Dear Cynthia, I was trying to post this on the "Ask Cynthia" page of your website, but I kept getting errors when I tried to log in. If you can help me with my dilemma, I would much appreciate!
I am a 34 year old lesbian in a relationship with a 35 year old lesbian. Because I was the one more "ready" to have a baby, I was the one who started trying first, last year, even though we both want to carry at some point. Seven months of inseminations later, I haven't been successful. Then, out of the blue, my sister died of a heart attack at age 36, due to medications she was taking for Bipolar Disorder. In my shock and grief, I impulsively told my partner we should inseminate her that month. We did it once, and guess what? Now she's seven and a half weeks pregnant.
I am thrilled and jealous all at once, and not to mention, grieving my sister very hard.
When we decided to inseminate my partner, we discussed keeping the original plan for me to try IVF this summer (I'm a teacher, and can only really do things like that in the summer.) In hypothetical terms, having two babies a few months apart seemed like an exciting idea.
Now that this is less "hypothetical," I have a decision to make, soon. I can't quite convey how badly I want to be pregnant -- I always have. I do not want to wait another year, until the following summer, to try. But I don't know if that is immature of me. I want to, ultimately, do what's best for our family. Is having 2 babies 4 months apart when I've just suffered a huge loss a crazy idea? I think it might be, but then again, I also think that life is short and there are no guarantees about what things will be like in a year or that there won't be miscarriages and my parents are getting older and I'm getting older and dammit -- I want to be pregnant already!
When it comes to getting pregnant, age is a huge factor, and though there may be a better time in your relationship and other factors, I would your chance to get pregnant more heavily than all of that. It sounds like the rest is good enough to be secondary to your passionate desire to be pregnant and your age. By other measures, 34 is not an advanced age, but for getting pregnant it is. Only you can guess if you have the energy and your relationship has the strength to add another baby to the mix, but it sounds like you're up for it. Rarely do people get pregnant when everything is in place and there are plenty of resources available. Heterosexuals usually get pregnant without fully committing to it. Needing to use donor insemination forces lesbians to be much much more conscious about the commitment than heteros. That means lesbians have to have more courage and faith that even though we don't know if we can handle it, and it seems impossible, that we somehow will. And we do. Let me know if this answers (or doesn't) your question!
