My wife, Amber, and I got married standing mountainside in March of 2021. The entire day of our elopement “minimony” was sunny and never reached a fraction above nine degrees Fahrenheit. Thigh deep blankets of untouched snow covered the ground in every direction around us except for one narrow 20 foot long path that had been shoveled out mid-morning by our Airbnb host, Keegan.
To the surprise of everyone, we decided to tie the knot in Palmer, Alaska, a slight eighteen hours of combined drive and flight time away from our home in South Carolina. The ceremony was quick, with no one except the two of us and our officiant in attendance. A few minutes past noon, we exchanged handwritten vows we’d memorialized within gray moleskin notebooks. We choked out “I do” before loosening the handfasting ropes from around our wrists and running inside in hopes of our blood circulation returning quickly.
Fifteen minutes huddled over an indoor heater was the amount of time it took until our teeth stopped chattering long enough to sign our marriage license and wave goodbye to our officiant. Everything fell into place that day, which is how I honestly could’ve described any day between meeting Amber and marrying her two years later. A lifetime of “bad luck” seemed to have finally stopped, our life together was finally boring and there was nothing more exciting to me than that.
Our elopement was everything I could have dreamed of. After the ceremony we split the final days of our trip between Fairbanks and Anchorage exploring glaciers, floating in hot springs, eating insanely priced foods, shopping, and playing in the snow. After it was all said and done, and after the longest flight delay possible, we returned to our lives in South Carolina.
Amber and I “officially met” in 2019, but were actually introduced to one another in 2015 while working in the same hospital. Amber is an MRI technologist and, at the time, I worked in the Emergency Department so we saw each other frequently throughout the six years I was employed there. We had a wonderful working system between us: I’d drop everything to bring her patients so she could scan their brains, spines, or any other body part imaginable and while doing so she refused to acknowledge my existence.
I get along with most people and I’ve never hurt for friends. Which is not to say that I’m extroverted or extremely social but what I am saying is that I’m nosey above all else and I want to know everything about everyone and everything. That trait has served me well, for the most part, and I’m grateful for the connections I’ve made over the years despite some of them requiring more leg work than others.
Getting to know Amber was humbling for a few reasons. For starters, she didn’t know my name and continued to mispronounce Brianna for the first six months of our relationship. In the beginning, Amber offered up little information unless explicitly asked yet even then the very bare minimum was given in return. Amber has never over-explained a concept in her life and she doesn’t participate in small talk.
Amber and I could not be more different if we tried. Amber is comfortable with silence and will not try to fill its space. Amber is bad with names and will not remember yours. Amber does not pry; she is not a gossip. Amber likes what she considers to be order while I attract clutter. Amber can be one track minded while I am always halfway to the moon. Amber is responsible, she carries the weight of the world on her back, and she never asks for help.
I couldn’t tell you why I was so drawn to her. I was attracted to her, sure, but otherwise she wasn’t particularly polite or engaging. Despite this, I reached out to her on social media early summer of 2019 while I was out of work on medical leave. We began dating that July and were married less than two years later.
I didn’t publicly come out of the closet until my mid-twenties and I did so by announcing my relationship with Amber. I was already a mom to a four year old daughter, had a gripping drug addiction that I’d only recently gotten sober from (for the fiftieth time but this one seems to have stuck!), and I already had a divorce under my belt.
Every lesbians wet dream all wrapped up in one body: there I stood.
Amber saw me for who I was without requiring explanation about my past. We share a lot of core values and we realized this quickly after meeting. We want to travel to the same places, we’re interested in similar hobbies, we both have similar dreams for the future and our career goals align. We both enjoy activities like kayaking, camping, card games, and we like nothing more than going to new coffee shops.
I met Amber during a phase of self-exploration. I hadn’t been sober as an adult up until this point, not really anyway, so navigating the world outside of addiction felt like taking off all of my skin and having every nerve in my body exposed to the elements at all times. I felt like a teenager who was left hung out to dry. I was vulnerable and scared but Amber stood by with her palms outstretched, welcoming me as I was even if I wasn’t sure who that person could be yet.
A month after we began dating, Amber’s older sister and three nieces visited for a weekend. Amber had been looking forward to their visit and I knew family was important to her. I’d gone to see a movie by myself (which is a favorite pastime and not a sad Saturday night for me at all, ok?!?) and Amber was texting me about how she was ready to finish her shift so she could greet her family already waiting for her at her house. Seeing Amber talk about her nieces and relating stories to her childhood growing up with three siblings of her own, I couldn’t help but send the text “do you want kids?” while the previews played on the big screen in front of me.
She texted back “I haven’t really thought about it. I’m not sure that’s for me” and my heart sank just as the lights dimmed around me and the projector screen widened for the movie to begin. I didn’t know what to say back. I locked my phone screen, watched the movie, then drove home wondering how I could’ve been so stupid to ever think “this” wasn’t too good to be true.
I had my oldest daughter, Stella, when I was nineteen years old and I grew up with two older brothers. Having more children was important to me and I couldn’t imagine Stella’s life without at least one more sibling to grow up with. Time was ticking too, at least in my mind—by the time Amber and I met, Stella was already enrolling in kindergarten.
The dramatic part of me began mentally kicking myself for thinking I could ever have the life I wanted. I was grappling with the idea of my sexuality and I wasn’t sure how having more children as a lesbian could come to fruition. Afterall, having a child was one small aspect of what kept me in the proverbial closet for as long as I was, and growing up in the bible-belt didn’t expose me to families that looked like the family I wanted to have.
As time went on and our relationship progressed, the desire for more children seemed to come naturally to Amber. By the day we shivered while reciting wedding vows in Alaska, we already had a fertility clinic appointment scheduled for the following month. I’d been tracking my cycles, started better supplements, and both of us were eating cleaner than we had in a long time (see: literally ever).
After we got home from Alaska, selecting our sperm donor was the final task before we could fully pull the trigger on trying to conceive. We had ideas about who we liked and we’d narrowed our choices down to two options.
The first donor was blonde, tall, and had blue eyes. He was described as being an outdoorsman and already had a son of his own before becoming a donor. His profile showed he was in his thirties which was something we believed to be important—we wanted to choose someone who’d (hopefully) matured enough to fully understand the implications of sperm donation. Something about him didn’t excite us though. His features didn’t resemble someone who could realistically be related to both Amber or myself and parts of his profile sounded a lot like a car salesman lying to my face about the lemon they needed off the lot.
Donor number two had darker hair than either of us but had a face shape similar to Amber’s, a smile that sometimes didn’t reach his eyes but appeared soft and warm. The way he was described it seemed like maybe he was someone we could get along with in our everyday lives. Based only off his childhood photos, Amber and I agreed he looked like someone with features resembling people from both of our family, at least resembling our families “just enough” to be believable.
There weren’t many physical traits we viewed as Absolute Musts. Mostly, we hoped to find someone who favored us/our families so any hypothetical child(ren) would appear related to either of us regardless of whose egg was used.
Our children will already have families that don’t resemble the majority of their peers solely because they have lesbian parents, so doing everything in our power to give our child(ren) a family they didn’t stick out from like a sore thumb…well, it was like the bare minimum.
Amber’s immediate family is small. Literally. Amber is hardly 5’3” on a good day and if I’m standing flat footed I have to slightly shift my eyes down to hold eye contact with her dad. Because of that, a donor listed as 6’7” was definitely out of the question. I’m just shy of 5’9” which isn’t gigantess but also isn’t short either so on the opposite end of the spectrum, to fit in with my taller framed family, a donor listed as 5’7” was also out. We had a few of these arbitrary numbers and standards in mind but we aimed to remain flexible. Neither of us wanted to turn what was already a sterile feeling experience into something short of a science experiment.
We listened to audio interviews, read personal essays, looked up what the fuck a Keirsey’s personality report is and how it differs from Myers-Briggs (I still have no idea). We really tried to find a donor profile that had both of us saying, “oh my god, me too!”
Quick Witted Introvert was the title heading for Donor option 2. QWI enjoys writing, reading, and traveling, he also really likes playing golf but we tried to ignore that. He didn’t try to frame himself as a people person, having used the words “dry” and “sometimes off-putting” to describe his sense of humor. He said he likes to know what he’s getting himself into before making decisions so he asks a lot of questions. QWI spoke fondly of his parents, especially his dad, and the family history he provided was pretty unremarkable. The more we read into his donor profile, the more impressed we became.
Throughout the recording of his audio interview he remained soft spoken yet so sure sounding of everything coming out of his mouth. He didn’t ramble, paused to articulate his response before answering each question, and every single one of his statements were concise, a trait I admire in people but have given up on ever adopting myself.
I listened to his audio interview what must have been a dozen times, a different comment standing out to me with each replay.
“Sometimes, you know, when I’m alone, I crave the interaction with other people. Sometimes when I’m with other people, I want to be alone.” I replayed that comment in my head for a couple days before telling Amber I had a good feeling about him and thought we should proceed with using him as our donor. Amber agreed.
We didn’t have adult photos to go off of and had no inkling who any donor could be. As far as we knew, they could’ve been our neighbors and we’d be none the wiser. It freaked me out a little, to be honest. But something about QWI felt comfortable.
His childhood photos favored Amber more than they could me. The illustration of his work ethic, favorite foods, and hobbies also mirrored Amber more than me. But hidden in the audio interview or briefly wedged in his About Me was his love for writing, dry humor, and our shared eye color. We figured if we went forward with this donor, any child would outwardly favor Amber but I depended on the (statistical) likelihood this hypothetical child would share my eye color. It wasn’t much but it was something.
On April 30, 2021 we purchased four vials of frozen sperm from QWI. That sentence reads just as perverted as it sounds out loud. As if we were online shopping for denim or stocking up on non-perishables for the winter. Yet reciting our credit card number over the phone to finalize our purchase of a stranger’s frozen semen sample still remains one of the least bizarre moments involved with conceiving via sperm donation.
Amber and I were relieved to finally check off the final task on our Fertility To Do List. Soon, after a long time dreaming, prepping, and driving two hours across the state at the ass crack of dawn for our transfer: a positive pregnancy test sat on our bathroom counter by the beginning of August.
We felt like we’d spent a lifetime working up to that moment but were grateful we weren’t forced to wait long, going through multiple rounds/years of fertility treatments like so many of the people close to us. We told our friends and then our family, Stella beamed at the thought of “finally” becoming a big sister.
The excitement of our pregnancy tightly intertwined with heartbreak and it was difficult to navigate this experience of joy compounded by so much grief. Our baby had barely grown a placenta in the time it took for everything else in our life to implode around us and that didn’t seem to slow down until close to two years after delivery. We were forced to adjust our norms with little to no forewarning. An all-consuming part of me resented that change. I still do.
Amber worked a travel contract in Kentucky and I attempted to adjust to my new role as a stay at home mom. 8 hours stood between our front door and the furnished apartment Amber rented for those 13 weeks yet most days she could’ve been on another continent and the distance would’ve felt the same.
The (long, long, so so so long) 40 weeks and 1 day of pregnancy dragged on. I filled that time immersing myself in forums and groups centered around the experiences of Donor Conceived Adults. This became an obsession and by winter there was little else I could focus on. My third trimester felt overshadowed by a moral conflict regarding donor conception that was now brewing inside me but I couldn’t help but wonder about the other half of this anonymous family tree. How many siblings must exist (as of 2024, we know of fourteen) and how many more might be coming in the future. I read about how unregulated the fertility industry actually is, preying on vulnerable people and lying to them about who their chosen donor actually is. My feelings towards anonymous sperm donors remains conflicted but ultimately I just hope our donor is a good person and that he really is who the cryobank says he is.
Quick Witted Introvert has stronger physical features than I do so I anticipated the baby to share a lot of those stronger features. In my head I envisioned dark hair, dark eyebrows, maybe a cleft chin like QWI supposedly has, but everything always seemed too abstract to really imagine. How could I possibly form a picture of what my unborn child may look like when the other half of her genetic makeup belonged to a stranger. The reality is that Quick Witted Introvert is nothing more than something picked from a catalog. We shopped for his gametes online like it was Prime Day. 0.5mL specimen containers were signed, sealed, and delivered straight to our door with overnight shipping prices waived as a “thank you” for being first time buyers. Attempting to conceptualize what this unborn baby may one day look and act like was similar to looking through a camera lens that never focused. Still, despite that, I was comforted by the visions of the green eyed baby Amber and I would be meeting so soon.
Magnolia Jules was born at 9:05pm seconds as I kneeled in the inflatable tub that’d been indefinitely parked in our bedroom for three weeks prior. I’d called my midwife, Lisa, at 8:57pm to say I think it’s time for her to come back to our house, the contractions had become too frequent too quickly and I struggled to breathe through them. Seven minutes later Amber called Lisa for a second time to say it was too late, Magnolia was here, Lisa was still brushing her teeth standing in her bathroom across town.
I felt like I was outside of my own body, looking down from the ceiling above us while my newborn baby, still situated in the fetal position, floated up from the pool’s bottom. I reached in and pulled her out from under water and the second she hit air she began screaming so loudly I couldn’t hear anything else around me. The cries echoed off the walls so forcefully I’m convinced she’d been waiting an entire lifetime for the opportunity to finally have her voice heard.
By 2am, our midwife and doula had finally closed their car doors behind them to go home. Stella was with a friend for the night, where she’d been since early morning after my water broke unexpectedly.
So there we were, just the three of us in our bedroom.
I stared at the outline of Magnolia’s brow bone and nose, took in the dark hair that covered every inch of her body. She rested soundly while swaddled in Amber’s arms. We’d given her formula after hours of trying to breastfeed. She never lasted longer than 5 seconds. My midwife and doula had tirelessly tried to help her latch, Magnolia was shuffled and repositioned by one while I sat feeling like a marionette doll as the other tried repositioning me too. Nothing worked and my midwife finally said Magnolia’s latch looked and felt like something she’d expect from a preemie, not a full term infant. We all shrugged it off. I was too tired to ask what that meant even though the comment replayed itself over and over in my head for the next six months. I’d mentally prepared for everything to be easier this time. I was older than I’d been at the time of Stella’s birth, I was no longer a teenager and had a healthy support system and lifestyle. I’d spent nine months convincing myself that the trials and tribulations surrounding my rough introduction to motherhood could’ve been avoided had I only been a little bit smarter, a little bit more prepared, a little bit older, and a little bit healthier. I believed in my heart I’d achieved all of those things but there we were with a new baby that couldn’t figure out how to fucking eat. I went to all the appointments, took all the supplements, read all the articles but none of them could fix this or fix me or fix her.
My pregnancy with Magnolia had been so planned and prepared for, all the way down to gamete selection and the exact time of conception via artificial insemination. By the time she was born, I could have recited QWIs donor profile by heart. The primary baby photo that sat in the top left corner of his donor profile was permanently seared into the back of my brain. I’d tracked every symptom, every hormone, read everything I could about donor conception, I ate the right foods, stopped every medication I was on prior to pregnancy. We even bought a fucking Berkey water filter and I made it thru the physical turmoil of giving birth in my god damned bedroom with no pharmaceutical analgesia. We’d done everything right despite everything else in our lives going wrong.
Every week the pediatrician lectured on the importance of newborn weight gain. The length between checkups became shorter just as the scale beneath Magnolia measured smaller too. Our worlds soon revolved around specialist referrals, logging intake and outputs, changing so many sheets after Magnolia undoubtedly projectile vomited up every ounce she’d finally gotten down. After a while it was like I was nineteen again, small hands that were too young, too stupid, and too unprepared to help the baby I was holding.
After midnight feedings most nights I’d remain upright in the glider in hopes that Magnolia wouldn’t lose the milk she’d just taken in. Some nights, however, I’d give into the overwhelming desire to pull down her lower eyelids and examine her eye color. The results were the same with each inspection yet I’d always find myself wanting confirmation just one more time. I’m unable to articulate why I began doing this, maybe it was an attempt to bring my mind back to reality. A grounding exercise of some sort like the ones I’d scoffed at throughout my many former rehab stays during, what felt like, my former lifetime. I was desperate to find any way to disconnect from my obsessions so I’d always find myself shining my phone flashlight off the wall behind Magnolia’s head in hopes the reflection would be bright enough to catch a glimpse without fully waking her.
I struggled a lot with the complexities of our daughter being donor conceived. I struggled with not struggling over the same things Amber did and feeling like we coasted thru the postpartum era on completely different paths. We spent months, days, hours upon hours combing thru cryobanks searching for a donor that matched our ideals as closely as possible. Which is ridiculous to say when you’ve grown up being told not to trust a single thing you read on the internet but it was all we had and it still failed us, or at least it failed me.
Quick Witted Introvert checked all of our boxes: he was tall but not too tall, he had interests that matched both of ours even down to his favorite foods and humor. His audio interview didn’t present him as some sick fuck trying to repopulate the earth. He gave the impression of being a person that values family and friendship, his donor profile had a negative genetic panel, and his green eyes were the only physical trait I felt (statistically) guaranteed to see myself in.
Two weeks after Magnolia’s first birthday Amber and I sat in the tiny office of a local geneticist. Magnolia’s gastroenterologist had ordered two genetic panels after an appointment in December, and after much delay we’d made it to the geneticist appointment over four months later.
We met the Genetic Counselor, Angie, first who asked us to give as much information as possible about myself, my immediate family, Magnolia’s delivery and the months following, and any information we had (if any) about Quick Witted Introvert. Amber handed over the print out of QWI’s donor profile we’d brought with us and Angie seemed pleased.
She stepped out of the room and when she reentered the Geneticist followed behind her. The doctor had a laundry list of questions and we answered them as best as we could.
After, she asked if she could pick up Magnolia to move her to the table. We nodded yes then sat quietly while watching her examine our blonde haired, brown eyed girl.
Wanna be blogger 
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