Same Sex Parents TTC#6

[Toebeans]

Hey guys! Pretty new here, happy to see that they're not closing down anymore! The wife and myself are at the beginning of TTC, looking into clinics in Sydney. I'm so confused over who or how to choose who to go through! Any advice on how you decided would be amazing!

Welcome! No experience with Sydney as we went through Melbourne, but I can offer some really general tips! Hopefully by now you might actually have made some further steps in your journey and this might be redundant!

From the outset one of our first decisions was to go with the clinic that had the biggest donor pool, as we knew we needed an anonymous donor and we wanted to have good options rather than "well I guess he'll do". This information isn't exactly advertised, but a basic google search of sperm donation and Melbourne brought up Melb IVF as the top search result so that was our not really data-driven approach.

Our next step was to look at the clinic and see if there were any specialists dealing in my specific health needs. Some advertise their openness to assisting LGBTI families, which is lovely. I also needed to narrow my search parameters to specialists with PCOS experience. And then after that, well it's all about bedside manner actually. This is a person that will be assisting you through some of the most vulnerable moments of your fertility life, so you need to get along. For example, when I'm nervous I make jokes to set myself at ease. My first specialist was on fire with her retorts and we could laugh and get along as people. My second specialist (required because my first specialist went on maternity leave) was very clinical and stony-faced and I spent all appointments tense and worried I'd done something wrong.

I guess when it comes to choosing a specialist also have a think about what kind of approach you want to take to your own fertility journey. For me I wanted a really holistic, whole-body approach. I wanted advice from my fertility specialist about all of the things I could do to contribute to a better physical and emotional chance of falling pregnant. Did I need iron supplements? Could I be taking a better folate supplement?

Best of luck on your journey, it's all really exciting at the beginning!

[BBBB]

Congratulations!!

Any updates from anybody else?

Hey! I’m stoked to see BH didn’t close down after all. And great to see everyone’s updates!

We’re hanging in there at 35 weeks and will be induced between 38-39 so the kid is almost here! Hope everyone is going okay in these crazy times ❤️