And We Roll Over: The Grape

There's this great KITH skit called Kathie Rolls Over. It's the Cathy/Kathie series, these really funny office women. One of them notices that Kathie is about to "roll over". They cheer her on as she types frantically. Then the camera moves to the back of the womens' heads and you see that they all have counters on the back of their heads. Kathie's rolls over to zero.

We've rolled over. It's week nine. We have a grape.

I'm working hard to pay attention to my instincts. Everything tells me that the baby is okay. It's hard to hold onto that faith when it feels like the world is so cruel and random at times.

I'm holding on as tightly as I can.

M. told her sibs last night. As expected, her sister's reaction was cool. She said "wow" about a million times. Her fantastically awesome brother continues to be fantastically awesome. Although M. told her sis last year we were going to start trying in Jan, I think it took them by surprise. Like many couples, we haven't been overtly public through the TTC months, so it feels more sudden to them than to us.

It's funny how M.'s family has consistently acted like we owe them more information than a straight couple. When M. came out she was told that she should have said something earlier, given them more time. Honestly, they wanted more time to try to change her mind.

Now we're getting the same message: that we should have given them more warning. I'm sorry, but A LOT of couples don't tell their families until they are actually pregnant. Just because they need some time to mentally wrap their minds around a same-sex family does NOT mean we are obligated to tell them sooner than we want to.

So, happy grape. I'm tired, head hurts, gassy and feeling ever so slightly sick. M. would smile and say that I'm pregnant, after all.

Risk Manifested

I honestly don't know what to say. Ms. Bri at Unwellness hit the 2%, the dreaded bad side of chance that nobody really wants to ever have to face and too many do. And it sucks. And there's no good reason, because life's most painful things don't come prepackaged with a logical, understandable reason.

M. and I are grieving a coast away.

The Baby Name Game

Let me tell you, baby name books are downright annoying. I mean just stupider than stupid can be. They make these claims on their jackets to give you at least a billion names, you flip through them until your head hurts, then you realize that 99% of those names are full of crap.

Crap, I say.

Here are my general rules of baby naming.

1. No awful nicknames. Always think about what they're going to call the little frog on the playground in third grade. Yes, think like the meanest nine year old you can conjure up. If it can get them beat up, don't do it.
   
2. Your friends call dibs. Yes, they found the absolute BEST name in the entire world and it's now theirs. It's out of the running. It is no longer yours.
   
3. You can't name them after your friends. I know someone who is naming her baby the same name as a friend of hers. It's a beautiful name, but really.
   
4. Nothing too common. The world has enough Olivias and Sophies. There are too many Logans and Jacks. No more Hannahs and Emmas on the playground. These are all very nice names, but enough is enough.
5. No pet names. You would not believe how many people I know who have a pet named Zoe, myself included. I can think of at least five Zoe's of various furry dispositions in about 2 seconds. Myself being named a name that is also used as a DOG NAME, I am somewhat sensitive to this one. The sad thing, I really love the name Zoe, almost so much that I would violate my own rules, except my little kitty is my Zoe bug.
   
6. No made up names. Let Ashlin, Kaylin, Maylin, Conlin die the death they deserve.
   
7. No weird spellings. Yes, that's you, Tiphanie, Oskar, Emilee, Madyson. Oh, and you too, Kevon. It is not nice to force a child to spend his or her entire life correcting the spelling of his or her name.
   

And those are a few of my rules. As you can see, it's going to be fun for M. and I to come up with the perfect, urban-hip, creative, I-have-two-moms-now-fuck-off name.

Actually, we may have our names.

And no, we're NOT telling.

The Egg Baby

During our, ahem, journey...to put it nicely...toward pregnancy M. and I had many instances where we were wiping and checking toilet paper, desperately wishing the pink, brown, red spotting we were seeing might, just might, maybe, perhaps, possibly, OH LORD PLEASE...be the infamous, legendary, stuff of myth...implantation spotting.

When we were in our last TWW I went to the bathroom while we on the ferry heading toward the penninsula for our camping trip. And there it was...

THE EGG BABY

Have you ever cracked an egg and noticed that stringy little bit of brownish/whitish opaque egg white that clings to the yolk, the little bit that simply refuses to seperate in any neat manner? That is what M. and I call THE EGG BABY.

There I was, staring at my very own egg baby, a stringy little bit of dark brown, mucousy STUFF (yeah, yeah, TMI), clinging stubbornly to the toilet paper. I would normally try to get M.'s attention then shove the toilet paper in her face, demanding that she evaluate every little aspect.

But I couldn't. We were on the ferry, after all.

So I carefully placed the egg baby on a clean piece of toilet paper, folded it, walked out into the washroom outside the bathroom, trying to pretend that there was nothing out of the ordinary about my journey. I grabbed M. and hissed...

M., look at this. It's an egg baby.

She looked at the toilet paper that I was gingerly cradling in my hand as we huddled in the corner, looked back at me and said...

Look at what?

She swears to this day that she saw nothing of significance.

And that was our implantation spotting, which we have lovingly now nicknamed...The Egg Baby. It was tiny, M. missed it, and it happened on the Washington State Ferry system.

Happy 50,000: Babycakes Greatest Hits

Sometime yesterday babycakes hit 50,000. Because I spent most of the day in a pregnant fog I didn't have a chance to commemorate the very moment we turned over.

Greatest hits

Our first post ever. We started babycakes as a way to document our jounrey through TTC. Being Uber Prepared Lesbians, we started the blog WAY before we actually started trying to get pregnant. It's hard to imagine what we posted about before becoming consumed.

The Cartoons. I drew comics for a while to have something to post. And because I really like to draw. It's been a long time since a Two Girls comic has been done. Since we have SO much more to talk about, perhaps it's time for the comic to come back.

We delved into the donor frenzy with Stalking Dr. Bob, when any decent looking man with sperm was starting to look like an option.

We talked about life stuff. I graduated from nursing school, started my job, finished my first year as a nurse. We talked politics, because what is life if you don't talk politics.

We told our parents that we were actively trying to concieve, which was an adventure in itself.

Known Donor. In August we finally settled on asking a friend to be our known donor. The funny thing is that even though the decision had been made, it would take us quite a while to actually ask him (in November). I spent a lot of time talking to him about NOTHING. I contimplated bribery. Finally, I did it, in the dumbest, most stumbling way possible, but I did it.

And the answer was YES. Good lord!

Babycakes became a TTC blog. Well, after more anxiety and testing and visits to lawyers and more visits to lawyers.

We rang in 2006 then we did our very first insemination.

I have to say that the first insem was both wonderful and awful. For the first time we could actually be pregnant. It took us a while to realize that with each insem we were most likely NOT pregnant.

We had our first TWW then our very first BFN. His name was Sherman.

We inseminated two, three, four, five, six, seven more times before our luck changed. Their names were Gert, Monty (watching Monty Python when we insemed), Bambi, Lopez (watching Kids in the Hall when we insemed...oh, I really liked Lopez), 006, and Moneypenny. We went on progesterone. We struggled with finding a place to do IUI using our known donor. We learned a lot.

In the meantime we enterained ourselves with Photo Friday and stories about our donor.

Finally we stumbled into cycle number eight with very few reserves left. We'd run out of hope. We knew our chances of getting pregnant were jack shit. We were starting to plan for the possibility that we were facing unexplained infertility and may have to move to IVF.

M. said she knew when I decided I was going to kill the teenager having a truly stupid conversation on his cell phone in front of us at Subway. I thought maybe, must maybe when my s/sx didn't drop off at my usual day 10 (even on the progesterone I could tell that they dropped off). It was our first IUI cycle but our timing was off.

On Friday, July 28th babycakes officially became a pregnancy blog. Eight tries, countless frustrations and tears, a billion newly aquired coping skills later M. and I were pregnant.

Thank you to everyone for sharing our journey with us. I hope our experience has been helpful in some way. I know that the support M. and I get from this blog is priceless. It really has kept us sane to both have a place to talk about our feelings and to know that people are listening.

Our love goes out to each one of you.

My, what a nice, full, slippery pulse you have....

What made my day today? Acupuncture.

Since we've become pregnant, acupuncture has become the best naptime EVER. I used to mostly fall asleep once the needles were in...now I completely zonk out. It's great.

Today my acupuncturist actually got rid of my headache for the rest of the day! And she's been working on a scar on my shin that is almost GONE. The best part? As she's taking my pulse she says...

Wow, your pulse is full and slippery, a great pregnant pulse.

Yee haw! My pulse is pregnant. She said by the end of the session my pulse was nice and strong. I've never been so excited about my damn pulse.

Eight Weeks: The Little Kidney Bean

Well, we've reached eight weeks today. So far, so good. The little frog is the size of a kidney bean.

Yay little frog.

Midwife #2

We have finished our visit with midwife #2. I'll call her Jane Midwife. There were things we liked better about her. There were some negatives. We are limited to either her or Sally Midwife because they are the only two private practice CNMs who deliver where we want to have the baby.

Pros

• Much more professional office. Nice and clean.
• She emphasizes nutrition during pregnancy
• A good combo of western and non-western techniques. She talked about herbs and accupunture.

Cons

• She is a very boundary oriented, controlled person. She made it very clear not to expect her to be primary labor support and suggested that a doula would be a good idea. That was our plan anyway, but her attitude was a little off-putting.
  
• When we asked her if she had any questions about US, she answered "No, not really." Huh?
  
• We think she is uncomfortable working with same-sex couples. Yes, the biggie.

M. and I decided to ask Jane Midwife about working with SS couples because she announces on her website that she is a Christian. That in itself is not an issue but her announcing it to the world bothered us. So we decided to outright ask her about working with lesbians.

She blinked. Paused. Then gave us a kind of long answer that I actually can't remember ending with something like "...after all, we're all just people." At this point M. and I stared at her silently. Because the answer to our question is very simple and short...

That's not a problem for me.

So, what is more duanting? Having to deal with dogs or having your practitioner be uncomfortable with you? Yes, dear readers, if you picked door number 2, you get the prize.

M. is calling Sally Midwife tomorrow. We finally have our practitioner.

To Test or Not to Test

Almost one more week down. They are finally starting to move at a speed a little faster than molasses.
The testing issue

Being a pregnant woman over the age of thirty five (hey, I'm thirty five spot on, I don't think I should officially be considered "over", but WHATEVER) you have hit the magical mark, the arbitrary moment where you go from assumed to be healthy to assumed to have problems. You are assualted with words like "downs syndrome", "nuchal translucency" and "chromosomal abnormality". Instead of relaxing and enjoying your pregnancy, you are faced with a million different decisions.

I once sat in on a genetic counseling session with a pregnant woman over 35. It was scary as hell. In the state of WA your practitioner is require to tell you of the risks and possible screening involved in having a child when you are over the age of 35. Isn't that nice? Basically, they are required to scare you.

M. and I have settled on NO SCREENING or TESTING.

Yes kids. We're not going to do anything. Because screening leads to diagnostic testing and diagnostic testing leads to a risk of miscarriage from an amnio that we just aren't willing to take on. We would only end up worrying and we worry too much already.

M. wants to get an early ultrasound. I'm comfortable waiting for that until 18-20 weeks. This is irrational, but I just don't want to NOT see a heartbeat. If we have truly experienced fetal demise, my body will tell me. I don't want a machine to tell me. I don't want to go into an ultrasound all full of hope and walk out completely and utterly crushed.

I want to hold onto all the hope this baby represents as long as possible.

I REALLY want your peaches....

The mythology of pregnancy includes cravings and aversions. The rush to the store in the middle of the night for the notorius pickles and ice cream. That one thing that just makes your stomach turn every time you smell it.

If only it were that simple.

I've been hit by food aversion and hit hard. Not only does the idea of cooking ANYTHING make my stomach turn, there is almost nothing I really want to eat.

Except peaches. Beautiful, sweet-tart, juicy peaches. There are some other things I can manage to choke down, like cottage cheese or boiled eggs, but my world right now is about the peach. I just thought that putting peaches on saltine crackers would taste MIGHTY FINE.

Last week it was potatoes. Except I wasn't having an adversion to everything else on the face of the planet, just craving potatoes.

For someone who has loved to cook her entire life, this is such a loss. I feel like part of me has been cut off. I can't take care of my M. like I'm used to. I can't spend hours pouring through cookbooks and thinking of all the delicious dishes I'm going to make. I have no desire to bake.

Unless, maybe, it's peach pie.

The Ticking Clock of Pregnancy

TTC is a toroturously infinate process. There's no way to know when it will end. Then you get the BFP and all of the sudden you have a certain amount of time before everything will change.

Yikes.

Most people think about that moment when you body will force you to push that baby through what seems like such a tiny hole. Once you're pregnant, that baby has to come out and it's only a matter of time. Tick...tick...tick....

Not me. What is my clock ticking about? What has suddenly become unavoidable? What am I worried that I may not be able to get through? In approximately seven months and thirteen years we will be the parents of a...TEENAGER.

It's no longer a concept, we cannot avoid it, and it might just be more painful than giving birth.

Belly Shot #2 7w0d

Seven Weeks, Spot On

Goodness, I can't believe how big the belly is already. It's crazy. And I can't even suck it in, it actually hurts to suck it in. So here I am with my new found belly.

Amazing that the little frog is still so small.

Belly Shot #1
BFF, thanks for the memories

Keeping Secrets

How can anyone keep pregnancy a secret?

Maybe it's just me. I'm a very vocal person and when I don't feel good, I make noises. Little moaning I-Feel-Like-Crap noises. And you know what? Pregnancy don't feel so great.

Yes, dear readers, I'm getting sicker. Still not puking, but it would be nice to have my stomach back. I'm tired of this constantly queasy, car sick feeling. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of all the strange little aches and pains that plague me. I want me back.

And yes, I'll take some cheese and crackers with my whine.

Funnily, I'm starting to forget what it felt like to feel normal. I guess this will make me appreciate it all the more when I start feeling better in six looooooooong weeks.

Although it's still early and too shakey for my taste, I'm glad we've told people. It makes it better that others know why I'm so miserable.

7 weeks today.

Yikes.

DtD's Reaction, Part II

Ever since we got pregnant, DtD has become very focused on his own desire to have children.

Is this a bad thing?

In a lot of ways I don't think so. It's a long process to go from I want children to I'm ready to have children. I see what he's doing as starting this process.

At the same time, it's a little scary.

What if his sights turn on us? We have that baby that he's always wanted. Using him as our donor requires a lot of trust that DtD will follow through on his agreement and not threaten M. as parent. His biggest negative as our donor has always been that he wants a family himself.

I think all this kid talk is about him coping with the reality of what we're all doing.

As wonderful as it is, it's also hurtful. I hate that by getting what we've worked so hard for we're ending up hurting our friend. At the same time, it's unavoidable.

What do we do?

Firstly, we support him. He's going through the same process all queers go through when we start thinking in the family way. It's a hard process that involves examining and confronting our own self worth, the way our families view us, and the way society views us. We're there for him.

Secondly, we keep him connected. Reacting to our fears and pushing him away would be a huge mistake. We care very much about him and there's no reason he shouldn't stay involved with our family.

Practitioner #2

Well, we had our meeting with Sally Midwife.

What I liked:

1. She's low interventions. At the same time if interventions (pit, epidural, vacuum extraction, c-section) become necessary, as in the baby is in distress, she'll be quite upfront.
2. She's a nurse. Yes, I love that she's a nurse. Safety first. Because we're all about safety.
3. She's supportive but realistic about natural child birth. Cool.
4. She's all about minimal testing. She was very strong about really thinking about what you'll do with the information.
   
5. She didn't treat me like a fat old pregnant woman. I did find out though that the hospital we're probably going to could actually force me to go to UWMC as a barriatric patient. Hmmmm.
   
6. She has eons of experience. One of the best in the area.
   

What I didn't like:

1. Her office is in her house, and it has dogs. Now, for some of you out there that would be nice and homey. For me, who is NOT a dog person, it wasn't so cool. I guess I expected a little more professionalism. Just a bit too cuddly for me.
   
2. She challenged me on my pregnancy symptoms. Well, are you feeling sick? On and off. Well, are you getting breast pain? I never get breast pain in the first place. Are your breasts getting bigger? Not that I can really tell, but 10% increase for me is like putting a bucket of water in the pacific ocean.
   

Overall, she had all the right characteristics. I can just be a bit of a cranky customer and I really hate new practitioners. We're looking into one other nurse midwife but it looks like Sally Midwife will probably be the one.

Okay kids, 1.5 weeks and we're at 8 weeks. If we're facing fetal demise, we should know by then. I'd be happier if I were puking my guts out but NOT REALLY.

When to Test, or the Art of the Compromise

I find the conversation over at Dos Mamas interesting. It's about when to test, especially when you're the non-TTC partner.

I personally hated testing, which I think makes me a minority in the TTC community. We don't have a billion left over internet cheapies sitting in the house. I think we had a total of two tests when we got our positive - one regular test that was left over and a digital we were saving for when we could actually see it say PREGNANT.

In a way I was happy when we decided that we would just start getting betas. I hated the hope that said "maybe the test just isn't picking the HCG levels yet". I started to understand that a white window was a white window, a negative, and nothing more. The one time we POAS before the beta I spent the entire morning in tears. I needed to hang onto my hope as long as possible because as we continued on our journey, I started being happier in the wait, happier when the hope was alive.

Yes, for us we started to crave the wait and dread the crash. The wait became shorter, more bearable, filled with possibility. Post-wait was just bleak and painful, and we rarely pulled out of our funk earlier than a day or two before out next insem.

I was lucky that M. and I agreed on when to test. She basically let my anxieties drive it, and let me tell you that there were nights that I could not sleep until I got up, POAS and saw the negative.

In some ways it would be nice to have a male, disinterested partner who is trained by society that it isn't his role to be involved in conception and pregnancy. Then it really is all about what mama wants. What do you do when you have two mamas, and in our case, two equally strong, pig-headed mamas?

You figure it out, but it's not easy. And you never stop having to figure it out. It's a constant compromise.

Maternity Clothing Cool

I went ahead and ordered some maternity clothes. Not because I'm super eager to fit into them. Not really. Mainly because I needed to convince myself that I'm not going end up a really unattractive pregnant woman.

After all, I'm not all cute with a bump and probably never will be.

Cathy sent me some super-cute clothes (thank you Cathy!!!) which helped boost my confidence. Then I bought some plain t-shirts and jeans from JC Penney. Not too bad. I look more baggy punk ass kid than pregnant at the moment.

I was really excited about the shirts because it probably won't be long before I have a problem with clothes for work. My plan is to wear t-shirts with scrub bottoms. I think I've found big girl maternity scrub bottoms at Sassy Scrubs. The Penney's t-shirts should work.

Yahoo!

I love it when I figure things out.

No More Dr. G.

Seems blogger has decided to cooperate again, so we're BACK! Whew!

Well, we had our intake appointment with Dr. G. She was as awesome as ever but we're not going to use her as our practitioner. She can only deliver at Sw*dish main, the biggest baby factory in the area. It was the deal killer. But we'll bring the baby back to her for care. Overall, it was a good appointment.

Now we have a consultation appointment with Sally Midwife, recommended to me by a friend who LOVES her. She's delivered nurse babies. There's something in me that wants people who have worked with nurses. We can be a demanding bunch and if that's on the table in the beginning, the entire relationship can be much smoother.

In the meatime, still preggers. No significant nausea but I'm so tired I can barely function. And lots of lovely gas. My bp at the doc was 110/60. Good lord, I'm NEVER that low. The MA looked at me a little weird when I started to argue with her about the pressure and said...

"Uh, that's a GOOD pressure."

Kind of like when I went to argue with my professor about an A I'd gotten on a paper, because I DON'T get A's. He looked at me and said "take the A".

The trials and tribulations of the perpetually inadequate.

Well, I've spent most of the morning lying on the couch, took two naps yesterday AND slept nine hours. Still exhausted. Time to go try to be productive.

Worry, worry, worry...

I hate the worries.

Yesterday was my first day back at work after our BFP. I am the third person on my floor to be pregnant. Well, not anymore since I found out yesterday that the night nurse, who was about three weeks ahead of me, miscarried.

Does this mean I will miscarry too?

I had a very busy day yesterday with very little down time. I've had busier days, I've had much slower days. I was running pretty much non-stop. I didn't have a lot of time to drink my water. I didn't eat my snacks in a timely manner.

Did I work too hard?

I worry about symptoms. I'm still not very sick. I'm have occasional mild cramping. Shouldn't my breasts be more tender? Was that pink tinged pee? I was tired last night but not much more than usual after a shift. Am I not tired enough? I'm bloated, but maybe not as much as a couple days ago.

It's enough to drive a person NUTS.

Then I refocus. What are the biggies? Cramping and bleeding. Do I have that? Not more than the mild cramping I've been getting on and off since we conceived. No bleeding. Beta numbers were good. We're more likely than not, OKAY.

It's so hard not to worry when you worked so hard to get here.

We have our first appointment with Dr. G. tomorrow. Happy six weeks!

Eating for Two

Eating for me AND the small lentil bean is becoming one of the biggest pains in the asses of all time. And it hasn't even been two weeks.

I don't really like to eat meat. I've agreed to eat fish during the pregnancy and not to be overtly militant about the no meat thing. This means I have to be extra vigilant about what I am eating. It means a lot more tofu.

I'm still reducing cow milk. I don't drink cow milk or eat cow cheese, only goat. I really like goat cheddar and goat yogurt but really don't like goat milk. Unsweetened soy milk seems to do the trick.

It seems the list of DON'T EAT grows and grows. Now we've added peanuts. Our boy had asthma as a child and I guess there's a connection with peanut consumpution during pregnancy. I really. really like peanut butter. Almond butter it is!

I need 20 grams of protein per meal. Yikes. I am working on putting together mental combinations of foods that will meet my needs. Yogurt and granola. Toast with cheese. Toast with almond butter. Crackers with almond butter. Cereal with soy milk. Edamame. Beans and rice (oh, how I love beans and rice with some salsa). Things I can just grab.

I need to eat more often. I actually tend to three small meals in the morning but between lunch and dinner, I usually go for a long stretch without snacking so by the time dinner arrives, I'm hungry and eat a somewhat large meal. No more.

Oh, the pressure.

On top of everything is the fear of weight gain. I don't want to go backwards. I don't want to walk out of this pregnancy an even fatter girl. All those fat girl emotions are bubbling up and they suck.

Support Group Hell

Now that I've posted my diatribe on the state of activism in the queer community, back to baby stuff.

We go to our first support group meeting tonight. No, not a support group for mom's to be, or queer parents. The support group we decided to start for lesbians TTC 6+ months. Considering that we are now...ahem...pregnant...ahem....this could pose a problem.

The problem is that we invited very nice neighbors from around the corner, J&L, who have been TTC longer than us. Now we are faced with telling almost strangers something that we both know will hurt them, no matter what kind of brave face they put on.

M. thinks we cannot lead this group. This makes me sad. Am I really no longer welcome in the club I tried to create? I tell you this quite honestly, my pre-preggo self would have hated my post-preggo self. I would have sneered at me and said nasty things under my breath. Because there is no happiness in Taking Some Time. There is only bitterness that you have to find a way to navigate through it and a way to prevent it from dragging you down.

So J&L will hate us. It's inevitable. We may lose friends before we even gained them. This hurts.

How am I dealing with it? I'm making cookies and putting some extra love in them. Because I'm a feeder in the end. I can make it all better with a magical concoction of butter and sugar. I promise.

Where Have all the Activists Gone...

M. and I came of age in the early nineties. We completely missed the AIDS crisis. We watched the dying throughs of Queer Nation and Lesbian Avengers with a sense of glee. We shunned the label of 'activist'. After all, no one was going to get anywhere by being militant.

We were not activists.

I was not going to take on the lable, with all its connotations and negativity. Other people were activists, you know, those people. The ones hold mock funerals in the street and block traffic. The ones who put themselves up for ridicule, who feed the fears of our opponents. The ones who polarize, not galvanize. I was NOT going to be one of those people.

I was wrong.

Some time in the last ten years the queer activist died. He or she was swallowed by our desire to trot out celebrity queers and supporters as proof of our progress. He or she was engulfed by our desire to portray our lives as slick media productions. We turned our back on street actions and marches, because we thought that the only way to win was to be acceptable and the only way to be acceptable was to be quiet.

I believe it is time to stand up again. We have spent too much time aiding our opponents by becoming docile and searching for acceptibility. We will never gain acceptibility. Partly because it has never been their goal to give it and party because it is also not theirs to give.

It is time for queers everywhere to take on the mantle of activist with pride. It's time to rediscover outrage. If standing up against injustice is militant, than I hope the world is filled with militants. It is a sad day when people are criticized for standing up for their rights. It's a sadder day when we stand down in the face of that criticism.

Yes, I'm fired up tonight. I'm pissed. I'm ashamed at my own part in the oppressive silence that has been created around queer activism. I am not silent now but I have been silent in the past when I shouldn't have been.

See, I promised to talk about something besides impending baby.

Is that some kind of glow or a glare?

Funny things have been happening to me ever since I got pregnant. It started with the really nice, could barely speak English, Chinese lady at the bus stop. She stood and shaded me with her umbrella for about ten minutes while we waited for the bus. No one ever does that.

Then the really nice people at Baja Fresh gave me FREE guacamole. It must have been the pathetic way I dug through M.'s purse searching for enough change. It made my bean and rice, no cheese, burrito truly tasty.

Am I glowing already?

At the same time, maybe it's the deeply crabby mood I've found myself in lately. I just feel frayed. And while most of the time the general public would shun crabby types, perhaps they sense the all consumingness of my petulance, and are compelled to be kind in order to pull me out of it.

That would be the glare.

A perpetually annoyed look I wear on my face, when I don't get enough sleep, the one that says I didn't want this particular table and I'm tired and I'm hungry and you're being way too cheery right now so GO AWAY. Or something like that.

I will be very glad when we reach twelve weeks, when I know things will be okay, when I feel a little more even and balanced.

What did it?

After freakin' eight tries it's natural to try to figure out what did it. What was different? For us there are two differences.

1. The IUI. This is the most obvious culprit. I can now prance around and declare that it was the IUI that made us pregnant. Except I seriously don't think it was. The timing was so poor and washed semen probably lives eight hours (lucky number eight), maybe up to twenty four. So no, I'm not doing the IUI dance of impregnation. Maybe it did it, probably not.

2. Ovulating like a Mofo. Yes, the one thing I'm sure of is that my body decided to ovulate like a mofo this time. I got to have mild cramping and lovely GAS for two days around ovulation. M. and I decided that in the very least I was getting some good eggs out there.

What really did it? Here's the secret. Summer. It was our first summer cycle and M. had talked to a psychic when we first headed down the TTC path who had a feeling that summer would be good.

And the other contributing factor? Irony. Yes, irony made us pregnant. M. and I had just decided to finally burst our TTC isolation and start working to join with others to alieviate our pain. We got our support group together and, WHAMO.

So much time in TTC is spent trying to figure out what level of intervention to move toward. Three cycles of IVI, then three of medicated IVI, then injectibles, then IVF? Or do you keep going with IVI? Clomid or not clomid? Progesterone? B6? Trigger shots? There is this never ending urge to tweak the process constantly. It's maddening.

In the end, it appears the most likely culprit was our old pal, the 5cc syringe stuck up my vagina along with a nicely sized sample. In the end it was just me, the cats, M., and the final scenes of Casablanca on the DVD. Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Oh, and summer and irony.

Grandma Slip Sliding Away

Mafalda on her 90th birthday

I never know how to talk about death. I hate how everyone uses euphemisms: heading toward the light, slipping away. At the same time, it's hard to use the words that truly describe the situation. Death. Dying. A final shutting down of the systems. The last beat of a heart. The last flicker of thought that will ever happen on this earth.

My 92 year old grandmother is dying.

Part of me says 'finally'. She's been mostly unresponsive for months now, just sitting in her chair with well-meaning caregivers who do her hair, put on her jewelry, wheel her around and spoon mechanical soft food into her mouth. She is a vain woman. She would hate to live this way.

Part of me can't believe that very soon, maybe even as I write this, I'm going to have only one living grandmother.

She's officially comfort care (another euphemism) and M. and I are heading down tomorrow. I debated if we should go down at all, but it seems proper to see her, even if she doesn't know we're there. It seems right to in the very least be present.

One life begins, another ends. I had always hoped she would make it long enough to see her great grandchild. Maybe somehow she knew that in the least part of her is going to be carried on.

Baby, baby...are you OKAY?

I took my BLS class yesterday (code for CPR for health care providers). I was nauseated most of the class. Yay!

They had a video that walked us through the steps of BLS. Part of it was people telling their real-life stories, how CPR helped them. One of the segments involved a mother talking about her baby.

I STARTED CRYING.

Good lord, save that baby! M. has been laughing at me ever since.

Then we had to do infant CPR. The first thing you do with CPR is confirm that the person is unresponsive (Annie, Annie, are you okay?). As I was shaking the baby the instructor gently informed me that the best way to see if an infant is okay is to wiggle its foot.

I tritely informed her that there is no way in hell I ever expect to be taking care of infants then proceeded to pick up the baby (no babies were harmed in the making of this story) by one foot and toss it around. I was completely serious, then all of the sudden I had this realization.

Dumb shit, you WILL be taking care of a baby. Um, you're PREGNANT.

I think the instructor thinks I have the maternal instinct of a rock now. It was a damn doll and I was tired.

The Conundrum of Family

Family-wize, we've only told the parents about the pregnancy so far. We're waiting to tell siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc...until around nine or ten weeks. Just to give the little frog some more time to stick.

My brother will be thrilled. M.'s brothers will be excited. M.'s sister is going to FREAK OUT.

We had a long talk with M.'s mom yesterday. We talked about her sister and how she's completely controlled by her fears, especially around issues of homosexuality. She's afraid that one of her kids could be gay. She's afraid of us influencing them in that direction. She's controlled by her husband's uneasiness and possible borderline hatred of queers. I guess M.'s sister is sinking deeper into her homophobia.

We were proud of M.'s mom who challenged Miss Thang on her antiquated assumptions about queers.

Remember, Miss Thang is the person who told M. that her relationship is SUPERIOR to ours because it involves a penis.

M.'s sis is not only homophobic, she is heterosexist. She believes that there is something inherently superior about her because she is straight. She will not be happy that her little sis is having a baby with her lesbian lover (he he). She will not accept that we have as much of a right to be mothers and to have a family as she does. When she was trying to get pregnant, years and years ago, before she and her husband moved to IVF, she told my MIL that it would not be fair or right if we, the lesbians, were able to conceive and she and her husband, the chosen straight people, had to struggle. In her eyes, we are not good or deserving enough to parent.

She will not be happy that this baby was concieved with minimal interventions.

Part of me can't wait to tell M.'s sis about the baby. Part of me doesn't look forward to having to protect our child from his or her own family.

Happy Birthday to My Girl!

34 years ago today M. was brought into this world.

She's very special because her sign is Leo and her chinese sign is the rat. This makes her a force to be reckoned with. She's strong and determined and has this uncanny ability to see the right path. She is 100% my rock.

Happy birthday Muffletastic!

I'm such a freakin' blabber mouth

I swear at this point there are very few people left in the Seattle metropolitan area who don't know that we're pregnant. I read something in some book that it's the HORMONES that make you such a blabber mouth. I just feel that I can't hide this incredible news that we've worked so hard for. And there isn't much inside my head right now beyond good lord, I'm pregnant!

I think this is actually part of the process of pregnancy: total and complete obsession.

What haven't we done? We haven't bought a single baby item.

Aren't y'all proud?