A New Family

This is about our attempt, as a lesbian couple (to protect our anonymity, we'll call ourselves Cagney and Ripley!), to create a child.

We've been making preparations for months now:

• finding someone who wanted to father a child
• getting to know each other and our hopes for what this could bring
• drawing up a co-parenting agreement
• monitoring baseline temperatures
• monitoring ovulation

More details on all these to follow. But for now - finally - the day has dawned, and we made our first attempt at insemination! We're keeping our options open, and are going to both try, and see who "catches" first. First turn is mine (Ripley).

Our father-to-be (who we'll call Travolta) delivered the sperm as arranged. The words "embarrassing" and "awkward" barely describe our attempts at smalltalk! Then we were left to get down to it - making love with a syringe of semen is a whole new experience. Kinda scary but lovely too.

And now it's fingers crossed (and legs crossed). Will have another go tomorrow, then wait two weeks and hope!