Nine months after Peggy’s departure on her self-imposed two year sabbatical Bette Porter was thriving in her professional career and new role as the Executive Chair for the CAC. Peggy’s personal assistant Michael was ensconced in his new albeit temporary position as Bette’s right hand man and even though forever loyal to Peggy Peabody he loved his new job and his new boss. The renovations at the CAC were well underway. Bette and the board of directors couldn’t be more pleased with the progress.

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When Bette and Tina got up on this particular morning they were excited about what the day held for them. Tina was ovulating and they hoped that today would be the day the insemination would take. They had been trying home inseminations unsuccessfully for the past six months so this time they planned to do it in Dr. Wilson’s office.

Bette had an early morning meeting so the plan was to drop Tina off at the Planet so she could have breakfast with their friends while Bette met with a client. Afterwards Bette would come back so they could go together to Sean Heaney’s loft to pick up the sperm. Sean was a good friend as well as one of the emerging artists that had gotten a career boost from his shows at the Porter Art Gallery. He was honored that Bette and Tina had chosen him as the sperm donor to father their first child.

For the past six months every time Tina was ovulating she would visit Sean to pick up the sperm, which he would ejaculate into a cup while she waited in the other room. He was beside himself with excitement and anticipation and even called it an auspicious occasion the first time they collected it but after six months without success it had become a bit tedious. None of them anticipated that it would have taken this long for Tina to conceive and it was taking a toll on their enthusiasm.

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Tina had been a very successful Development Executive for Shaolin Movie Studios in Burbank, CA. She’d moved quickly up the ranks over her eight year career, but the job was highly stressful and demanding. There was no way that she could keep up with a career like that and try to raise a family, so when she and Bette decided to do this incredibly major thing Tina resigned to prepare her body for pregnancy. She exercised, ate right, reduced stress, and monitored her cycles. She was in great physical shape, so couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t gotten pregnant after trying for so long, but month after month the home pregnancy test showed negative. The couple was getting concerned that Tina wouldn’t conceive so they decided to do the inseminations under a doctor’s care in the hopes of increasing their chances for conception or at the very least identifying the problem should there be one.