What’s been stopping me from posting?

- Pregnancy is a whole lot different to TTC.  It doesn’t quite generate the cyclical dramas that ttc does.  And there’s been a whole lotta heartache.  I started to feel like my blogging was getting too bleak.  From around months 3 – 5 of the pregnancy there were lots of tears and lots of dramas.  The good news is that things are really on the up and up.  We’re both really happy, settled and our marriage is stronger than ever.   The pregnancy has been so far healthy and trouble free.  I am now 30 or 31 weeks today (30 weeks according to our 7w ultrasound dating scan, 31 weeks according to our date of conception).   We are both really excited.

- But somehow the blogging hasn’t just quite worked for me lately, particularly when there was so much to be blue about. I’ve reverted to being a lurker.  Still reading all your blogs but kinda hanging out in hiding.  I really want to get back on board with posting my own story and commenting on your adventures too. So, I’ve been giving some thought and working on starting a new blog.

- I have started a new blog and plan to be a bit more active.  I’d love you to join me over at my new place.  If  you’re still reading, and you would like the details, please leave a comment here, with a link to your own blog if you’ve got one, or a reason as to why you’re reading.

I am sorry I’ve been in hiding lately.  The pregnancy is quite overwhelming and when I think about blogging, I really don’t know where to start..   It’s been a bit tough.  The pregnancy is going fine, we have the 20 week scan on 1 May and  I am really looking forward to that.  We’re not planning to find out the sex, although I feel that it’s pretty likely to be a boy.   A has been wonderful at supporting me and our baby.  She’s been talking to the baby every night since we found out and lately that’s developed into a lovely session reading poems and chatting about the day with our little one.   She’s away this week, so I’ve been holding the phone to my belly so they can have their nightly chat.  I am supremely confident that our relationship is going to thrive from parenthood.  My body is changing rapidly and I don’t like it as much as I thought I would.  I kind of thought that I would get a glossy, round bauble of a belly, but instead, thanks to the fact that there was a bit of a belly to begin with, it is more like a pillow stuffed up a Santa suit and I feel frumpy and fat, rather than glowing and pregnant.  When I look down past my boobs I see my belly protruding.   I find being a same sex parent-to-be exhausting.  The family stuff continues to be hard.  We have just had a two week visit by my parents, followed by a one week visit by A’s parents.  My mother has come on board a lot, but it’s very much in this ‘my daughter is having a baby’, mother-daughter bonding sense.  I know a lot of the lesbo conception/parenting books talk about this.  How it’s wierd that suddenly your mother (who before could not relate at all to your ‘lifestyle’) now has a womanly inroad with you, no matter how it came about.  She’s made her concerns known about what we’re doing, and I think by doing that we’re able to move on.  It’s not an easy dynamic, but the relationship is strong enough to hold it, I think.  My father remains disengaged.  That’s ok.  My parents have a long-standing overseas holiday planned around the time the baby is due, so my mother will come a few weeks after the baby and stay for two weeks once A has gone back to work.  I think this is ok, as I think we will thrive from having time just A and I and the baby to settle in and find our style without any opportunity for others, albeit wellmeaningly or not, saying things that hurt or undermine or just don’t get our family structure.   Hopefully my mother and I can grow together around this. I think that’s already happening.  There is general ambivalence in my broader family (i.e. siblings) and in fact, one of my brothers didn’t even reply to my email telling the news.  Didn’t even reply (it says something about the relationship already though that I choose to tell him by email.  I just didn’t have the reserves for anymore phonecalls). Perhaps I was being blind and I actually didn’t worry to much at first and just put it down to him being generally crap.   But no,  when I asked my parents whether he had got the email, they said he had, but he hadn’t known what to say and so had said nothing.  They then cited his feeling about our ’situation’ as a possible barrier to this big family reunion that’s scheduled for next year.  That he would be too uncomfortable and rather than the entire family going away for a weekend perhaps we should just go out for a meal.  He has never told me he has a problem with my sexuality (not forgetting my older sister is also gay) and he doens’t even have the guts to tell me himself.  So I hear this whole backstory about what he thought about our wedding (he had to bring his children (9 and 12) as they couldn’t get a babysitter and he told them we were having  a party to celebrate buying a house and then my niece read the word ‘wedding’ on one of the menus at the reception and he was so embarrassed – I am sorry, I am not going to be complicit in maintaining a cover story for your comfort on my fucking wedding day).  He and his wife are quasi-catholics, but he’ll take that mantle on when it suits him.  I think he just doesn’t love me enough to get uncomfortable… Sure, it’s uncomfortable explaining to your kids that gay people exist, that they get married and that they can have kids, if you’re a buttoned up garden variety hetero.   By comparison,  I am saying my mother’s been supportive, but she suggested I give the baby the ‘father’s’ surname ( A and I have unfortunately rhyming surnames that makes hyphenating cruel and impossible, so we’re going to use A’s surname for the baby) and when I was talking to her about the problems with A’s family’s over-enthusiasm (see below) she was like “I find that extraordinary, given it’s yours and someone else’s baby, and it’s not even related to them.”  At the time I responded with all the right things, but thinking about this in my yoga class tonight brought tears to my eyes, and I was tempted to jump on the phone and tell her how hurt i was and regive the same sex parenting 101 lecture I gave last time.  But I decided against it, even though I am sure you’re recoiling in horror at this, for my family, she’s come 70 per cent of the way and I think it just needs time and for her to see in person how we are going to live as a family. And aside for my not-very-into-kids lesbo sister, she’s the closest ally I have in my family.  I am using every opportunity when I talk to her to reinforce A’s role in our family (she knows we plan for A to have the next child so heaven help us if they see themselves as ‘not even related’ to the baby), but I think we just need to keep modelling our family (it’s so foreign to them, they don’t know what it’s going to look like), being ourselves, and gently correcting asumptions.  And, apart from parents, who get special dispensation, blocking out people like my crap brother, who do not love us enough to be part of our family. … Anyway, I am nearing 2000 words and that I am sure is a mortal blogging sin (just like not blogging for months on end). So I’d better sign off.   If you’d made it this far, I thank you.  This blog is like one of those late night phone calls to a friend in tears needing to debrief.  This proves the point that I should blog more so that I can relay these dramas in episodes.  But, Fuck, it’s just too much.  It’s emotionally very exhausting..

Dearest friends in the blogosphere,

I hope someone out there is still reading this.  I feel very bad that I have not posted in soo long!

The great news is that I am pregnant.  Almost 14 weeks!

I am sorry you missed out on the drama that was our final insemination attempt.  It was touch and go on the timing and we told no-one we were giving it a final attempt.   I surged just in time for an insem on the last day we were in our old city,  the last day the clinic was open before it closed for Christmas, me forgoing the post-IUI rest period to leap out of the stirrups to drive A to work before going home to meet removalists and scrub mould off bathroom ceilings, before packing the car and us driving off for a weekend of hard-core hiking  in the Blue Mountains and time in Sydney with A’s parents before we flew to my hometown and then to our new country.  We lodged all the forms and scripts for IVF before we left.  And, me, being so convinced it hadn’t worked, and so sick of putting my whole life on hold, drunk a beer on a warm summer Perth evening (and boy I enjoyed it!).

There was drama with the BFP.   No period but clinics closed over the new year period so no blood tests possible either.  HPT would not work.  Us staying with my parents and sneaking out to the pharmacy to buy HPTs and then sneaking in together to cafe bathrooms to stare at little pee sticks that kept giving negatives.  When the clinic finally opened (our clinic has branches all round the country that we could use), we were there for a blood test the minute the opened their doors (it was 17DPO).   We got a call from our clinic (they fax the results to them) later that day. It was a very cautious phone call that said ‘ well there’s some pregnancy hormone there so technically you’re pregnant but you’ll need to do another blood test because normally we like to see the levels a lot higher than that by this stage’ (the HCG was 35).   So it didn’t really feel like we were pregnant.  I remember sitting in the car in my parent’s carport out the front of the house, after having taken the call, and us both going ’so at least it can happen’ but feeling numb and then wandering into the house like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The second blood test, on the day before we left, showed the HCG levels at around 391 (it was now 20DPO). (by this time, we were back in Sydney for a day before leaving Australia) and the call came in while were sitting in the food court in a shopping mall, me having to go into the toilet corridor to be able to hear a word of what was being said, and the nurse  telling me that I would need to arrange an ultrasound for 7 weeks.  I was gesticulating to A and giving her the thumbs up and then we wandering around in a daze and kept shopping.   I don’t think we had quite absorbed it.

And a few weeks later, our 7w ultasound showed a strong beating heartbeat and our little baby. That was incredible turning point for us.  It was real. Our baby was on its way.

I haven’t blogged as A and I were very keen to kept it quiet until we got to the 12 week mark .  (There are a few people IRL that read this blog.)  We really enjoyed the private joy that the 12 weeks provided.  I was very sick those first few months.  We were in a new city, new jobs and to begin with we were in this awful short-term serviced apartment. I was throwing up daily.  It was horrible.  Then we moved into our house, I started to feel better, my belly started to grow, and we started to share our news.

Sharing the news has been incredibly full-on and I look forward to blogging about all the various reactions.  It’s been exhausting managing a lot of not-so-positive ones including the (now former) friend who said ‘I wish I had told you sooner how I felt about lesbians having children, so that you wouldn’t have gone ahead and done this’.   Family has been tough too. But friends have been overwhelmingly supportive and that’s why they’re friends.

So, there’s enough material from the past 3 months to keep me blogging until the baby arrives.  I feel really sad I haven’t been able to share this sooner with my internet friends.  I’ve still be following all the blogs, and I was inspired by the wonderful news of the arrival of Vee and Jay’s Bonus Ball.  Welcome!  Vee and Jay’s story has been so inspiring and its so wonderful that their much longed for child has arrived.  I so appreciate how all you wonderful women in the blogosphere share your lives, it really enriches mine.

For those of you interested in the details, the baby’s EDD is 17 September 2009 (even though the date based on my LMP puts it at 9 September, the late rise in the HGC (and the size on the ultrasound) indicates that conception didn’t take place until a week after the IUI. Something I thought was impossible with frozen sperm.)  I am glad to go with a later date as it means less impatience and I can get away with working closer to my due date.

Anyway, thanks so much for sharing the journey this far, and I look forward to sharing the rest of the ride with you all

xxx

I thought it was high-time I checked in and reported this. Sorry for the suspense. I spent the first half of last week drafting my ‘I’m pregnant’ post in my head, but not wanting to pre-empt anything so deciding not to blog at all, and the second half of this week trying to bring myself to write about the inevitable BFN. Basically, at 14DPO temp was still high. On the evening of 14DPO I had some never-seen before small, bright red spotting, which after first thinking it was my period, when nothing had shown by the morning, we thought it could be something different. On 15DPO there was a slight temp drop, but not below the coverline, and still no AF. A -ve HPT that morning didn’t disuade us that we could possibly be still in with a chance. By the evening of 15DPO, still no AF, and just as we were about to test again, AF arrived. So I’m now on CD3 and we start drugs again on Tuesday (CD5) and can (all going well) squeeze in another IUI before Christmas. We’ve got our appointment with Dr Y&F next Tuesday to discuss IVF options for next year. It will be a crazy two weeks… but then again, aren’t they all?

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..

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.