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!

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

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.

Overwhelmed

Perfect Canberra blue autumn day.

I spent the day with Joey and Helen building their first garden bed today. Six weeks ago they moved into Joey's childhood home - a bush block with wombats, echidnas and roos, a dam, a wealth of trees and logs, hills, slopes, rocks and sticks, and a big old house cluttered with books, pots, tins, paintings, prints, photos, instruments, toys, shelves, cloth and drawers. The verandas have boxes and boxes of tools and bottling jars, newspaper and pottery, there's a swing set, a fallen down cubby, surfboards by the dam, rusty bikes, a Beetle filled with kids books, a windmill in pieces, a potters wheel, a giant ants nest. They are in the thick of making sense of the wonder and jumble of it all, getting the solar power, the generator and the pump for the dam all working, and getting the first garden built felt like a big achievement for the settling in effort!

While we dug and made edges, we also talked all day, off and on, about the baby collective. Helen is so eloquent when she talks about why she thinks that it is a wonderful thing for us to all be doing together. I didn't know before today that she'd thought about it from so many angles, and with such generosity towards all of the different perspectives. She makes me feel safe, and overtaken by such a sense of trust and love and overwhelming good fortune instead of the usual worry and fuss. And it is overwhelming - there is so much love and goodwill being extended for a child who doesn't even exist yet, and in every hidey-hole, magical bit of junk and little animal track into the tall grass all I can see is the joy of summer holidays together here and that feels like such a richness it is completely unbelievable too.

Traveling

Parkes, NSW. Hot, hot, hot. Hot in the shade and mindbogglingly hot in the sun.

Today is our third day of camping with Joey and Helen on the way home from Brisbane to Melbourne, and it's really, really hot. After I had a minor melt down yesterday at the tail end of the hottest part of the day (can't use the air conditioning because it heats up the engine alarmingly and we are packed in tight with walls of bags on all sides) Hollie and Helen came up with a ratings system for identifying levels of heat stress, from hot and sticky to completely hysterical. I'm on the lower end of hysterical, heat-wise, but feeling more relaxed today regardless, the worries I've been turning over since we all got on the road together are less compelling than the last few days.

I've been worrying about how I seem to Joey and Helen, whether I seem healthy, happy, emotionally normal, sufficiently resilient, creative and interesting enough to be worthy enough to carry and raise a baby. I've been worrying about how to arrange the practicalities of donation, how Hollie and Helen will feel on the day, how to bring up sperm analysis and testing. I've been worrying about stealing Helen's right to first-born baby. I've been worrying about whether I come across as profoundly grateful as I feel and whether I talk about the baby making too often, and whether I sound flippant or ridiculous when I do, and whether I'll have to seem confident and on top of things all the time.

Despite the heat and the worries, though, the country is spectacular and incredibly varied as we work our way down the inland road, and we have swum in beautiful rivers the whole way. It's hard to stay worried in the relief of cool, deep river water! Only two more hours in the car until the next one!

New Year

New Year's Day, Woodford Folk Festival. Hot in the sun, with a glorious breeze and just the tiniest shower as the sun set.

Today I walked up the hill with Joey and Helen to watch the sun rise. Most people were still pretty messy from the night before, and I think a lot had seen the night right through to sunrise, but being Woodford it was sweet and special. Even though we all know the sun does it every morning, it felt momentous when it stained the whole sky pink and then broke up above the horizon and through the clouds. It felt momentous for me because this is the year I'd like to try to make a baby. A baby with Hollie. And Joey. And Helen. The Baby Collective! Happy, happy New Year!