One Year: the stats

Checkups, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Height: 38th percentile
Weight: 27th percentile
Head: 97th percentile

Biology Matters

We went to visit Dr. G. yesterday for Finn's one year checkup. It was funny because several times Dr. G. refered to some sort characteristic that Finn has as being from M. and myself. Such as his big head...she said "Oh, you both have big heads," and she indicated that Finn's blond hair and blue eyes come from M.

He he.

In so many ways biology doesn't matter. Finn is Finn. He's not some collage of my mouth and DtD's eyes and hair and my coloring and DtD's knees. When I look at him sometimes I see DtD and all the time I see our beautiful little boy.

In so many ways biology does matter.

When you have to rely on outside biological matter to create your family you work hard to discount that reality. You also make a lot of decisions before that child becomes reality and before you are forced to confront how your decisions affect him or her. The biggest one is where they come from.

How do we explain these decisions to our children? Because to them biology is important, or at least our decisions around their biology. Some of us have decided to never allow our children to know where they come from. Would they agree with this decision? Is it really fair to them to decide ahead of time that even if it's important for them to know where they come from, they won't be able to find out? Some of us have decided to be open with either a known donor or ID release. Will this make things somehow better?

We make the best decisions we can. We make decisions around our own fears or around financial concerns. I don't think they are inherently bad decisions but there is no way of knowing the consequences.

We decided to use a known donor for Finn, to allow him access to his biology and to keep the process transparent. I've never wanted to pretend that Finn appeared out of nowhere. But we still land in the same trap. I have great trust that DtD will be responsible and present in Finn's life, but what if I'm wrong? What if Finn grows up and hates who he comes from? What do we do if he strongly questions the decisions M. and I made when we had no idea how they would impact our children? As much as I don't want biology to matter, it will matter to him.

And ultimately biology matters because it matters to society. It matters to Dr. G. who can't stop thinking that Finn is some combination of myself and M. It matters to my mother who wants to attribute every characteristic Finn has so some combination of genes. It's something that will pop up and haunt those of us who try to irradicate it from the equation.

It just matters.

Walking...

Walking with Mama, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Finn's still working on walking but he likes us to help him.

A Hard Day

Post partum has not been kind to me. In many, many ways. My body isn't what it used to be, not that I had much to lose, but any loss is difficult. I'm sleep deprived. And the best part is post partum has taken someone who has always had a difficult time with emtional regulation and sent me winging off into the stratosphere when it comes to coping with crap.

Hard days feel even harder.

I'm having hard day today. I got to enjoy (ha) being publically humiliated by a doc in front of my patient for no reason other than my expectation that I am a professional who brings perspective and concerns that may be different than his but still legit and his clear expectation that I should just carry out his orders and never question. Yeah, lots of fun.

Then the even more fun (ha) crazy sensitive overreaction from me that included tears and more drama than I ever wanted, where I got to make all the coworkers concerned and once again prove that I am an emotional FREAK.

This is usually followed by a deep desire to crawl into a cave somewhere in the wilderness, me questioning why I'm even allowed to be a participating member of society, deep seated embarassment over not being able to handle things in a non-emtional way. Otherwise known as...

I FUCKING SUCK.

M. brought me back to earth. She knows I'm a freak. She knows it's hard. She knows I hate this part of me yet I still have to function and try to live with myself. She knows me and she makes me feel better and human.

Some will probably tell me I'm whining and have low self esteem and need counseling and heap judgement. This blog is me and I feel that people like me suffer quietly. I don't want to be alone which is why I write this. I am strong and fierce but have so much weakness and there's not much inbetween. I need to find my inbetween.

Dressed Up

Sweater Vest, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

With Spring slowly peeking through the grey clouds of winter we're getting more and more sunny days. This means better pictures. And going to the park, and long walks, and general fun.

Heres our boy in a sweater vest. Pretty gosh darn cute.

Bring us your issues yearning to breathe free...

Rebecca's response to my last post made M. and me think.

We want your issues.

M. is honing her post partum doula practice and (sadly) hasn't actually worked with a queer parenting couple yet. She wants to know...what are queer parenting issues.

This is outside the normal issues adding a child into your family brings. You know, the sleepless nights, the lack of coping skills, who will take out the trash, who makes dinner, WHY DOESN'T MY HOUSE WORK AS SMOOTHLY AS BEFORE????? The constant struggle to make the workload equal. Those issues everyone has.

The boob was (is) our issue. Straight couples have a clearly defined boob. Unless one's hubby is deeply devoted to male lactation (I believe it has been done, or it's some sort of wild internet rumor) it's quite clear who will be feeding the baby. It's different when one person has working boobs and the other one has a non-working set.

So bring it on...give us your issues...tell us what has made your experience as a queer parent different.

Parenting Together

M. and I have tumbled into parenthood mostly easily. It's like we have this amazing, awesome project to work on together and we love working on stuff together. There remains one topic where we have a little bit bitterness and anger between us.

Breast milk.

I think the hardest part of being the The Other Mother for M. has been not being able to have the ability and connection of breastfeeding. I'm intensely proud of her because she has set aside her own issues and been 100% devoted to getting Finn the absolute best we can give him and everyone knows that Breast is Best.

I'm the problem. I admit it. I love to breastfeed but I hate being The Boob. It was the absolutely most challenging thing about bringing home a newborn. It made me feel crazy and there were many times when I simply did NOT want to feed him. I hate obligation. I hate being tied down. I love my boy but sometimes I just wanted to be left alone.

I've slowly started to accept that I will never be left alone again. Not for a very very long time.

The conflict has been over pumping. If I could spend my days blissfully feeding my son, I would. I can't. I have to work, and it's not even normal work where I can quickly slip into the empty office down the hall. It's hard, emotionally and physically draining work where I often barely have time to eat, or drink, or even think. And somehow I was supposed to pump.

I tried. We had Finn on breast milk exclusively for six months. Then we supplemented. Then I went down to twice a day pumping...then once a day...then NONE.

M. was mad at me. M. is still mad at me. We've talked about it. She knows why I've made my decisions. I know she doesn't agree with them. She's not pissed but she's still disappointed, because she wants what is best for Finn and she can't give him what I am refusing to give.

I get this. I just can't do what she wants.

We all want the best. Then we do second best. Then third. And we parent together, not against each other. And Finn gets as much boob as he wants on my days off, and I love being able to do that, and will do it as long as he's still interested. And M. loves her boy and wants what's best, and is the best Other Mother around.

Even if we don't always agree.

Those Sad Moments...

You know those moments...the ones when you realize how much your life has changed.

M.'s mom was looking at a picture of us from about ten years ago. She turned to M. and said...

"You look about the same. Sacha looks tired."

Wah.

I am tired. I've been tired since I decided to change careers and started working my butt off to get into nursing school. I've been tired since we started TTC and it ended up more difficult than expected. I was TIRED when I was pregnant and now...well, I'm tired. I nurse all night and I work long days.

You sacrifice to get what you want and I seem to have sacrificed my youth and vitality. As much as I want to ignore my dear MIL's words, she's right. And I don't know how to undo the fatigue. I've been tired for so long that I don't really know how to stop being tired.

So it's back to work for me. Back to the grind that I actually love and that supports my family. Maybe tonight I'll get a little better sleep and give me a couple days, I may not feel so worn out.

Just in time to do it all again.

Tall Boy

Tall Boy, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

I'm at work but here's our boy. He looks like he's been caught stealin'.

Sunlight

Sunlight, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Food Fight

I'm actually quite intent on not having food fights with my boy. Our approach to food is that our job is to make nutritious food and Finn's job is to decide whether to eat, what to eat and how much to eat. That's it.

It doesn't mean managing a pre-toddler's food isn't frustrating.

At the moment it seems he could possibly survive on bread. Doesn't like peas, bananas, advocado, black beans, carrots or any other typical toddler food. Will only eat full flavored, complex foods. Will not eat meat. Loves tortillas, toast, yogurt, cereal, toast, toast, quesadilla, toast, and rolls. Oh, croutons and veggie booty. LOVES the VB. And whole apples. Won't eat them in slices.

Ooookay.

Then there's spoon vs. hand. Sometimes he'll let us feed. Sometimes he refuses whatever we stick near his mouth. Sometimes he shovels fistfuls of whatever he has into his mouth. Sometimes he drinks his food and it ends up in his hair.

You never ever know. Feeding Finn is a daily adventure.

Don't forget the dunking. Everything goes into his cup of water. He doesn't use a sippy and instead uses a small cup and he ends up putting his food in it then drinking the water, then eating the soggy food. There is no other word to describe it other than disgusting.

Then he tried to feed it to us. Even more disgusting.

About this time M. and I start to wonder exactly why we're letting him feed himself. Are the long term benefits of him developing a healthy relationship with food really worth the daily pain?

Yes. Absolutely.

Still, couldn't he be just a little less disgusting? Just for mommy and mama? Is that really too much to ask?

Boy Shorts

Boy Shorts, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

Summer is coming fast. Are these cute, or what?

Back Off, Baby Bob!!!

Okay, so Finn has a jealousy streak.

Today we went and hung out with mama (M.) and mama's friend Baby Bob. Baby Bob is really cute and only seven months. We told Finn ahead of time that mama's friend Bob would be coming along. We tried to prepare him.

Finn did not like Baby Bob.

He hit Baby Bob. He tried to bite him. He tried to run over Baby Bob who could only scoot away. Luckily he's a baby and didn't take the tirade too personally.

Finn DID NOT like Baby Bob AT ALL.

As much as we've worked to bring equality to our parenting, there are times when Finn is all about mommy (me), especially after I've been working for a couple days. Well with Baby Bob in the picture, Finn was all about mama. Laughing at mama, trying to get her attention, leaving a clear message that Baby Bob was in his territory.

Back off Baby Bob!!!

Luckily Baby Bob has his own loving family and he's not coming to live with us. If he was I might fear for his safety.

Those Nice Moments

I was tired yesterday. I pulled a double the night before and then had to get up and parent. Finn and I ran a few errands and ended up sitting at one of our favorite grocery stores eating mushroom soup, orzo salad and bread for lunch.

He's the best.

I was just having lunch with my son, feeding him spoonfuls of soup that spilled all over his shirt, letting him feed me handfuls of orzo salad, talking to him, making him giggle and really enjoying my boy. It's hard not to. There was a man and woman sitting down the counter from me having a business lunch and I was convinced that my constant yammering at Finn was probably bothering them. Then the man came up to me and I was sure he was going to tell me how interuptive we were.

Instead he gave me the nicest compliment. He told me it was nice to see a parent interact with their kid because he often observed parents not doing so. That was really sweet. It gave me warm fuzzies the rest of my day.

Fear

Worrying is a parent's prerogative. That's what my fab wife said when she responded to an anonymous comment left on the previous post.

Totally.

Fear is a strange thing. We all live with it all the time. Then you have a child, a precious, lovely, vulnerable child, and the fear seems to bubble to the surface more often.

I remember when I was pregnant being terrified to ride in the car. All of the sudden the possibility of having a high speed motor vehicle crash was too real. I would sit white knuckled in the passenger seat telling myself that I'd been in the car a million times before, that nothing would happen, that I was overreacting and being silly.

Fear is what keeps our children safe. It's what forces us to parent in an intentional manner. Because we're afraid of what happens if we don't pay attention.

The poster that M. responded to was very critical of my very real fears around my son and drug use. She diminished our son's pain when he teethes. She seems to find nothing redeemable in my thoughts or my parenting style.

I see the end results of drug and alcohol abuse every time I go to work. I work to be disengaged from my patients, to know that my care alone will never save them from addiction, to accept that no matter what the hospital does for them, the ultimate end for most of my patients is an ugly and untimely death.

Now I have a child and every single one of my patients is someone else's child, and someone else's heartbreak. It's hard not to be afraid. If I think about it too much I feel paralyzed. How can you criticize that response to working in the middle of the massive human tragedy of addiction?

Fear can cement you to the ground, keep you in the house, cause you to overprotect and shelter to a fault. I know this. I work hard to let go, even in my thoughts, of my sensitive, beautiful boy. Because if I protect him too much, I ultimately hurt him. And none of this means that my ultimate fears won't come true. If I wasn't willing to take on the risk and do my best to prepare my son for the world, I wouldn't have ever had a child.

I think we all fear for our children and it's natural. It's part of being a parent. I think when you have no fears, no concerns about the ultimate outcome of this amazing project that you're in the middle of, you have the curse of naivety. And that is the scariest of all. That will bite you in the ass.

Hopefully He'll Write Bad Poetry

We went through another bad round of teething last night with our sweet boy screaming and not being able to settle because he was in so much pain. M. and I ended up giving Tylenol on top of Motrin. Finn finally settled but proceeded to sob in his sleep for a couple hours. It breaks my heart.

Our boy is so sensitive and sometimes I wonder how he's going to survive a world that chews up The Sensitive and spits them out in a million pieces, over and over again. I know this because I am one of The Sensitive and have struggled to cope with this part of myself as well as allow it. There is little support for those who want to live with being sensitive instead of shoving all the pain down.

I asked M. last night how Finn will deal with pain in the future if teething is so difficult. What will happen when he skins his knee or when his first boyfriend/girlfriend breaks up with him. How is he going to deal with the unending pain of living?

She answered "he'll be a drug user."

I worry she's right. I worry that our boy's eventual answer to all the pain of life will be to numb it with whatever drug of his choice. Heroine. Alcohol. It's impossible not to worry when I see The Sensitive day in and day out with abscesses and needle tracks and insatiable appetites for illegal substances.

Then M. said, "Hopefully he'll just write bad poetry."

I'm hoping for bad poetry.

One Year Later

One Year Later, originally uploaded by Sacha Digi.

It's taken me a few days to get pics uploaded, but here is the comparison. 365 days later...the boy. The fabulous boy.

Cupcake Monster!

Our very first first birthday party has come and gone. M. and I are exhausted and our fantastic Mr. Finn is fast asleep.

It went really well. We had a house full of babies/toddlers and it was total and utter chaos. I put out the toy box and they went rampant. The food turned out well and the cupcakes were mmmmmmmmmmmmm good.

And we have a cupcake monster on our hands.

Finn had his second ever cupcake and now knows what they are, and demands them. I decided to have an after-party cupcake and a glass of milk when Mr. Bo Finner noticed what I was eating. Finn doesn't sign but he gets his point across, so quite a bit of yelling ensued. Needless to say, I shared my cupcake with the monster.

Oh, almost forgot. Finn took his first steps today. One, two, three very wobbly steps from the fridge to the stove. In pursuit of cupcakes.

That's my boy!

Makin' Cake

Finn's birthday party is tomorrow so M. and I are up making cake.

Mmmmmmm...cake.

Making cake for a one year old birthday party is proving to be a bit of a nerve-wracking experience. You have to think through what food sensitivities are out there, and are there babies who are under a year so they can't have honey, and what about citrus, or chocolate, or those poor little wheat sensitive babies. It can make a person craaaaaaaazy.

We started with the idea of having red velvet. Oh red velvet cake is such a wonderful thing, except for all that food dye. Okay, so we decided that surely Whole Foods, the slick and shiny mecca of all things better for you MUST have some more natural food dye. Except tired mamas didn't have time to make it to Whole Foods.

Then it was lemon. Tart lemon cream cheese frosting, lemon curd filling. Except Finn seems to be having some skin issues after we introduced lemon. Nix the lemon.

Maybe apple spice, moist and zesty, with fresh-ground nutmeg. Uh oh, the recipe has honey. There might be babies who are under a year and shouldn't have honey. They might eat the cupcake and die from botulism. We might be shunned as BABY KILLERS. No apple spice.

White cake with strawberry buttercream? Maybe? Please? Dammit...strawberries.

What have we ended up with? White cupcakes with buttercream meringue frosting. Simple. Nothing offensive. From scratch because in this family you get scratch cake for your birthday. And the batter looks wonderful.

Mmmmmmmmmmm...cake!

One Year Later...

Finn is one.

I can't believe it. I swear this year was warp speed. I can't believe we have a toddler. I can't believe I've been back at work for eight months. I can't believe we survived.

Finn is such a great kid. He's sweet and very generous. He loves people and I don't worry for a moment about socializing him. He's happy. He has a fantastic sense of humor. I love to hang out with him.

He's still an intense and challenging child. He needs so much of us and we work hard to give it. I'm glad that he doesn't need as much as he did when he was born because he is exhausting. Sometimes I worry that he needs so much that a sibling will be a disaster for our sweet little boy. We now see the world through his lens, filtering everything we do through how it may affect our fantastic little boy.

M. and I have found our new normal. Our new life as parents has a million and one limitations but we have stopped mourning what we used to have and adjusted to our new reality. We've found new ways to function and cope. And for all the limitations, our new life has one important thing that our old one didn't - our son.

I will never love another child like I love Finn. He is our first and I am so glad it was HIM who was born 365 days ago, him who came screaming out of my abdomen, him who pushed both M. and myself to our very limits in our efforts to get him out in the way we wanted. I am so glad he's here.

And now our first born son is running around the house with his bits dangling and his bum cold. He's tired and night is coming. Maybe tonight I'll get a couple hours of not being a parent and maybe not. No matter what, it's been a good day and I'm excited about what's to come in our next year.