Last week Kim and
I finally had our long-awaited appointment with my
ob-gyn, who gave me the OK to push forward with the
baby-planning. Things got very real, very fast.
Suddenly tough
choices abound. It's not just about picking the right
prenatal vitamins or researching which ovulation kit is the
most accurate and affordable. The Maggie-and-Kim
dilemma du jour is selecting a donor, should we decide
to take the pregnancy route.
If you've
never searched for a donor before, let me help you
understand the process. At most sperm banks you can
preview brief profiles of donors, which include hair
and eye color, height, weight, hobbies, medical
history, and so on. It's like browsing personal ads
on a dating service. Once you've chosen some
candidates, you can purchase additional information
such as photos, essays, and even audio CDs to help narrow
down your selection. In theory, once you find your favorite,
you leave the baby-planning stage and progress to the
baby-making stage. We've stalled in stage 1.
The sticking
point is the appearance of the new baby in relation to our
firstborn, Calvin. My gut says our new baby should
physically resemble Calvin, who happens to be
blonde-haired and blue-eyed like his birth mom (me). I
get it -- this sounds problematic. But from my experiences,
I know that even the slightest differences between
siblings can potentially drive wedges between them.
Our children will already have to deal with the fact
that Calvin will have a present biological father, whereas
the new baby won't. Talk about sibling rivalry.
Sometimes I
wonder if it's wiser to intentionally celebrate our
new baby's differences by selecting a donor
with markedly dissimilar physical traits. Kim thinks
so. She also happens to be brown-haired, brown-eyed,
and is hoping the baby resembles her -- it wouldn't
hurt if the donor had type O-positive blood, had an
athletic lifestyle, and was of Manchurian decent.
I'm sure
we seem ridiculous. I fully expect to receive a deluge of
e-mails titled "All that matters is having a healthy
baby." But when you are forced to choose, when
you have the ability to pick your baby's
appearance like furniture from a Pottery Barn catalog,
it's hard not to grow consumed by the options.
The truth is that if tomorrow we woke up and
discovered I was magically pregnant, we wouldn't give
a rat's ass about his or her gender or hair
color. Perhaps this is a good reminder for us as we
embark on this next stage of our baby-making journey -- all
the small stuff will melt away when my belly feels those
first flutters of a heartbeat.