I placed the donor in my online shopping cart—just as I might with a book on Amazon—double-checked the order, then clicked Purchase Vials. I’m having a baby! I thought. The moment felt monumental.
As the order processed, I planned what I had to do next: Make an appointment for the insemination, buy prenatal vitamins, put together a baby registry, get the baby’s room set up. Between thoughts, I noticed that my order was taking a while to complete. The rotating circle on my screen, known as the “spinning wheel of death,” seemed to be spinning for an unusually long time. I waited, waited some more, and finally tried using the back button in case my computer was crashing. But nothing happened. Finally, the spinning wheel of death disappeared and a message popped up: Out of stock.
Out of stock? I figured there must be some computer glitch—maybe when I pressed the back button?—so I speed-dialed the sperm bank and asked for Kathleen, but she was out and I got transferred to a customer-service rep named Barb.
Barb looked into the matter and determined that this was no glitch. I’d selected a very popular donor, she said. She went on to explain that popular donors went quickly and that, while the company tried to “restock” their “inventory” often, there was a six-month hold for it so it could get quarantined and tested. Even when the inventory was made available, she said, there still might be a long wait, because some people had placed it on back order. As Barb spoke, I thought of how Kathleen had called just yesterday. Now it occurred to me that maybe she’d suggested this donor to several women. Like me, maybe many women had bonded with Kathleen over her honest appraisals of semen.
Barb placed me on the waitlist (“Don’t be foolish and waste your time waiting,” she’d said ominously), then I put down the phone and felt numb. After months of fruitless searching, I’d found my donor, and my future baby had finally seemed like a reality, more than just an idea in my head. But now, on my birthday, I had to let that baby go. I was all the way back at square one.
I slumped over my laptop, staring into space. I sat there for a long while until I noticed, on the corner of my desk, a business card that I’d gotten the week before at a professional networking event. It was from a twenty-seven-year-old filmmaker named Alex. I’d spoken to Alex for only about five minutes, but he was kind and smart and seemed healthy, and I thought, with the impulsivity of somebody running out of options, that maybe I could skip the online banks and try to find my donor out in the real world. Alex fit the profile of the kind of donor I sought. Why not ask if he’d consider it? After all, the worst he could say was no.
I chose my subject line carefully (An Unusual Question) and left the email vague (Hey, remember me, from that networking event?). Then I invited him to meet for coffee so that I could ask my “unusual question.” Alex responded, wondering if I could email him the question. I replied that I’d prefer to discuss it in person. He wrote, Sure. And the next thing I knew, we were set to meet for coffee Sunday at noon.
I was, to put it mildly, nervous when I arrived at Urth Caffé. After sending my impulsive email, I was certain that Alex would say no and then tell ten of his friends what I’d done, leaving me so humiliated that I’d never be able to go to a networking event again. I’d considered backing out, but I wanted a baby so badly that I felt I had to do this, just in case. The answer to an unasked question is always no, I repeated to myself over and over.
Alex greeted me warmly and the small talk came easily—so easily that, before I knew it, we were having a great time. After about an hour, in fact, I’d almost forgotten what we were doing there when Alex leaned across the table, looked me in the eye, and asked flirtatiously, as if he’d concluded we were on a date, “So, what was your ‘unusual question’?”
Instantly my face felt hot and my palms sweaty, and I did what any normal person would do under the circumstances—I went mute. The gravity and lunacy of what I was about to do rendered me speechless.
Alex waited until I began forming words, flailing, using incoherent analogies to explain my request. I was saying things like “I don’t have all the ingredients for the recipe” and “It’s like donating a kidney, but without removing the organ.” The second I said the word organ, I got even more flustered and tried changing course. “It’s like giving blood,” I said, “except there’s sex instead of needles!” With that, I willed myself to shut up. Alex was staring back with a strange look on his face, and I thought, Life does not get more humiliating than this.
But then it did. Because it quickly became apparent that Alex had no idea what I was trying to ask.
“Look,” I managed to say. “I’m thirty-seven years old and I want to have a baby. I’m not having luck with the sperm banks, and I’m wondering if you’d consider—”
This time Alex clearly got it, because his entire body froze; even his mocha chai latte stayed suspended in midair. Other than one catatonic patient in medical school, I’d never seen a person sit so still before in my life. Finally Alex’s lips moved and out came one word: “Wow.”
Then, slowly, more words came out. “I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
“I know,” I said. I felt terrible for having put him in such an awkward situation, for bringing this up at all, and I was just about to say so when, to my amazement, Alex added: “But I’d be willing to talk about it.”
Now it was my turn to freeze before eventually saying “Wow.” The next few hours flew by: Alex and I discussed about everything from our childhoods to future dreams. It seemed that talking about sperm had broken down all the emotional walls, the way having sex with somebody for the first time can open the emotional floodgates. When we finally got up to leave, Alex said that he needed to do some thinking, and I said okay, and he said he’d be in touch. I was sure, though, that once he actually thought this through, I’d never hear from him again.
But that night, Alex’s name appeared in my inbox. I clicked on his message, expecting a nice rejection. Instead he wrote: So far I am a yes, but with more questions. So we set up another meeting.
Over the next couple of months we met at Urth so often that I started calling the café my “sperm office,” and my friends started calling it simply Spurth. At Spurth, we talked about everything from semen samples and medical histories to contracts and contact with the child. Eventually we got to the point where we talked about how to do the transfer—whether we should have the doctor do the insemination or have sex to increase the odds of conception.
He picked sex.
Honestly, I had no objection. And more honestly? I was thrilled with this development! After all, I imagined that in my future life as a mom, there wouldn’t be much opportunity to have sex with a gorgeous twenty-seven-year-old like Alex, with his ripped abs and chiseled cheekbones.
Meanwhile, I began obsessively monitoring my menstrual cycles. One day at Spurth, I mentioned to Alex that I was about to ovulate, so if we were going to try this month, he had exactly one week to make a decision. In other circumstances that might have seemed like a lot of pressure to put on a guy, but by now it felt like a done deal and I didn’t have time to waste. We’d already looked at our plan from every possible angle: legal, emotional, ethical, practical. By this point, too, we had inside jokes and nicknames for each other and had bonded over what a blessing this child would be. The week before, he had even asked if, like any other business opportunity, I had “gone out to others” or if this was an exclusive offer. I had the fleeting impulse to invent a bidding war to seal the deal (Pete is circling and there’s also interest from Gary, so you better get back to me by Friday. There’s a lot of heat around this). But I wanted our relationship to be based in complete truthfulness, and anyway, I was sure that Alex would say yes.