Meine Suesse

Welcome to our new blog. My lovely wife Susanne wrote a beautiful post last night about the challenges she is facing as she's come off of antidepressant meds over the past month. It's not an easy process, but it's something that makes sense (as she explained) as we begin our initial attempts to bring a child into the world.

The funny thing is that I also deal on a regular basis with anxiety. I come from a big family of seven brothers and sisters (all born within a year of each other) and basically all of us suffer from either depression or anxiety. When Su and I began researching procuring donor sperm we learned that donors can't have any such mental or physical problems. So by choosing a donor who met the specifications we were looking for, we basically picked a donor who couldn't pass on my family's brain chemicals. I see that as a wonderful thing.

I'm a redhead and although it's a recessive gene we decided to go for a redhead. And since Susanne is brilliant (4.0 in everything) we figured we'd pick someone who had proven academic prowess. Of course, with the spermsicles on ice at our local fertility clinic, we just look at our donor as a blessing. We can't produce a child without sperm and I can't help with that. Of course, men can't produce children without available eggs, so it all seems pretty "even steven" to me.

By this time, you're probably wondering who we are. Here's what we wrote about each other on our archive blog prior to our wedding last August.

"How can we best describe ourselves? Monica is sort of hyper, never lacking for ideas and a thoughtful, caring person. Susanne is calm, brilliant and kind. (Can you tell we wrote these about each other?) We make a great team. Although Monica was in junior high when Susanne was born, we both feel that this just means that Monica knows more lyrics to songs from the 70s." Su is a social worker, and I am a former Peace Corps Volunteer and work for a federal agency in DC.

You may be wondering why I titled this post Meine Suesse. Susanne was born in Germany and almost all of her relatives still live there. She is "Susi” to them, and I like to call her what sounds to me like "My Susi" but it actually means “My Sweetie”. Susanne is an amazing woman, and she is such a blessing to me. Last night when we were talking about our artificial insemination journey that's just about to begin, she told me this-- "I don't want to have a baby, I want US to have a baby." I felt so connected--so part of a joint effort to have our family.

We'll be writing here and there on this blog. We don't know what the future holds. We may get pregnant right away. We may experience disappointment after disappointment. We may change course and opt for adoption. We don't know what the future holds, but we do know that our love is powerful and solid. So stay tuned. We predict great things to come! -Monica