Finish line
I’ve made why may to the end of NaBloPoMo. There’s only so many times a girl can blog Na-Blah-blah-Blah. I am sick of myself. Nothing to report. Still waiting. No pregnancy, lesbian, ttc related anecdotes to report to fill out this blog.
The sun is shining on the table where I’m writing, with pretty patterns of leaves and light and shadows surrounding us. Lola is cooking up a storm of the week’s eating – spaghetti bolognaise, a chickpea and pumpkin tagine, and tonight’s delicious pizza. My back is aching from what I think has become a too-tight bra. My eyes are sand-paper tired after too much work. I need to go onto the couch and watch more of our bad drama show and then sleep. I have become such a couch potato these days, I don’t really have much energy for the world outside our sunny home.
After this incessant blog-a-lot, I’ll probably take a day or two’s break from the blog. Wednesday is 14DPO and the blood test at the clinic is Friday. So either way I’ll have some material to write about and some news to share..
10DPO
You may have noticed that I am dragging myself to the NaBloPoMo finish line. It’s a really hard time to be blogging through, it’s 10DPO, my boobs are sore as hell, and I could either be pregnant or not, and I have been sitting in perfect ambigiuity – I have no hunch, no preconceptions, and have just been living-through this 2ww. Waiting. And the waiting is better than a BFN, but boy it’s painstaking. The good thing is if we’re not pregnant, bring on our next pre-Christmas cycle. Particularly with my new short cycles. We could be inseminating again in just over two weeks.
I found that our October break from the clinic re-set my ability to stay on this rollercoaster. I have the energy and the belief. I am so up for whatever it takes.
In good news, Lola and I did all the Christmas shopping for the children in our lives (my nieces and nephews and her godchildren) during a 25 per cent off sale at Kmart today. Normally I go way overboard for my nieces and nephews, but we just can’t at the moment. Things are tight financially, and so there we were with our notepad and pen calculating prices and comparing products. But we were in and out of the mall in just over an hour and we got a whole lot of really great gifts, at really good prices, and it was really satisfying coming home knowing we hadn’t blown the fortnightly budget.
God willing
I am getting this one in early tonight. I hate the way that under the NaBLoPoMo regime blogging has become a bit like teeth-brushing, a habit to drag yourself bleary-eyed to before tumbling into bed. So, I am putting first things first and lodging this post while Lola is in the kitchen frying red snapper and baking potatoes.
Lola and I need to prepare wills. There’s an external reason why we need to have wills in place in the next month or so. And I guess we’ve finally crossed the threshold from young people who have nothing that matters to slightly-older people who do have somethings that matter. So this got us talking about what to do about our as yet unborn children. Because we’ll have the will in place and then I could get pregnant and we both could die and our unborn child could survive and what would happen then?? Enough to put even the most level-headed girls in a panic.
So we got on to that troubling topic of who we would entrust with guardianship of our children if we both died. It’s so tough. Do we go with family or friends? What role do our donors have in this process? If they were to have a role, what does that tell them about how we perceive their legal relationship to the children and, in a worse case scenario, how could that affect things in the future assuming we don’t die? Will our siblings feel a connection to a child that is not biologically related to whichever of us is their sibling? Our families definitely won’t provide them with connection to their queer heritage and community. Our friends may not provide sufficient contact with our families. Also, friendships can change and even the best of friends can be a bit unhinged at times. All the relevant people are so scattered, that our child might not even know them very well.
We’ve come up with a solution to put in this iteration of the will that feels comfortable to us. And we were relieved when we realised that we could change it at any time. And, that at this stage, this stuff is so speculative, that we don’t need to have it all sorted before we’re even pregnant. Thank goodness we live in a place where the non-bio parent is automatically recognised, so we don’t need to cross that hurdle. God willing we will never need these plans, but it makes you realise how kids really raise the stakes, and this is before we even have one.
Late, but not too late
It’s late. But not too late. I have just squeezed in a blog to today, getting home at 11:20pm from work and sitting down at the computer to blog at 1130pm. Now that’s commitment.
I was provided with some very bad indian take away for dinner, that saw me throw up about 5 mins after my last bite. I thought either I’m pregnant (I’ll take any sign!) or that the Indian was really bad. I think it was the latter.
I am going to watch an episode of McLeods Daughters, a bad (good) Australian drama that Lola and I are working our way through now that we’ve exhausted every indy, queer, quirky series out there, before tucking myself into bed. Goodnight.
More blah-blah-blah
Ok, I got nothing. All there is to report is that I went for the blood test, levels are fine and ‘exactly where they should be.’ They say this each month and it still ends in a BFN, so I don’t put much weight on it. The HCG shot has had the expected effect of having me hate my life and desparately pining for a career-change. Sadly, I think there’s something to that, given that it comes up every time I feel down, but I will have to put that on the back-burner for a while yet. Money and maternity leave provisions get first prize. Blah. It’s been a Blah day.
Na-Blah-Blah-Blah
This is what Lola calls NaBloPoMo. I can’t blame her for not remembering the strange acronym. I am starting to hit the daily-posting wall, it’s late, I’m tired, but I have to post. The 2WW is going glacially, I can’t believe its only 6DPO. I have a blood test to check progesterone levels tomorrow and another HCG booster shot. I am looking forward to a trip to the clinic, it makes me feel like I am being proactive about trying to get pregnant just by being there.
It was a momentus day in Australian Parliament today. If only I could understand what the processes all are. The Senate has passed it and now it just needs to go back to the House of Reps and then get assent by the Governor-General turning the Bill into an Act. The legislation will remove
discrimination against same sex couples in laws including tax, superannuation, Medicare, social security, health, aged
care and employment. There’s still no national anti-discrimination legislation and no gay marriage. But this is a massive step forward. It means that if I die, Lola gets my superannuation. It means that our family will be recognised at a federal level, as well as in existing State/Territory legislation. It means so much for so many people. It will create some complications on the social security front and many GLBT families may end up with less than they currently receive. But it means that there’s hope for better days ahead.
Dear Diary
Now that TTCing has taken over my entire life, my diary has taken on a whole new meaning. I can entertain myself for hours with nothing but my A5 week to a page Collin’s diary (as proved during a very quiet day at work today). I use the year-planner page at the front to track my cycle lengths, periods and inseminations. Then on each day I write in the cycle day number and where applicable the days post ovulation number. Then the fun starts. I count until my BFP is due. Using my 2009 diary, I count until the due date. I count until the 12, 16 and 20 week milestones. I then canvas fallback plans and count to when the next insem will be if we don’t get a BFP this time. I review previous dates, analyse patterns in my cycles, calculate the days of the week and the conflicting events that may happen with our next insem or BFP news. It’s like a portable fertility friend but far less technical and more optimistic. Thankfully I already have a policy of only writing in pencil in my diary, because with all this optimistic markings in my diary, there’s usually some erasing to be done.
TTC timing
We had dinner tonight with two lesbian friends who have been thinking about TCC quite seriously for some time. They’d always had this drawn-out timeframe which involved starting to ttc in mid 2010. Now things have changed a bit and they’re thinking of starting in January 2009. I am very happy for them, but it does mark the time that we’ve been on the TTC train for. It wasn’t long after they told us that I realised that it was now quite possible that they’d be pregnant before us. I am ok with this. But it is painful. These markers of time can stretch out. It was twelve months ago that we were signing on at the clinic. Then getting our donors on board and patiently waiting out the six month quarantine period before we could get started. It takes so damn long to get to the starting line. On the upside I am really looking forward to having some of my good lesbian friends with children around the same age as ours and to (hopefully) be going through the same things at the same time. Oh well, let’s see eh?
Baths and boosters
I love baths. They’re my one indulgence. And despite the drought here, I naughtily have one almost every day. Sometimes even twice on a particularly luxuriant weekend day. Over the past four months of TTCing, I abstained from baths in the first month, but bathed during the 2WW in the next cycles, avoiding the bath only for a few days after the insemination. The same goes for swimming. But I’ve noticed conflicting advice on the net, and so this month I’m trying my hardest not to submerge. And I am missing it and finding I have a whole lot more time on my hands. I thought at first the restriction was just about the temperature, the bath not being too hot, but in some places I’ve read its about the water at all – hence the no-swimming. Dear Readers, do you have baths or go swimming during the 2WW? Does anyone have advice on bathing during the 2WW? What happens when I get a BFP? I can’t imagine not being able to bathe for an entire nine months. But, I guess I’m now at a point where I’ll do whatever it takes.
I have my first HGC booster shot tomorrow. It’s a lower dose than the trigger (1500iui opposed to 5000iui – although due to my bad reaction in August, this time I had only 3/4 of the 5000 this time as my trigger). After Tuesday’s rather embarrassing and very uncomposed telephone conversation with my parents, I have asked Lola not to allow me to answer the telephone tomorrow. I do not want a repeat of the melodramatic, uncontrollable and totally over-reactive crying episode followed by a heavy dose of anxiety. I can now certifiably say that the HGC shots really do mess with me.
NaBloPoMo block: the stolen dialect meme returns
I’ve just returned from a fraught trip to the lesbian queer festival film (yes, just the one lesbian film) which didn’t end up screening due to problems with the DVD (more on lesbian cinema anthropology later). So we’re back home, settling in for a non-lesbian DVD, but first, I needed to blog! That’s when Vee’s stolen dialect meme comes to the rescue! Thanks Vee.
1. A body of water, smaller than a river, contained within relatively narrow banks.
A creek
2. What’s the thing you push around the grocery store called.
A shopping trolley.
3. A container to carry a meal in.
A tupperware container.
4. The thing that you cook bacon and eggs in.
A frying pan.
5. The piece of furniture that seats three people.
A couch.
6. The device on the outside of the house that carries rain off the roof.
Gutters.
7. The covered area outside a house where people sit in the evening.
A patio or a verandah or a deck or a porch- depending on what it’s made of and where it’s situated.
8. Carbonated, sweetened, non-alcoholic beverages.
Soft drink or cool drink
9. A flat, round breakfast food served with syrup.
Pancake.
10. A long sandwich designed to be a whole meal in itself.
We don’t call it subway here, unless it comes from the store called subway. It might be called baguette if it’s in a long roll or a sandwich.
11. The piece of clothing worn by men at the beach.
Bathers or speedos.
12. Shoes worn for sports.
Sneakers.
13. Putting a room in order.
Tidying up.
14. A flying insect that glows in the dark.
Firefly
15. Little insects that curls up into a ball.
Slaters
16. The children’s playground equipment where one kid sits on one side and goes up while the other sits on the other side and goes down.
See-saw.
17. How do you eat your pizza?
With fingers.
18. What’s it called when private citizens put up signs and sell their used stuff?
Swap meet or garage sale.
19. What’s the evening meal?
Dinner.
20. The thing under a house where the furnace and perhaps a rec room are?
We don’t have furnaces. We might call this a basement.
21. What do you call the thing that you can get water out of to drink in public places?
Bubbler.
And on the baby stuff, much the same as Vee, but a few differences:
- diaper – nappy
- crib – cot
- bassinet -bassinet
- pacifier – dummy
- onesie – wondersuit
- stroller – pram
- mom/mommy – mum/mummy
- teeter-totter – see-saw
- formula – formula
