Tuesday, April 28, 2009

I Might Be Your Biological Mother, But Don't Try To Find Me - I Will Reject You

So I've been considering prostitution for some time now, and I'm convinced that the "pros" (like cute shorts, free condoms, untaxed income) FAR outweigh the "cons" (such as no 401K, lost vaginal tone, and long hours), but then I remembered that I have had another option for bringing in some extra income: Egg Donation.

No, not Easter eggs (by the way, if you still have those in your fridge, you might consider throwing them in the compost pile, I'd hate if you caught worms from ingesting a three week old chicken fetus), HUMAN eggs. Think about it: men donate sperm all the time! They leave it in their pants! Hotel rooms! Sometimes little plastic cups! In hookers! The men in Iowa are even leaving it in other men now! Men practically leave a snail's trail of semen behind them wherever they go, and I'm just glad that sperm is not, like, fluorescent green or something, because can you imagine how hard it would be to eat again when every public surface glowed like algae in the moonlight? It's better that we can't see that shit without a black light.

And being the uber feminist that I am (HA)((DOUBLE HA)), I know that I am entitled to the same rights as men, and should be able to leave my slimy DNA everywhere they do, so I googled "oocyte donation" and I came across this article, so apparently lots of other women are owning their bodily functions and harnessing the inherent power of their ovaries for financial gain, and I'm thinking I might join the ranks and sprinkle a few more Cat babies out there in the general population because who DOESN'T want a crude, quasi-addict with a porn fetish as a child? I know I do.

You may have noticed that I said a "few more" Cat babies, and that is because I kind of already donated eggs one time in college when everyone was doing it, except that it wasn't in college, it was in 2006, and practically NO ONE was doing it, but I read this book called Julie & Julia - 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen about this chick who decides that making every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which includes ingredients like bone marrow and snails, French people are disgusting mother fuckers) is going to keep her from going bat shit crazy, murdering her husband, and buying 30 cats.

Oh wait, that's me.

Anyway, it's a great book - funny and inspiring and touching and all that bullshit - but the relevant part is that this chick Julie mentions a time when she she made $7,000 by donating her eggs to a family in another state. My ears perked up like they do when I hear people having sex, and I thought to myself, "Self? You might want to look into this whole egg thing for yourself". So I did, and although it turns out that the going rate for eggs in Minnesota is only $4,000, I would have done it for $20 and a six-pack, so I signed up in April of 2006 with a fertility clinic in the area.

Thus began a SIX MONTH SCREENING PROCESS which included psychological evaluations, complete family medical history research, medical tests of every imaginable kind, pelvic exams, counseling sessions, and finally, filling out a W-2 which for some reason has always confused the hell out of me (Do I claim one? Two? WHAT THE HELL DOES EXEMPT MEAN? Am I head of household if I'm the only one here? Can I count my gold fish as a dependent?), but finally I passed all the tests and was put into a book of "donors".

I assumed the egg recipient would be the one to select her donor, but it turns out that a nurse/social worker matches eggs to uteri based on common physical traits (hair color, height, race) between the egg maker and the loser who couldn't make her own eggs. Just kidding about the "loser" thing, what I really meant was "lazy".

Anyway, after a couple of weeks, I was matched to a recipient and began a series of SELF-ADMINISTERED hormone shots to beef up my ovaries and increase the egg production. I don't remember exactly how it worked, but I was on a strict birth control regimen which consisted of NO SEX UNDER ANY CONDITION until three weeks post-egg retrieval (apparently I was fertile enough for dozens of multiple births to be an issue should one of my ex's sperm get past the goalie, imagine that), and I had to inject my belly or inner thigh twice a day with hormones for about three weeks. I also had to drive to the clinic every other morning for a vaginal ultrasound to check the progress of the Giant Ovary Project, and to draw blood to test my hormone levels and determine the optimal time (literally, the exact time of day) that the retrieval would be most successful.

Then on the night before the retrieval, I had to have my girlfriend NeeNee inject my lower back with the biggest fucking needle I have ever seen, and frankly this was the only part of the process that scared me. Not only was it roughly the size of my windshield wiper blade, but also it had to be injected EXACTLY twelve hours before I was scheduled for the retrieval. We had about a five minute window to get it right, or the whole process would have to be scrapped and started from scratch. Luckily, my girlfriend works in the medical field and was studying for her RN at the time, and I was shocked and relieved that I didn't feel the needle. I may also have been drunk, but don't tell them.

For the retrieval, they knocked me out (THE BEST PART!) and slid an incredibly long, thin needle all the way in through my lady bits, down the fallopian tubes, and sucked out a total of 12 incredibly ripe eggs. Then they woke me up, handed me a check for $4,000, and sent me on my drugged-up merry way.

The only down side of this whole Easter Bunny project for me was that I ran the risk of one of my grapefruit-sized ovaries (I shit you not)((you could feel them through my belly with your hand)) might decide it wanted to flip over because it was so heavy. But that didn't happen, and a few months later the clinic called to tell me that my donation had resulted in a pregnancy (TWINS!) and it ended up being a really great experience for me (and my bank account).

So if the prostitution thing doesn't pan out, any of you want to have my babies?



(OH GOD I just remembered that when I told my dad about my plan to donate, he asked me if I was I was okay with the closed-donation policy which means I could never find out who received my eggs or lay any claim to the resulting children, and I said that I was because to me the donation was similar to donating blood - I was giving my DNA to help someone who needed it, but it wasn't an actual child. Then my dad traumatized me for life by saying that he probably has dozens of kids running around out there somewhere, and when I asked him if he used to donate sperm, he said yes. Except then he explained that he did it the old-fashioned way, that it was the 70s and "free love" and all that shit, so my dad basically told me that he was a slut.)((SHUDDER))

27 comments:

  1. I can always count on you for a good ab work out of laughter in the morning- somehow though, i'm fully tempted to donate every egg in my body... UNTIL the huge needle part... i dont trust any of my friends to shoot me in the back with a needle, let alone do it myself. You rock!

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  2. I don't think you want me to have your baby.
    I'm way too premenstrual, premenopausal, and just all around plain nuts!

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  3. I heart you. But I dont wnt your kids.

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  4. Blogger sucks, my first comment got lost. Anyway, that process sounds horrible. But I'm really lazy.

    And thanks for the offer but, OH MY GOD NO MORE KIDS FOR ME. Ahem, sorry. Thanks anyway.

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  5. Thats QUITE a process! But its GREAt that someone got a child out of it! Good job Cat! Its funny as shit cause one day in like 7 years you are gonna see a girkl who is 10 and looks kinda like you and go..."Um could it be?" lol

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  6. I am seriously laughing at the comment about your dad being a slut.

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  7. i once heard the going rate for eggs was 10k. but it sounds like an awful lot of work for only 4, unless your plan is to take over the world with you annonymous offspring, turning them all on at the same time like in that robot movie with will smith.

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  8. Wow! Good for you. When I was younger I thought that I would be able to donate like you did... but now that I am a mom... and I know what my babies look like.... I don't think that I could do what you did so very selflessly. You are are wonderful person!

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  9. Like I don't have enough issues without grapefruit-sized ovaries!! (Ow.)

    I've never looked in to the whole egg-donation process. That's a lot of work and needles! At least you not only got paid, but helped someone in the process. That's pretty great.

    So are you.

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  10. It all sounded perfectly fine until the last five paragraphs. The getting knocked out part was the only highlight. Needles? No. It is kind of cool that you busted out twins though. You should have gotten $8,000.

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  11. Way to go! You're like the Johnny Appleseed of bloggerdom! Only instead of planting trees you're planting love. And getting mad money, Yo!

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  12. Yep, been through this 3 times for IVF, so I had all the same shit but I was the one paying for it! Still didn't get any kids out of it, probably should've used your eggs instead...

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  13. I was going to have an egg on toast later...I can't do it now!!!

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  14. OOH I donated my eggs once too. I only got $1500. (UTAH SUCKS for so many reasons!) and I left them 18 eggs. 14 of them fertilized. I was robbed!

    now, going through this entire process for myself, I am lucky to get 4 fucking eggs. Get pregnant now girl. Getting old sucks!

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  15. I may take up egg donation too. Good way to pay off college loans!

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  16. Hmmm I wonder how much I could donate eggs for and if they'd want mine? LOL Good stuff.

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  17. Wow. I had no idea donating eggs was so complicated! I'm officially taking it off my "get rich quick" list. Prostitution sounds like a much more viable option.

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  18. I wish you still had the gimp arm, cuz I loves me a defective woman. If you decide to turn tricks, let me know if you shatter another appendage, k?

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  19. You know you're awesome, right? I read a lof of IF blogs and yeah, awesome.

    (I would do it too, but they don't pay you over here and call me a selfish bitch, but if I'm going to jab myself with needles and go in for egg retrieval, then I want some sort of compensations for it.)

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  20. Holy shit dude, those were YOUR kids that showed up in this year's Easter Basket? Nice work with the egg donation. I have a friend who just tried the embryo adoption and the transplant didn't take so it's back to the drawing board.

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  21. Fuck! That's wild, Cat. So awesome that you did it. Is it weird to think that you have biological twin children out in the world somewhere?

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  22. I'm literally too old to donate or to be a prostitute. When I found that out I was devastated. No more Plan B for me.

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  23. I find it ridiculous that woman get 4K for donating an egg, while men get $75 for 4 ounces of semen, and it better be a full 4 ounces too. On a side note, do they have nice magazines for you to look at while you're at the clinic?

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  24. My eggs are kind of like the forgotten easter eggs in the fridge. I'd love to sell mine, but they are old and most likely full of worms.

    If I were younger, however and full of fresh eggs, I would so sell mine. I wish I had thought of that back when I was trying to live on air...

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  25. Josh - I'm surprised they have to pay men at all.... :):):):)

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  26. I never knew women got paid to give up their eggs. This might be a better option than education has been lately.

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  27. I'll let you know if my eggs are in jeopardy, but I'm just working on getting John to give up some swimmers right now, so I think I'm good.

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You.Yeah, you. Speak the fuck up.