How it All Works or Lesbian Baby Making 101

We've had lots of questions from our friends and family about how to make a baby when both parents are women. Keep in mind that this varies based on age, geography and certain motherly preferences , but I'll share with you our process.

We decided early on to go on this adventure with the help of a well known health center in Boston that has been doing the work of getting lesbians and single women pregnant for decades. It's an expensive and potentially emotionally draining process so we thought that leaving it to the experts would be wise. We think this will give us the best chance of success.

Steps we've already taken:

• In October we went to an orientation at the health center, that outlined lots of things about what to expect and how the process works. 
• We began tracking Ali's basal body temperature first thing every morning for the last 6 months, supposedly before she moves or talks. (Which is impossible because she needs to move to get the thermometer....but you get the point.) We've learned lots of fascinating things about how hormones change throughout your menstrual cycle, and that causes your temperature to change. Your temperature rises after you ovulate, and drops back down right be for you menstruate. 
• We've been practicing with the ovulation predictor kits. Basically works like a pregnancy test, but measures the hormone that increases at ovulation. When the hormone spikes we see a little smiley face. It's cute. 
• Ali had a complete physical and a ton of tests to make sure that she was healthy to carry a cute little baby. 
• We had our enrollment and medical visits at the health center. They gave us more details about scheduling appointments etc. The nurse practitioner reviewed some dos and don'ts and cleared us to go buy sperm. 
• We own sperm! It's waiting for us in Boston in it's cute little nitrogen tank. We have enough sperm for 3 cycles. Hopefully it won't take more than that because those little bottles run $650 for .5ml. I'm pretty sure that's more expensive than gold. 
• We've made appointments for our first IUI. On the first day of the menstrual cycle we call the clinic and set up appointments for every day that you might ovulate. Because my wife's cycles fluctuate somewhere between 32 and 45 days we have appointments set everyday for 14 days. Each night we have to either cancel or confirm the appointment for the next day. 

So we are in full swing now. Any day now we could be packing up and driving south for our first shot at growing our little family. Then we wait a couple of weeks to do the pregnancy test. Then if it's negative we wait a couple more weeks to try again. I'm practicing patience.