23: You Can Keep Your Underwear On (w/ Baby Daddy Michael)

Meredith: 0:00

Okay, we’ve been on the run all week long.

Michael: 0:04

And had the runs all week long.

Meredith: 0:06

No, it was just me at the beginning half of the week.

Michael: 0:09

I went through a whole roll of toilet paper at your house, remember.

Meredith: 0:12

You did. You did Music. Hello everybody, it’s another week of the backup plan. I’m Meredith, I’m having a baby eminently. My gay best friend and I are doing it. We froze sperm this week. Ah, like it’s getting so close. So, first of all, if you’re watching this on YouTube, I forgot that I still had to record an intro for this week’s episode. So you’re getting a little bit of high low. Right now. The hair is we’re hair banding it because it’s been a rainy day in Los Angeles and I can’t. I drove all across town. I did a lot of work today. I came home, I took a shower and realized, oh shit, you just washed off all of the makeup that you were going to wear in the video. So the zit sticker is still on, but I did put on some more makeup for you and, like I put on some nicer clothes, but there’s no bra, not that you can tell, because we’re cut off right here at the shoulder. Anyway, this last week Michael was in town and we didn’t have time to record like a proper long interview, kind of catching up on everything. I feel remember a few weeks back I did record an episode with him and the app that I used to download all that stuff, just totally didn’t record his side of it. So really it’s just a catch up interview with myself where I’m talking to myself. So that’s not interesting. You don’t need that. We’ll do like a real good, proper catch up, maybe an AMA. So if you guys have questions for us, feel free to either email me info at backupplanpodcom or reach out through Instagram or comment below if you’re watching this on YouTube and we’ll do that proper catch up. But this week’s episode is strictly about like the things that we did this week, which was the sperm freezing. It was his physical and then, surprise, surprise, my foot really is as bad as I’ve been seeing. It is. Again, if you’re watching on YouTube, you will see a little quick flash of an image later on in the episode and you can see exactly what my nerve ending looks like in my foot. Thank you, mris. I had my first MRI this week. Like that’s weird. Mris are strange. How does that science work? I’ll never know. Anyway, this episode was filmed in front of my friend’s house on Friday afternoon while we waited for to come home so we could do a cute little like family dinner and order in. So the shadows are harsh, but the content is real and I’m just. I’m so glad to be moving forward on all of this. So the timeline now just to kind of skip ahead a little bit is I will be having surgery on my foot, not this Friday but next Friday, and then, once my cycle gets to the place it needs to get to, then I will be taking some hormones and we’ll get in on the IVF. We’ll be ready to go. So it’s getting nearer and nearer. It still kind of feels far away. I’m still getting a lot of that like hurry up and wait energy Just want to get this done. I just want to have a little baby in my arms. I want to take a positive pregnancy test, but I know that this was the universe’s way of saying hold on a second, take care of yourself before you take care of somebody else. So you know, now I get to run around with a kid. Hopefully I won’t feel part of my foot. I’m going to have a little bit of keep wanting to say paralysis. It’s not going to be paralysis, it’s just lost feeling, just like no nerve endings, which is so much more preferable to what I’m feeling now. But this isn’t a foot podcast, this is a baby podcast. And you want to hear about Michael’s sperm donation. I know you do, so we’ll just get to it. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you check out Backup Plan, pod on social media and let’s roll tape. It’s been an exciting week and now we’re waiting. We’ve had to drive across town so many times that, like I’m like let’s just grab dinner here before we go back down to Orange County, because otherwise we’re going to be sitting in three hours of traffic like we did on Wednesday, because Wednesday was Valentine’s Day, which is a great day to make a donation I think the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me. But on the way home I just didn’t even think about the fact that like people would be leaving early for dates and shit like that, it was three hours of traffic. So we’re here, we’re outside of my friend’s house waiting for her to show up so we can have dinner with her, and it’s Friday and we had literally an entire week of doctor’s appointments. So there was Monday physical for you. Tuesday physical number two for you We’ll get to that. Wednesday cryopreservation. Thursday podiatry appointment for me. And then Friday, another cryo appointment for you. So Monday physical we drive to San. No, no, we drove to Newport and yeah.

Michael: 5:29

So I got there and they were going to do my physical, but first I had to have. So they have to do a blood work and a urinalysis before you donate sperm, because they have to make sure that you are you know, just completely disease and infection free. They have to make sure that you know, whatever they’re going to be using to fertilize the eggs is that we’re not transferring any diseases, particularly because they could be liable if they did such a thing. So anyway, right before you donate sperm you have to get a physical. You know they’re going to check your body and see if you have any obvious visible signs of infection. They’re also going to do a urinalysis, which you know, mostly to roll out STDs and things like that, and then do blood work to see if there’s something you know that maybe even you don’t know about lurking inside. So we get there and I knew that they had said that I needed to arrive ready to give a urine sample, but I just completely forgot. So I’ve been traveling for work the last two weeks in a row and I haven’t really been home very much, but I spent the whole last week in Seattle, which is a very wet climate, especially in the winter, I immediately come to Southern California, which, as most of you know, is a very dry climate, and I didn’t think that it actually would have any like tangible effect on me. But when I got there they were like, okay, well, let’s, let’s take your blood first so we can get that out of the way. And I’m like, okay, good, like I’m good at giving blood, I have these two veins that like show up really well on my right arm.

Meredith: 7:10

And I walked in and was like, oh the nurse, she’s so good at finding veins, like it’s so hard to find a vein for me always, and she got it first, like right off the bat, and I was like, oh, she’s good, Don’t even worry about it.

Michael: 7:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then for me, she just could not find a vein. I was like squeezing a stress ball. She kept tapping my, my inner arm just to see if something would show up, Like nothing was coming. And she’s like you’re really dehydrated. And I was like I didn’t think I was, but I guess so. So I drink two bottles of water and still just nothing. So so finally, I do have a couple veins on my hand that show up really well. So she’s like well, it’s not ideal, but let me go in through your hand. She puts an IV in my hand and it starts to give blood and then just stops.

Meredith: 8:03

So long story short Michael’s a vampire.

Michael: 8:07

Right, or I died and didn’t realize it and I’m just walking around like, hey guys, you know what I mean, but I’m actually dead.

Meredith: 8:14

I think you’re a vampire. That’s what I would go with. You give vampire vibes before you give anything else. So they went ahead with the physical, the actual physical physical, which wasn’t very much right.

Michael: 8:27

No, the physical was easy Basically. Yeah, you, I mean you can keep your underwear on. They’re just, they’re just checking the body for any, like you know, specific signs of some type of infection, just to see if I have any spots on my body that correspond with having having an infection. You know, she asks me to breathe and listens to to my lungs through the step. Stethoscope takes my heart rate. Yeah, and, just, you know, looks at your fingernails, just places that you would think to check on someone to make sure that they’re healthy.

Meredith: 8:57

You can keep your underwear on. It’s going to be the title of the episode. So we had to come back the next day for Michael to do the P sample and the blood sample, which was, I mean, not ideal but fine. We went back at seven am To get that done because we both had busy schedules the next day. And then Wednesday was when we drove to Santa Monica to do the cryopreservation, and I will let you describe that because I have no idea what it was like.

Michael: 9:31

It was clear that this kind of place is a place that is very. They’ve probably been doing sperm donations for years and they’re very comfortable with it, but I had never done one before and it was my first time, so I was a little bit nervous. So the guy takes me back to the room. The room is very comfortable. It’s very nice. There’s just a chair. It’s away from the wall, which is great. Everything is very sterile. They have like a pad for you. Well, no, think about it. Think about why you wouldn’t want to chair up against the wall?

Meredith: 10:07

Is it just in the middle of the room?

Michael: 10:09

Yes, oh, yeah. So anyway, yeah, and we have to sign some paperwork or whatever. He shows me where to put the sample when I’m done. And then there’s also like this big screen TV in there and a laptop in case you like. Didn’t bring anything to prepare.

Meredith: 10:29

Was there like a? Was it just in incognito mode in the browser? I wouldn’t even want to touch the keyboard.

Michael: 10:36

I didn’t even open the laptop, so I have no idea.

Meredith: 10:39

So it’s very clearly like this room is only used for this.

Michael: 10:42

Oh, yes, yes, no, this was not a clinical room that they repurposed for any other reason. There was. There was like headphones that you could put on, like noise canceling headphones, with like ear covers, so, you know, to make it even more sanitary, and whatever you pulled up on the laptop could be projected to the, to the TV. I just, I wasn’t. I wasn’t about any of that.

Meredith: 11:05

Did you get like an AV less than then when you came in? Was that like the most complicated part of it?

Michael: 11:09

No, he kind of just assumed that that I would figure out, yeah, that I would figure out how to do it, yeah, so, and he also, like, showed where the Wi-Fi was, in case you brought your own device, you know, just whatever, whatever you needed to do. So, anyway, that’s as much detail as I’ll go into. The only thing that I will say is that, like, for me, if I was doing such a thing, I would prefer just a completely, like dark, soundproof booth, and everything about this place was great, except that is the one part that was missing. You’re in an exam room that is right off of a busy hallway, you’re hearing people going back and forth the whole time, you’re hearing people talk out in the hallway. It just wasn’t, wasn’t ideal for that.

Meredith: 11:57

So then did you not use the headphones there, or you had your own headphones?

Michael: 12:01

I had my own headphones, yeah, I just wasn’t interested in touching anything on that TV stand, so you know.

Meredith: 12:09

So was there no ambiance lighting, then I would have wanted ambiance lighting.

Michael: 12:14

I preferred no lighting at all. I turned all the lights completely off, you know, also because just in the off chance that there is like a hidden camera somewhere Not that you know, they don’t have night vision, but I just I don’t know, I just, yeah, I just I needed to pretend that I was not where I was. Yeah, I needed to pretend that I was just like at home in my own bedroom, Anyway.

Meredith: 12:41

So that was Wednesday and we had the very long drive home. And this is when I should like interject and say that last week I talked about my bad foot. I have a bad foot and I’ve always had a bad foot and I had bunion surgery like two years ago, and I still have this problem with an inflamed nerve and I did something called cryo surgery which calmed it down for a little bit, but it is very quickly wearing off and my foot’s been in really bad condition. And what I’ve decided during this week which I’m not happy about, but it is what it is Is that I have to get the staking care of before I start the IVF. And on oh wait, on Thursday okay, thursday is when we went to the podiatrist. No, we went to Wednesday, we went to the podiatrist. Oh my God, I can’t even keep it all straight anymore. So Wednesday not only did we go do Michael’s donation in the afternoon, in the morning we went to the podiatrist. Nothing sexier, nothing more romantic. And that was when she was like, yeah, the surgery is not as bad to recover from as the bunion surgery you had. So like, we can take care of this and you can recover enough to start IVF pretty quickly. So Thursday was when I went for the MRI, discovered how big this inflamed nerve is in my foot and we’re just going to push the IVF a month, which is fine, because we’ve got your stuff on lock, don’t have to worry about that anymore, and I’m going to have surgery on my foot in two weeks. I just got that scheduled today, so that’s very exciting. So that was Thursday, and then Friday is today and we came back here to Santa Monica to do another donation, because it’s just best to have more on hand if I have to do any more rounds. This way, michael doesn’t have to worry about coming back. Was there anything different about your experience today?

Michael: 14:28

Not really. It was faster and easier.

Meredith: 14:31

Good to know and that’s been. That’s the medical update this week is that IVF is being pushed a month. We have two samples. I don’t know how many vials we get to you know. Have you seen if you’ve gotten? You haven’t gotten any information from kind body saying like here’s what we got.

Michael: 14:47

I haven’t checked my email yet, but I should probably check and see if they sent me anything.

Meredith: 14:52

There may be something exciting in the email, but we’ll see. But yeah, I mean, I preferred this method because I don’t know, like just being alone in your house knowing what you were doing in the other room, and like trying to be silent, or like closing myself off in a bedroom and pretending I’m not there. That was all weird. This just felt more like, oh, I have to drop something off of the post office, oh, I’m going to stop by kind body, like I will say the other thing that I really liked about kind body, and I don’t think you you probably didn’t even realize this. The front doors were totally locked to the office. They have those girls sitting at the front desk have a button to push. So whenever they see, every time they see somebody walk up or walk back, they push the button. And I didn’t even think that there are situations where that would be a bit of a safety issue, because people are crazy. People are crazy and you know women’s reproductive rights are difficult to deal with.

Michael: 15:50

But they’re having babies, not having abortions.

Meredith: 15:54

Yeah, but it’s one way or the other. It’s like if you can take away a woman’s right to have children, you can take away to not have children, like it’s just an infringement of medical rights. That was what my mom always told me. Like growing up, being indoctrinated into the liberal agenda, my mom was like the problem with an abortion politically is if they tell you you have to have this baby, then they can just as easily tell you that you can’t have a baby. As I said about the, you know different countries where single women can’t get sperm from those sperm donors because that’s against the rule Bringing in married couples.

Michael: 16:31

in some countries can’t.

Meredith: 16:33

Yeah, so it’s. It can be a tricky subject and if somebody wants to have a problem with something, they can have it pretty all too easily. So that was nice. I felt safe. When I realized that door was locked I was like, oh nice, nice one. Have your thoughts changed on this? Like going to a doctor’s office and having it more official. Has it felt any more real yet?

Michael: 16:58

It feels like we’re a lot closer to actually being able to make this happen. It was nice to know that. You know that, instead of trying to do it at home or you’re like fumbling around with like I don’t know whatever your DIY kit was like. This is going to be like this is going to be like tested and frozen and counted and all that and and is going to be from what I, from what little I know about IVF like directly deposited into the egg as as opposed to the more rudimentary method.

Meredith: 17:34

Okay, let me see, I’m going to give you a very a theater majors version of IVF, so you can you can understand exactly how it’s going to happen. So, okay, so what we’re doing is a fresh transfer. So, even though your sperm are frozen, I’m going to be injecting myself with hormones that will grow the follicles in my, in my ovaries to produce eggs. So a woman is born with as many eggs as she’s ever going to have in her entire life. You, as a man, produce fresh sperm, always, all the time. It’s unfair, so the eggs that I have in my body at this point are like, not as Choice or ideal as the ones when I was 22.

Michael: 18:21

They’re like, they’re not Grade double a, they’re like bees or seas yeah so what they’re gonna do is all the follicles.

Meredith: 18:29

They’ll grow them so that they’ll all drop eggs at the same time. So everything’s on me very, very, very time. So I’ll have, I’ll be taking these hormones every single day, and then I think it’s 36 hours, hours before oh, I think that might be. I think that might 36 hours before the egg retrieval, I’ll take a trigger shot and it releases them. It is Okay. Well, we’ll continue this later. The backup plan is created, produced and hosted by me, meredith gate. Julian Higgins is my co-producer. You can find us on social media at backup plan pod. The best place to get updates is to sign up for our newsletter at backup plan podcom, where we also post all episodes, show notes and transfer routes. Thank you for listening.