THE FIRST CYCLE

After their embryo transfer, our recipients, Jenny and Erin, stayed in a hotel near the clinic. To give themselves the best chance of the procedure working, Erin was on bed rest for a couple of days until it was time to fly home.

Now began the two week wait. Until the pregnancy test two weeks after the transfer, there is no indication whether or not a woman who has completed an embryo transfer is actually pregnant. This is a nail-bitingly stressful time. The intended mothers would be cataloguing each twinge, wondering if a bit of spotting was a sign that the embryo was implanting in the womb, or being rejected, and generally on pins and needles.

Many women can't wait the full two weeks and use early home pregnancy tests to try and get an indication of whether or not the transfer worked. Jenny and Erin were no exception.

The problem with these tests is they are not certain. It is hard to tell exactly when the developing early pregnancy might produce enough hormones to register on the test. In other cases, a "chemical pregnancy" produced by the drugs one takes to do the IVF cycle could indicate a pregnancy where none exists.

With all of this in mind, I waited to hear what Jenny and Erin's early tests were revealing.

PROOF THAT GAYS PARENT BETTER

Logic dictates that lesbian or gay male couples are better parents, on average, than straights. After all, gay couples are almost always parents by choice, not by accident. And they have to jump through so many legal, practical and societal hoops to have children that the process selects for those most dedicated to having kids.

The Canadian government did a "study of studies". It reviewed all the research out there on gay families. It found that almost all the studies show that kids of gays do as well or better than children in straight families/

Surprise: the new Conservative Canadian government tried to surpress the study. It's bad news, after all: gays are better parents than straights. Why must gay families continue to suffer at the hands of biased bigots? There is no reason to deny gay parents the rights we need to care for our children. There is every reason to give us equal rights. It's not just the morally right thing to do, it's scientifically proven!

"SUMMARY: The study for Canada's Justice Department finds that kids raised by lesbian parents are just as socially competent as kids raised by straights.

A Canadian study has found that same-sex parents are just as good, if not better, than opposite-sex parents.

The study, released by the Canadian Justice Department, was commissioned in 2003 by its then-Liberal government. The study primarily focused on lesbian couples.

The study, authored by Professor Paul Hastings at Concordia University, asserts that children raised by lesbian parents are equally as socially competent as children raised by heterosexual parents.

"A few studies suggest that children with two lesbian mothers may have marginally better social competence than children in traditional nuclear families, even fewer studies show the opposite, and most studies fail to find any differences," says the 74-page study.

Hastings, who only just gained permission to release the study, suggested that publication was restricted by the Conservative government that regained power in 2006, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In December, the Conservatives tried to challenge the constitutional definition of marriage, but the efforts were defeated in the House of Commons.

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005. "