Like Clockwork

Like Clockwork

Article by Lindsey, West Yorkshire, 02/08/2014

Roadside insemination hadn't worked and the following month our donor was on holiday over ovulation. So when the next cycle came along it was serious business and we decided to inseminate three days running. We'd planned how it would work before Luna was born: she would be tucked up in her cot fast asleep by 7pm when our sperm donor would arrive.

At 8pm the four of us sat in our living room: our donor, always keen for a good pre-insemination chat, perhaps to calm his nerves; Sally, glancing at the clock periodically and drinking half a bottle of ginger pale ale in an effort to relax; and me, pinned to the sofa by a cluster-feeding four-month-old Luna.

9.30pm. I put a wide-awake Luna in her cot and wound up the clockwork musical box on her mobile - a full wind could equal a very quick shower, a race downstairs to get the nappy wash on or...I hoped...an insemination. I unscrewed the lid of the little plastic pot and carefully drew up the stringy, gloopy semen into the syringe. I gave the musical box another wind - the extra thirty seconds could prove vital - and telling Luna I'd be back in a minute, I headed through to the spare bedroom where Sally was lying on the bed. She'd tried to create a bit of ambience with a couple of candles and the bedside lamp; soft music coming from the i-Pod dock was just about drowning out the musical box nursery rhyme jangle. 

10.30pm. Luna, in bed next to me, had just about fed to sleep. Sally, having spent an hour with her pelvis tipped up in a room of ambience, felt it was time for some sleep too. She slipped into bed next to me and I reached over awkwardly to grip her hand. Tomorrow we'd do the same. And the next night the same. And with a bit of luck, by this time next year, we'd have two babies...wide awake at 9.30pm...maybe by then Luna would be able to wind the musical box by herself...