more special.
“It was magical, wasn’t it?” Tammy said as she sat down on the couch, still in her wedding dress after she took off the coat.
“I never thought a city hall wedding could be so much fun. And lunch was fabulous,” Stacey said and sat down next to Tammy with a look of gratitude and disbelief. “I never believed we’d get here, did you? Marriage at a pretty little wedding. Your mom and grandmother there as our witnesses. I keep thinking I must be dreaming.” She looked happy and peaceful.
“I thought it would happen, I just didn’t know when or how,” Tammy said, smiling at her.
And now they had the rest to do, which had been the whole point of the wedding before they did it. They’d actually been carefully selecting their sperm donor for three months, but they both wanted to be married before they did it. And the one they wanted had made a sperm donation yesterday, just for them. He was Swedish-American, with blue eyes and strong masculine features, six feet four, and a medical student at NYU. He looked surprisingly like Tammy, as though he could have been her brother, and he looked a little like Stacey too. They were both tall and angular, and Stacey had been blond before her hair turned gray when she was twenty-five.
The vial was waiting for them in the refrigerator, since they’d picked it up at the sperm bank, and Stacey had been instructed how to use it. You didn’t need a doctor to do it, but it was convenient that she was one. There would be no slipups, and Tammy trusted her to do it more than anyone. It was the final seal of their vows and their bond on this very special day.
“Why don’t you go change,” Stacey said gently. “We’re not doing this in a Chanel dress,” she said and Tammy laughed.
She came back a few minutes later in her nightgown with nothing under it. Stacey was reading the directions again. She had three needleless syringes, in case there was a problem with any of them. It was a completely painless procedure, which only required directing the sperm upward with the syringe internally, just as it would happen during normal sex. It just came out of a syringe instead of a penis, but the process was simple and similar. There were no hormone shots involved or medication. Tammy was only thirty-two, and had no history of fertility problems. All they needed was the sperm.
“I’ll get out of my tuxedo and be back in a minute,” Stacey said. She was back five minutes later in her nightgown too. Tammy looked at her, and they both had the same idea at the same time. Since they lived together, they had the same cycle and the time was right for her too. They were both ovulating at the exact moment. Tammy had checked that morning. It was why they had wanted to get married on that day, so Tammy could get pregnant on their wedding day, if it worked the first time. They realized that they might have to try for six or eight months, or even a year for her to get pregnant. This was only the first try, but if it took, Tammy loved the idea of conceiving on the day they married. And she finally felt ready to get pregnant, after months of thinking about it.
“Why don’t we both do it?” Tammy voiced what they were both thinking and hadn’t said.
“Is that too weird? And I want to be sure there’s enough sperm for you,” Stacey said, but she could already see that there was more than they needed, even a lot more, just in case they spilled some. “There’s no point doing it halfway, we want this to work. My eggs are nine years older than yours. We have a much better chance of you getting pregnant.” They had known that for some time.
“You’re only forty-one. Women your age get pregnant all the time.”
“I know. I see the results in my practice. Half of the kids I see have mothers over forty now. Some of them have to work at it with IVF and hormones. I don’t know if I’m over the hill yet or not.” But her periods were as regular as Tammy’s.
“Let’s do it. That way maybe at least one of us might get pregnant. It could be you.” They hadn’t planned for that, and Stacey thought Tammy would handle it