I looked down last night in bed to discover that I was leaking MILK! After checking with Dr Google that this is within the bounds of normal for 4ish months pregnant, (it is), I feel ridiculously proud! Hollie says it's just one more sign of being 'one big bundle of hormones'. Whatever the reason, I'm so happy to be leaking, not vomiting. This has been the best week in the last 3 months. I've spent three days at the farm with Joey and Helen making garden beds, got sunned at a picnic with Cath who is 6 weeks ahead of me in her pregnancy and slept through the night for the first time since the nausea started. I can't wait to go home to clean and fuss and garden and relax in the last few days before school starts again.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Recovery...?
Windy and grey, but not cold.
I'm in an armchair at Joey and Helen's place. The school holidays are finally here and at 14 weeks, I think, hope, that the morning sickness is easing.
The last eight weeks have been some of the hardest I've ever had. I have certainly never felt so sick for so long before, and the confusion and anxiety over why the vomiting is so bad, how simple nausea can be so utterly miserable and defeating, what to do about work when I can't go more than half an hour without needing to lie down or retch uselessly again. Being so nauseous feels like being squeezed by something all over - it's so oppressive and all encompassing.
In addition, at week 8 I bled dramatically- a huge gush that couldn't seem like anything but miscarriage. Except that it wasn't and two (long, long) days later we got to see the little creature wriggle on screen at the hospital. I felt tremendous relief, not because it was still alive but because it meant all the sickness hadn't been for nothing. At the same time I was disappointed in no small way, a miscarriage would have meant the nausea would stop - a measure I guess of how sick and beaten I felt, given that this baby is so wanted, so planned, so longed for.
Right now the little creature is 9cm long and kicking, sucking, swallowing, rolling over, waving and smiling away in there. We saw it again at 13 weeks and it has utterly changed my feeling about the pregnancy. I feel like that's my BABY in there now. I like to know that even though I can't feel it yet, it can feel me.
Friday, August 30, 2013
Success
Rainy and fresh.
Superstition has kept me from writing anything at all for the last two months. I've been flattered that people have asked if I'll update the blog eventually, but not enough that it felt like a good idea to actually put these words in print...
I'm PREGNANT. First shot miracle. One fuck wonder.
That'll do for today. I'm 10 weeks, so sick with morning sickness, and PREGNANT.
Xox
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Not Knowing
Bright and sunny.
So, three inseminations, done.
The second two were ridiculously much easier than the first... bad puns all round by the third time. I have a feeling that the last one was a little too late, and perhaps our syringe technique was not perfect the first two times but it's a beginning, at least. Who would have ever thought that I would find myself suggesting that perhaps if I went down to get some milk, Joey might use the time to put some sperm in a jar for us. What a bizarre thing this is.
All the sperm business was over by Wednesday and Joey and Helen didn't have to go home until Sunday, which meant we all kind of got a holiday together. Hollie was at work, but home reasonably early so we all got to eat and talk lots. Regardless of whether we get pregnant this time around, it was such an important, lovely time together. I felt so happy with the four of us all drinking tea together. Sometimes it feels like this is the best possible way of getting pregnant (awkwardness aside) - so many good cups of tea this way. And it does feel like we are absolutely enveloped by love through the whole process this way too. I know that the normal thing is not to tell anyone until you've got safely past the miscarriage mark, but that was just never going to work for us. It's too much of a big deal for each of us to make it worth keeping it a secret. It's been so great having our friends offering excitement, good luck, things to think about and advice. The other night someone asked me whether we would consider, if there was such a thing on the market, using a penis shaped dildo with a built in syringe to inseminate. How could I keep the fact of trying to get pregnant a secret with that kind of question on offer!?
Now we are waiting. Or, more precisely, we are in a state of Not Knowing. The difference being that you usually know what you are waiting for - to go overseas, until the holidays come, for the next episode to come online, for the train - but this seems to be all about the state of simply not knowing what will happen. I am still on school holidays, which probably gives me a bit more time than usual to wonder, but even so, it is ridiculous the way that despite absolutely knowing that there is no way that I could feel pregnant, or have any kind of physical changes yet, I keep surreptitiously feeling up my tits to see if they've got more sensitive and trying to work out if I'm hungry or actually feeling nauseous. It's not altogether comfortable, the wondering, because if all that change is going to happen, I'd really just rather know now. I feel a little bit like I'm hovering between being ordinary or something absolutely life changing happening. I'd rather know! But soon enough. And mostly, I just can't actually imagine that I would be pregnant this first time. It felt like too much of a practice round. We were so awkward and emotional, it seems like getting through that should have been enough to achieve for this month.
So, three inseminations, done.
The second two were ridiculously much easier than the first... bad puns all round by the third time. I have a feeling that the last one was a little too late, and perhaps our syringe technique was not perfect the first two times but it's a beginning, at least. Who would have ever thought that I would find myself suggesting that perhaps if I went down to get some milk, Joey might use the time to put some sperm in a jar for us. What a bizarre thing this is.
All the sperm business was over by Wednesday and Joey and Helen didn't have to go home until Sunday, which meant we all kind of got a holiday together. Hollie was at work, but home reasonably early so we all got to eat and talk lots. Regardless of whether we get pregnant this time around, it was such an important, lovely time together. I felt so happy with the four of us all drinking tea together. Sometimes it feels like this is the best possible way of getting pregnant (awkwardness aside) - so many good cups of tea this way. And it does feel like we are absolutely enveloped by love through the whole process this way too. I know that the normal thing is not to tell anyone until you've got safely past the miscarriage mark, but that was just never going to work for us. It's too much of a big deal for each of us to make it worth keeping it a secret. It's been so great having our friends offering excitement, good luck, things to think about and advice. The other night someone asked me whether we would consider, if there was such a thing on the market, using a penis shaped dildo with a built in syringe to inseminate. How could I keep the fact of trying to get pregnant a secret with that kind of question on offer!?
Now we are waiting. Or, more precisely, we are in a state of Not Knowing. The difference being that you usually know what you are waiting for - to go overseas, until the holidays come, for the next episode to come online, for the train - but this seems to be all about the state of simply not knowing what will happen. I am still on school holidays, which probably gives me a bit more time than usual to wonder, but even so, it is ridiculous the way that despite absolutely knowing that there is no way that I could feel pregnant, or have any kind of physical changes yet, I keep surreptitiously feeling up my tits to see if they've got more sensitive and trying to work out if I'm hungry or actually feeling nauseous. It's not altogether comfortable, the wondering, because if all that change is going to happen, I'd really just rather know now. I feel a little bit like I'm hovering between being ordinary or something absolutely life changing happening. I'd rather know! But soon enough. And mostly, I just can't actually imagine that I would be pregnant this first time. It felt like too much of a practice round. We were so awkward and emotional, it seems like getting through that should have been enough to achieve for this month.
Monday, July 1, 2013
Ten things about insemination
Dark. Cosy in bed.
I am judgemental about people who write blogs with posts that are called things like 7 things I should have done before having a baby or top 3 reasons why we love cloth nappies, because all those dot points seem to say they can only think in bite sized pieces rather than some kind of sequential, coherant whole.
I can't seem to think in any kind of sequential, coherent whole. Bite sized pieces it is.
1. Last night we tried to get pregnant for the first time. We are trying three consecutive days, so tonight will be the second. It was a hugely much bigger deal - emotionally- than I think any of us expected.
2. I won't speak for the others, but what I found hard was the intensity of gratitude I felt. And accompanying fear that it's too much to ask of them. I find it so hard to handle the idea that Joey and Helen are doing this incredible thing for us, for me, and there is nothing I can do or say to even express how grateful I am. Helen asked if I meant that I feel I need to repay it somehow, or if it is the discomfort of indebtedness. But it's not that. It's really just the overwhelmingness of gratitude. Who would have known that it could be such a difficult feeling.
3. Hollie said, just accept the hugeness of the generosity. You'll give it back to the world, in your own way. I was surprised by that, coming from her, but comforted too.
4. I said I wouldn't speak for the others' feelings, but I think we all got a pretty big dose of Shit Got Real! It seemed silly, given how much preparation had gone into this. You'd think we'd have been prepared, but we weren't. Hollie (lawyer) made us laugh by worrying about how incredibly unregulated and "off the grid" the process is...
5. The process. I washed three jars, different sizes. All with lids. I had no idea what would be most appropriate! Then we went for a walk, after working out that they would message when we should come home, and that the jar would get tucked somewhere warm. We walked. I freaked out. We got a bit hysterical about how no one knew that we were wandering the streets waiting to get a message telling us that we had sperm waiting for us in a jar. I did that thing with the corner of a park bench to get the top off a ginger beer bottle that needed a bottle opener. Drank ginger beer. Picked lavender.
Then we got the message and so we walked home, took the jar from Joey on the stairs. We all hugged. I thought about how the family from school who lives in the flat below us had no idea what their kid's teacher was getting up to in the stairwell. Helen and Joey went to get icecream. Things felt momentous. Got it in the syringe and the syringe in the right place, and... Well now we just wait and see!
Then we got the message and so we walked home, took the jar from Joey on the stairs. We all hugged. I thought about how the family from school who lives in the flat below us had no idea what their kid's teacher was getting up to in the stairwell. Helen and Joey went to get icecream. Things felt momentous. Got it in the syringe and the syringe in the right place, and... Well now we just wait and see!
6. The funniest thing - actually from earlier in the day. I had to get a syringe, a medicine one with no needle (obviously), but when I went to the chemist, the ones there seemed way too big. So stupidly I asked if they had any smaller ones and predictably they asked what for. Oh God. I mumbled something about giving the cat antibiotics but having lost the little medicine syringe and left as quickly as I could. But it gave me an idea. Hollie and I may have made a baby, using a nice little syringe that I got from the vet.
7. All the straight women in my life had warned us about the weird/gross factor of sperm. I didn't think it was weird or gross. I was too busy feeling grateful.
8. After the insemination we did the crossword in bed. We did quite well. It was very soothing. I felt like Hollie and I were really in this whole thing together - I'd been worrying about this part of everything, given how it really shows up how we really can't make a baby with just the two of us. But it felt like we made a baby with the two of us.
9. Helen and Joey came home and we all had tea in the living room. The cat saw Helen was still jittery and chose to sit on her and go nuts purring and headbutting. I loved everyone so much.
10. We went to bed. I didn't sleep, but I felt happy. In the middle of the night I got up and peed on all three brands of Ovulation Prediction Kits to see if we'd got the timing right. All three said yes. I went to sleep.
X
Sunday, June 30, 2013
Bed
Overcast and mild. Still in bed at midday!!
This time together feels really important. We might make a baby together tonight.
Hollie is under the weather and has the day off. We've spent it in bed so far... such a luxury. Watching ABC family drama and talking about how our family tree will look. Working out the plan for this evening (the sperm logistics!) and talking about worries. Talking about what we are looking forward to. Sorting out Christmas plans. The cat thinks all his Christmases have come today, with both of us still in bed for hugs.
This time together feels really important. We might make a baby together tonight.
Fingers crossed!!!
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Feminist
Cold, dark. Warming up my feet before getting into bed.
Julia Gillard lost the leadership spill tonight. I was moved that what brought her almost to tears was not losing the position, thanking her family, etc, but her hope that the next time a woman made it to being Prime Minister, it would be easier than it had been for her, that having been there first would have made some kind of a difference.
Closer to home, this week we managed to talk about sperm and how to hand it over. On Facebook. God, what a weird, weird thing this is. Glad to get the logistics sorted though - if we were blushing online, it's probably good we're all clear on what to do in the actual event.
So soon now. Feeling happy.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Day One
Sunny. A perfect winter day.
Today is special! Before I started keeping track of my cycle, month by month, I'd always thought of getting my period as being the end of a cycle - my body's way of saying, well, you didn't get pregnant (of course, how would I have?!) so we'll scrap all that and start again in a few days. However, as the fertility charts count it, the first day of your period is the first day of the new cycle, a definitive new beginning. Somehow I've swapped over to that way of thinking, which makes today the first day of the cycle in which we might, MIGHT, make a baby. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Partly I think I've swapped ways of thinking because of my joy each month over the way that ovulation shows up with all its miraculous temperature shifts and fern shaped patterns on a microscope slide - it means that the excitement is all over by about Day 14 and then it's just about waiting for my period to come so that I can start a new chart. Also, I can see the emotional benefit of understanding it as a new beginning, rather than marking the end of a failed attempt, once we are actually trying to get pregnant. It's a bit kinder on your feelings that way, I guess.
I've been thinking a lot about how it might feel to see 'not pregnant' turn up on the little tester stick thing. The odds are not in favour of getting pregnant first time, apparently. Dr Google seems to say that you have about a 1 in 4 chance each time of getting pregnant, with the reasonably common complication of miscarriage still to add into the equation after that. Another way of looking at it is that on average it takes six months of trying. I'm never sure how to feel about these numbers. Six months is not a hugely long time in some ways... It's only six tries, after all, but then any baby-making site, anywhere on the Internet, has story after story of people who do not get pregnant despite good health and best efforts, month after month, and the people who are telling those stories seem BROKEN by the accumulation of those negative pregnancy tests.
Will I feel broken too, if it takes a while?
My aunts tell me that I come from a line of "one fuck wonders". (Not my words!). I hope I inherited that!
X
Today is special! Before I started keeping track of my cycle, month by month, I'd always thought of getting my period as being the end of a cycle - my body's way of saying, well, you didn't get pregnant (of course, how would I have?!) so we'll scrap all that and start again in a few days. However, as the fertility charts count it, the first day of your period is the first day of the new cycle, a definitive new beginning. Somehow I've swapped over to that way of thinking, which makes today the first day of the cycle in which we might, MIGHT, make a baby. (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!).
Partly I think I've swapped ways of thinking because of my joy each month over the way that ovulation shows up with all its miraculous temperature shifts and fern shaped patterns on a microscope slide - it means that the excitement is all over by about Day 14 and then it's just about waiting for my period to come so that I can start a new chart. Also, I can see the emotional benefit of understanding it as a new beginning, rather than marking the end of a failed attempt, once we are actually trying to get pregnant. It's a bit kinder on your feelings that way, I guess.
I've been thinking a lot about how it might feel to see 'not pregnant' turn up on the little tester stick thing. The odds are not in favour of getting pregnant first time, apparently. Dr Google seems to say that you have about a 1 in 4 chance each time of getting pregnant, with the reasonably common complication of miscarriage still to add into the equation after that. Another way of looking at it is that on average it takes six months of trying. I'm never sure how to feel about these numbers. Six months is not a hugely long time in some ways... It's only six tries, after all, but then any baby-making site, anywhere on the Internet, has story after story of people who do not get pregnant despite good health and best efforts, month after month, and the people who are telling those stories seem BROKEN by the accumulation of those negative pregnancy tests.
Will I feel broken too, if it takes a while?
My aunts tell me that I come from a line of "one fuck wonders". (Not my words!). I hope I inherited that!
X
Monday, June 17, 2013
Long, long days
Wet. Again. A second week of having the Preps inside every lunch time will send me completely crazy!
The weekend was also crazy. Actually, our whole life feels like madness at the moment... Too much work and not nearly enough sleep or time to talk. Hollie's hours are even more long and ridiculous than usual and in addition to the usual truly insane work hours, she had a paper reappear from the job she had two years ago that needed one final edit before publication. She is one of the toughest people I know, when it comes to just knuckling down and doing it, but her life is looking pretty crazy from the outside. I don't really know how she is feeling on the inside... That would require seeing her for more than the hour before bed when we try to eat dinner and catch up and do the dishes and iron and work out what to do about the fact that we have no milk and it is raining... again!
I have also been working stupidly hard. I came apart at the seams a week ago though (my threshold is lower than Hollie's but it is still only the second time I've ever cried at school), and since then I've sorted out some things that should help, with the ever wonderful Harriet and a little bit of footstamping in the Principal's office. The school stuff is all looking significantly more do-able now, with a few new strategies and resources and the holidays also coming very soon. More than anything, I was struggling with the emotional task of managing all those kids, parents and co-teachers. I know that I couldn't possibly teach any other way, but when people tell me that teaching must be some much more emotionally easy than counselling was (my previous job) I feel like running down the list of emotional work that I do each day and explaining just how much this job requires all the same involvement of heart and mind... only unlike counselling it's not all over in discrete hour long blocks, you never have any idea what is coming up next, you get all of them all at once, all day long, not one-at-a-time with a reasonably certain lunch break. And in counselling, my job wasn't kids. Wild, wonderful kids who bend towards you like plants if you water them with love, making it double, triple as important to do it right, treat them well, love them back. Oh well.
The problem is, even with school on the up and up, a brand new dishwasher and Julia the German exchange student - who we've employed her to come and clean the house (and named the dishwasher after) - insemination #1 is approaching and we haven't really got much time for last minute getting ready. Emotionally, I mean. I remembered the other day that I have to find a needle-less syringe somewhere, but it's the emotional preparation I am wondering how we'll find the time for in the next couple of weeks, Actually, I feel prepared. Surprisingly, I feel calm - happy and quietly excited. But I think Hollie has a few last worries to work out. Obviously, it's not like we have ALL the emotional preparation to do in the next two weeks or I would be REALLY worried, but still. On the weekend, we should have talked about it, but we were so tired, emotions ran high, it was hard, there was arguing.
Anyway. Like school, the answer is always love, finding more time for love. I know this about Hollie: it never takes much. A head scratch and dinner. Flowers. Clean pyjamas. In the Complete Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth they say that before you have kids you should do this:
The Love Map (Truly! That's what they called it!)
- make a list of all the things that make you feel loved.
- from this list, prioritise and mark the top four ways of being loved that you absolutely must have or you start to feel stressed, insecure or alone.
- make sure something on the list happens every day.
I think Hol and I do a particularly good job at love in general, but the thoughtfulness that is behind this way of approaching each day is worth remembering in these days of 8pm finishing times. So, to dinner.
X
The weekend was also crazy. Actually, our whole life feels like madness at the moment... Too much work and not nearly enough sleep or time to talk. Hollie's hours are even more long and ridiculous than usual and in addition to the usual truly insane work hours, she had a paper reappear from the job she had two years ago that needed one final edit before publication. She is one of the toughest people I know, when it comes to just knuckling down and doing it, but her life is looking pretty crazy from the outside. I don't really know how she is feeling on the inside... That would require seeing her for more than the hour before bed when we try to eat dinner and catch up and do the dishes and iron and work out what to do about the fact that we have no milk and it is raining... again!
I have also been working stupidly hard. I came apart at the seams a week ago though (my threshold is lower than Hollie's but it is still only the second time I've ever cried at school), and since then I've sorted out some things that should help, with the ever wonderful Harriet and a little bit of footstamping in the Principal's office. The school stuff is all looking significantly more do-able now, with a few new strategies and resources and the holidays also coming very soon. More than anything, I was struggling with the emotional task of managing all those kids, parents and co-teachers. I know that I couldn't possibly teach any other way, but when people tell me that teaching must be some much more emotionally easy than counselling was (my previous job) I feel like running down the list of emotional work that I do each day and explaining just how much this job requires all the same involvement of heart and mind... only unlike counselling it's not all over in discrete hour long blocks, you never have any idea what is coming up next, you get all of them all at once, all day long, not one-at-a-time with a reasonably certain lunch break. And in counselling, my job wasn't kids. Wild, wonderful kids who bend towards you like plants if you water them with love, making it double, triple as important to do it right, treat them well, love them back. Oh well.
The problem is, even with school on the up and up, a brand new dishwasher and Julia the German exchange student - who we've employed her to come and clean the house (and named the dishwasher after) - insemination #1 is approaching and we haven't really got much time for last minute getting ready. Emotionally, I mean. I remembered the other day that I have to find a needle-less syringe somewhere, but it's the emotional preparation I am wondering how we'll find the time for in the next couple of weeks, Actually, I feel prepared. Surprisingly, I feel calm - happy and quietly excited. But I think Hollie has a few last worries to work out. Obviously, it's not like we have ALL the emotional preparation to do in the next two weeks or I would be REALLY worried, but still. On the weekend, we should have talked about it, but we were so tired, emotions ran high, it was hard, there was arguing.
Anyway. Like school, the answer is always love, finding more time for love. I know this about Hollie: it never takes much. A head scratch and dinner. Flowers. Clean pyjamas. In the Complete Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth they say that before you have kids you should do this:
The Love Map (Truly! That's what they called it!)
- make a list of all the things that make you feel loved.
- from this list, prioritise and mark the top four ways of being loved that you absolutely must have or you start to feel stressed, insecure or alone.
- make sure something on the list happens every day.
I think Hol and I do a particularly good job at love in general, but the thoughtfulness that is behind this way of approaching each day is worth remembering in these days of 8pm finishing times. So, to dinner.
X
Saturday, June 8, 2013
How much gratitude?
Sunny Melbourne day! I spent the morning building a chicken pen at school in the warmest of autumn sun.
I got this message this morning: "Soooo, we are just planning July - when are you fertile?"
How much gratitude can you possibly feel? The newspaper is full of disasters, school has been a week of struggle and sadness, but that message makes me feel like the sun shone just for me today.
I got this message this morning: "Soooo, we are just planning July - when are you fertile?"
How much gratitude can you possibly feel? The newspaper is full of disasters, school has been a week of struggle and sadness, but that message makes me feel like the sun shone just for me today.
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