the use of headlamps and doing headstands, just to get pregnant?! 

I can tell you this much, if I never see another headlamp again, it won’t be too soon.   And I don’t imagine my wife would willingly do another headstand unless she absolutely had to.  Bottom line, just when you think things can’t get any more unsexy, they do.  And that is what lesbians deal with when it comes to home insemination every day!  Unless…..   

Our First Trip to the Doctor

Tick Tock Tick Tock

A lot of people say, “timing is everything”.  When it comes to trying to conceive, that couldn’t be more true.  Timing really is everything in more ways than you can probably imagine.  There’s timing of your period, timing of your cervical mucus, timing of your ovulation, timing of your inseminations, I could go on and on.  When trying to conceive, it feels like the clock is often your worst enemy.  Waiting for the damn results of your OPK’s or pregnancy tests feels like what could be an eternity.  Is it a positive or a negative?  The clock just seems to tick so slowly in anticipation.  After receiving a bunch of negative pregnancy test results, my wife and I began to question so many things.  Was something wrong with her?  Was it me not inseminating her properly?  Was our timing off?  Was the sperm ok?  So many questions and not enough answers we could provide with our resources at home.  So, as much as we didn’t want to, we decided it was time to go consult with a doctor.  We had come to the realization that if we wanted to make this happen, we needed to make sure everything was ok with my wife and make sure there was no other medical reasons preventing us from getting pregnant.  We were not going to commit to any inseminations with the doctor, as we were dead set on doing this at home, even if it was with a turkey baster or needless syringe.  So, off to the baby doc we go.

It looks as bad as it actually feels.

I will say this much, going to the doctors office for any kind of anything isn’t fun.  Its just all around emotionally taxing, invasive and unpleasant.  My wife and I were told that if we were going to do a fertility consultation/workup, we would have to commit to testing for the duration of a month.  Luckily, our insurance covered this part…the only part.  The first visit we were given a ton of information about IUI’s and IVF and all of the things we were not interested in.  The doctor was nice but we weren’t feeling this whole medicinal experience already.  They advised us that they would monitor my wife’s menstrual cycle, her ovulation, how many eggs she produced, and do a lot of blood work.  Basically, my wife needed to prepare to be poked and prodded all over.  They did some initial blood work on that day (I believe they took something like 7 vials of blood from her) and told my wife to come back in a week between the hours of 6am-8am for some more fun stuff.  So, not only did she have to get poked and prodded, she had to get up at an ungodly hour.  I wouldn’t let her go alone so we would both proceed to get up at 5:30am on 4 separate occasions and drive 35 minutes to get blood work.  Good times indeed.

Although I clearly have my complaints about the doctor, I will say this much, they did help us uncover a few things going on that may have been factors in our ability to get pregnant.  The blood work revealed a few things that were actually quite a shock to us.  First, my wife found out that she had hypothyroidism.  When I heard the doctor say it, I was repeated in my mind, “hypowhaaaaaaaat”?  Then he explained that she had low estrogen levels as well.  Luckily, both things were very easily treated with some medication.  My wife had good eggs, which was huge and there were no other indications telling us that we would not be able to get pregnant.  PHEW.  Huge weight lifted.  However, the final bit of news that was uncovered was a bit scarier.  The doctor said that my wife was a carrier of cystic fibrosis.  This meant that if our donor was a carrier, there was a very high chance that the baby would be born with CF.  Very scary to think about, especially not knowing if our donor was a carrier or not.  Thankfully, we had our do some genetic testing which revealed he was NOT a carrier!  PHEW AGAIN!

After our month worth of visits to the doctor, they “recommended” that we do IUI’s with them.  They proceeded to explain that since we were a same sex couple, we would have to do 6 IUI’s that would not be covered by insurance before insurance would kick in.  They then mentioned that each IUI would cost approximately $1500 per try, and that did not include lab fees.  Yeah, no thanks.  The other thing that was troubling is that Massachusetts is one of the only states to provide full coverage of IVF for patients, that is, unless you are a same sex couple.  Don’t even get me started on how unjust and unfair that is.   My wife and I end up going back to a different doctor and I will explain that story later on… but don’t forget I mentioned this now.  You will learn why later.

You need a whole lot of this...

To get this.

I feel like I got all serious on you this week.  Next week is all about head lamps and head stands.  You won’t want to miss it.  Until then, happy baby making!

Pee on that stick!!!

Dip the stick in the toilet?

I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be so well versed on telling people how to pee on a stick.  Being that I have worked in the women’s reproductive health industry for the last 10 years and we sell an ovulation predictor kit, you can imagine how many women I have talked to about this.  I will never forget one woman that I spoke with.   She called our customer service line and had some questions about exactly how to pee on the stick.  I never thought it would be difficult to simply pee on a stick, but I suppose when you are trying to make a baby, you can never be too sure about anything.  Better safe than sorry I guess, at least for this woman.  She proceeded to ask me if she should hold her leg up on the toilet and put the stick under her leg or if she should dip the stick in the toilet water.  I honestly had to hold back my laughter.  I certainly wasn’t judging, as this was not the first time I was asked some “off the cuff” questions, but it gave me quite a giggle to imagine a woman dipping her ovulation stick into toilet water or the image of her holding her leg up while trying to pee on the stick.  Regardless, after 15 minutes of “coaching” I was able to talk her through the process and she was able to successfully pee on her stick. 

In the process of trying to make a baby, I feel like all women do is pee on sticks.  Whether it is to predict the timing of your ovulation or to test whether you were actually pregnant or not, there’s a lot of peeing on sticks that happens when trying to conceive.  I recall my wife having pee sticks in every purse she owned, in every bathroom we had in our house, and even hidden in the most obscure places.  And then when you actually have to interpret the results of the pee on a stick?  Forget it.  There are so many different brands and the way they tell you if it’s a positive or a negative can vary so drastically.  Some do the smiley or sad face, some just say yes or no, some make you interpret colors (as if peeing on the stick wasn’t hard enough).  And then there is the waiting for the results.  How can 5 minutes feel like 5 hours?  I can’t begin to explain how excruciating those 5 minutes would be when waiting for the results.  Over time, the OPK test’s get easier and easier because you know that if you get a negative and are not ovulating, you still have more chances to get a positive, so you don’t feel discouraged.  But waiting for the pregnancy test results was a whole other ball game.  Those were probably the toughest 5 minutes of the entire process. 

But back to the OPK’s.  There are so many options and so many different ways to interpret the sticks, how does one choose?!  The feminine care product aisle at your drugstore can be quite overwhelming.  Well, at least to me it used to be.  I would walk into that aisle and when looking at all of the options for ovulation predictors and pregnancy tests, it was like trying to pick a green M&M out of a bag of red M&M’s.  Who the heck knows which is the best or easiest to read?!  Luckily, I had a bit of knowledge going into this but my wife had her own preferences which did not overlap with my knowledge, so ultimately it didn’t even matter at the end of the day.  I bought what my wife liked.  Period end of story.  A valuable lesson learned early on in this process for me.  Just say yes to the wife and get what she wants.  Wait until I tell you about her pregnancy cravings and what trips to the grocery store used to look like for us… I’m pretty sure I ate cereal and ice cream for dinner at least twice a week.  Until then, don’t fret too much about peeing on sticks.  Just let it flow…