Fingers Crossed

[edited first paragraph-- painful, but gone]

Partner admitted to me that she also feels that she'll get pregnant right away. We talked about names again when eating our hotdogs at Costco. It felt exciting since I kept sneaking glances at the EPT in the (gigantic) cart.

As for the February cycle-- We haven't said it outloud, but I think that's a lost cause. We're totally shooting for March. I really want the March goal to be achieved. And I really hate how fucking many steps we have to take. I find myself insanely jealous of my hetereosexual married friends, which is really most of my friends. I love them, but why do they get it so easy??

Incidentally, on a small update note: I got carded all around town this weekend, and at our bowling alley dally, the bartender there not only carded me, but inspected my license. Hurrah. I am young again!

Neon Green Laces-- Always a Winner

Saturday night at the bowling alley! Perfect cure for cabin fever. Or would that be the pitchers of beer?

This worked wonders on our late afternoon mood, and I fear we got so zealous that we signed up for a fifteen week Wednesday night league with our friends J and R. It's called the "Get Off the Couch League." I thought if they called it the Cure for Cabin Fever League that would have really nice alliteration. Just call me the Poet Bowler.

Also, Partner kicks my ass in bowling too. As a young child, she bowled at 140. She was twelve. On my 12th birthday, I asked to go bowling with some friends. I bowled a ONE. This league should be interesting. I am supposed to be the "jock" in this relationship; after all, Partner and I were introduced after I was finished playing in a week night summer rugby game. Bring on the existential crises-- I fear there will be many. She'll show me a thing or too, that Partner, just like she did in our fall softball league.

I'm more interested in the pitchers of beer. And the funky shoes.

Saturday Excitement

Morning trip to Costco, always pleasant. We got Partner a new laptop, which should be very exciting. But what was the most exciting purchase of the day? That I couldn't stop staring at while eating my hotdog with a blissful grin on my face? Was it the huge pack of blue cheese? Was it the beautiful piece of salmon? No, no, my friends. My favorite purchase of the day?

A 3-pack of EPT.

(I hope we only end up using one.)

"Why, Yes, You Can."

No joke: waiting for Partner at Indian restaurant tonight, I told the waiter I'd like a Kingfisher.

He said... "Can I see your id?"

"Can I See Your ID?"

Last Friday I had this really great day resuscitating my dissertation, and today I plan on breathing a little more life into it. After all, I am freaking thirty-two, and it's time to get done with this so I can go on to law school. Ha ha ha. You thought I was going to say so I could finish with school finally. What folly! Not being in school! After all, I am in about 28th grade, so why would I want to stop now? Besides the market for an English PhD is too abysmal for words. Still, I started this damn thing, and I actually like my topic and think it's compelling. It was Partner's clever metaphor that gave me the boot; she said to me, "This year, why don't we try for two births: our child and your dissertation." So helpful. I don't know that I am serious about law school, but I am such a politico -- Oh blah blah-- That's not really what I want to talk about.

It's just this: I remember being at the hair salon at sixteen, and my stylist saying, "Oh, you have a grey hair! Should I pull it?" and I, horrified she would deny me this maturity, gasped, "NO!" but it was too late. Grey hair gone. At sixteen, I probably looked twelve, and at twenty, I probably looked fourteen. I have always looked very young. When I turned twenty-one, I took my passport out to the bar since I hadn't gotten my license renewed and I didn't want any trouble with the authorities. No luck there. This was the conversation:

Bouncer: "Why is your passport green? US passports are blue."
Me: "It's the Benjamin Franklin commemorative edition."
Bouncer: "The what?"
Me: "The Benjamin Franklin commemorative edition. Look at the back page, there's a little bio of him as a statesman."
Bouncer: "C'mon, girl, where'd you get this made? You've been taken."
Me: "Seriously! I am twenty-one today! Don't ruin my birthday!"

He let me in, but I think he thought he was doing me a favor. I showed him all sorts of id with my name on it, my student id, my international student card, my library card, but in the end, the bouncer thought I was just a clever thirteen year old, and if I did that much work for a fake id, I deserved a drink.

People in restaurants used to think that my youngest brother was my older brother. I am ten and one half years older than him.

Two years ago, I went to a local antique market with Partner and my parents. It was early morning, and I had a baseball cap on. My dad said, "Four adults, please" and the ticket seller said, "No, she's not thirteen yet," pointing at me. It was great. It was the week of my thirtieth birthday. How thrilling! The seller was mortified when I told her how old I really was. She thought she'd insulted me or something crazy like that. (No, lady! You made my decade!)

I always said I'd be happy to be carded still at thirty. And I was, even if it was a little exasperating. And then I came down with a case of hubris, I said, outloud so all the bad little aging demons could hear me, "I'll be happy if they are still carding me at thirty-five." I mean, okay, a little bit of a reach, but I didn't say forty, even if that's what I was thinking.

I haven't been carded in a long time. For me that is. This summer while in the South, one bartender wouldn't serve me, even though I was with my parents, who vouched, reluctantly, as this revealed their ages too. But since then, a veritable desert of "Can I see your id?" Oh sure, at my local grocery store they do it, but only because they were busted for selling to minors and they are required now as punishment to id everyone. It's not fun to be asked when the seventy-three year old buying cooking sherry in front of you was asked first.

I have inspected my face-- are there more wrinkles? Not really-- I suppose a little crinkle around the eye, but I love those crinkles. They're there because I smile a lot. What's giving me away? To me, my hair looks the same, but maybe it's not.

Last week I was drying my hair, and guess what? There is quite a bit of grey. I mean, I can see the grey even when I am not up close, running my fingers next to my scalp in search of the little buggers. And the texture is different. Right now, if I let my hair air dry, it goes kinda wavy. The greys look like they want to curl right up (which would be totally cool with me).

Hmm. Grey hair.

My matrilineal line is a hair-dying line. My grandmother had her hair done every week, and I never saw a grey hair on her head. Never. My mother is also very much about having her hair dyed. She was blonde for a long time, but then took a turn toward a reddish hue, and is now a chestnut blend I would say. It always looks good, the color, I'll hand that to her. But even though this has been my experience with hair color, I spoke out against it. "I'm just going to be totally grey! None of this hair coloring bullshit! I want to be a crone!" My mother just smirked and nodded. (Age is usually a secret in my family, so to say I wanted celebrate getting older, smacked of something akin to hypocrisy. For example, my grandmother's date of birth was different on every document she had, and none of them was correct. I was the only one that knew how old she really was. My parents tried to get it out of me for her funeral, but in the end, we ended up only putting the year of her death on the headstone. I wouldn't let my Gramma down!)

I asked one of my dear friends, let's call her Irish, about this. "Irish," I said to her, "Should I color my hair? It's looking more grey than ever." Now, this was a telephone conversation, and she hadn't seen me for about a month. There was no hesitation: "Yes." A one word answer from Irish, with no embellishment, and just so you know, both Irish and I are serious talkers. My mom once told me she didn't know how we were friends because she couldn't imagine how either of us could get a word in edgewise.

So, here I am. Thirty two and not being carded. And my hair is going grey. And I am still in school, contemplating more school, with no baby that I desperately want, and signs that used to be off in the distance that I was getting older, are coming at me with increasing speed, like I'm going downhill on a bike. And that's really fun, mind you, going downhill on a bike, but depending on the hill, it can be pretty damn scary too.

I'm going to the bar tonight for a post-dissertating drink. I think I'll take my id, just in case...

Controlling my Uterus

I haven't blogged in a few days and have more than a few thoughts on my mind, but a very limited amount of time to express them. I have a stack of papers to grade already, only the third week of the semester and already I feel behind the 8-ball, and some class prep to do still, and cramps on top of it all. I have horrible cramps, and more than one ob/gyn I have seen has expressed concern that they are caused by endometriosis. The last ob/gyn I saw (for the first and last time) wanted to cut me open the very next week. I told I'd think about it and never called her back. She never called me to follow up either.

The ob/gyn I saw for the longest expressed her concern that I had endometriosis because she felt I had a retroverted uterus. Apparently most women are born with the uterus tipped backward, and as we mature, the uterus naturally goes forward. My understanding is that for 20% of women, this doesn't happen. This isn't naturally an abnormal position-- it's just like being right handed or left handed. The problem only starts when the uterus is tipped because of some other "problem." The ob/gyn who told me my uterus was tipped backwards thought perhaps it was because endometrial scarring had caused the uterus to attach to my intestine. This would also explain the painful sex I sometimes had as well.

Of course all of this maybe effects fertility. And only maybe do I have endometriosis. My understanding is that no one can tell me that for sure unless I have a laparoscopy. I can only be maybe expectant until I am. Expectant. (I love that word by the way: Expectant. It expresses so much.)

Have you divined yet my fears surrounding this issue of fertility?

But you wonder about it, maybe? After all, I am constantly talking about Partner as the one who gets preggo? Yes, it's true. Partner gets to go first since she's older-- thirty-six-- and I am a mere thirty-two, a virtual babe in the woods, and I'll go second. That's our grand plan. I'll have at least one, and at that point we'll discuss whether or not we want another. And the other idea is that our donor will be the common biological link between all kids. Hm.

I am very excited to have babies myself. As an undergraduate psych major, I was required to take a developmental psych class, and in this course, we watched a great documentary following the lives of (I think) five different pregnant women and their subsequent births. It didn't try to hide anything, and in one of the birth scenes, as I sat in this huge lecture hall with tears streaming down my face, the boys behind me were gasping and groaning, "Eugh, gross" or "Oh God, that is so disgusting." I remember the mortification from my friends as I turned to the boys and said, quite audibly so the entire lecture hall could hear me, "You just shut up. Just shut up because this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life." They shut up alright. I think I stupefied them. It makes me laugh now-- my younger eager self-- but I still feel the same about childbirth. Beautiful. Amazing. Incredible. Something I desperately want to experience. I have no ambivalence about it all. No doubts. I want to be be pregnant.

So, back to the retroverted uterus. Back to the endometriosis. The ob/gyn who wanted to cut me up couldn't tell me for sure whether or not the endometriosis would influence fertility. She said it was maybe or maybe not, but why not just get rid of the maybe not quotient early on, so in case I had problems with fertility, then we'd know it wasn't the endometriosis that was causing it, since she would have burned off the rogue tissue. But who was to say that by the time I was ready to have the baby, the tissue wouldn't be back? Well, no one. And who was to say whether the retroverted uterus or endometriosis would really cause infertility? Well, no one I have seen will say that definitively either. Pft. Square one. (Just fyi, it's not surgery that particularly scares me here-- I just think it's something that ones doesn't do lightly, and that's been impressed upon me by my father, the surgeon.)

I have stupid reasons for being concerned about infertility really-- other than perhaps the endometriosis and uterus situation-- and one stupid WannaBeMom reason is that in all the sex I had with men, much of it (gasp) unprotected, I never got pregnant. Maybe I am just lucky. And I actually do think of myself as a lucky person. My mother told me it was important to think of yourself as lucky, and I think she's right about that. And I am lucky that I never "caught" anything in all that time, including, but not limited to, an unwanted pregnancy.

The thing is, that I won't know a thing until I start trying in earnest, and truthfully, it's years down the line. (Will I still be blogging then? Will you ever know if I manage to get pregnant? Are there any you's out there reading this blog? I hope the answer is yes to all questions.) And I think I just need to go back to my mother's advice, and quit worrying about what's not even a legitimate worry at this point (although that is one of my fortes). I am a firm believer in how your mindset creates the desired (re)action.

The thing is that the world seems to thrive on unknowns, and so clearly I need to get used to that and stop worrying so much about everything. Instead of worrying about my potential to conceive years down the line, I should probably start worrying about this pile of papers, waiting for grades, and my unfinished dissertation: two things I really do have control over.

Snow Galore

Just a quick note because Partner and I are enjoying being snowed in today, and snowed in we are! I am dying to go walk in the snow, and totally wish I still had my cross country skis around. I'd ski into town and get some hot chocolate.

The well pump out front is totally under snow. I'd say there is at least 6-7 inches right now, but I am going to get a ruler and measure.

The snow is shoaling out of the sky.

Wow.

Love Potion No. 9

Well, we still have not sent our check the attorney in order to "retain" her and it's a little frustrating. We just get so busy, and partner's work life is a little stormy right now, and she gets home and it's like we just want to eat dinner together and veg out. Really, the retainer is not bad the way it is stated, it's just so forward leaning, and after some reflection on that, I decided that perhaps the attorney is just making sure she's covered in the same way we want to be sure we are covered. I think we're just going to sign it and take it over on Monday.

[edited and deleted material]

Whew. Last night I was skeptical. This morning I found myself lying in bed thinking that if it works, then we could have a baby by the end of this year. OH GOD. A BABY BY THE END OF YEAR! Yes, I thought, we should definitely try for the February ovulation cycle.

So, then Partner and I commence upon a discussion of ejaculate. Now in my past, I had a few relationships with men, and am no stranger to the penis or the workings of, but not so for partner. She asks me, "How much semen comes out?" So, I tell her anywhere from half a teaspoon to a tablespoon. "Oh, good. I thought it was like this absolutely miniscule amount and we weren't going to be able to get the potion out of the container." Whereupon we both started laughing, imagining little semen spatulas to get it out of the container in order to make sure we got it all! Oh dear... Little future child, we love you. We are just a couple of fun-loving mamas and I hope this mirth isn't distrubing to you. Or to anyone reading this. It's just such a situation we're in here, and we want some babies, and if we can't laugh about it then, oh well...

However, from here on out, I am going to abandon any talk of sperm, semen, ejaculate, etc, and refer to it all as "the potion." I am already creating little rhyming ditties in my head about the potion. I'll spare you.

The potion....

She's In Like Flynn

Condi was asked about air strikes in Iran in her confirmation hearings, and was sufficiently cagey enough to indicate that she is indeed perfect for this administration.

Iran, you say? WannaBeMom is losing it, you think? You feel you need to correct me, because surely I meant to see Iraq? No, no, no. Did you forget about the axis of evil? I got this joke years ago in my email, and I thought of it again today. Have fun:

The Axis of Almost Evil
By John Cleese (of Monty Python fame)
Bitter after being snubbed for membership in the "Axis of Evil," Libya, China and Syria today announced that they had formed the "Axis of Just as Evil," which they said would be more evil than that stupid Iran-Iraq-North Korea axis President Bush warned of in his State of the Union address.
Axis of Evil members, however, immediately dismissed the new Axis as having, for starters, a really dumb name. "Right. They are just as evil... in their dreams!" declared North Korean leader Kim Jong-II. "Everybody knows we're the best evils... best at being evil... we're the best."
Diplomats from Syria denied they were jealous over being excluded, although they conceded they did ask if they could join the Axis of Evil. "They told us it was full," said Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. "An axis can't have more than three counties," explained Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "This is not my rule, it's tradition. In World War II you had Germany, Italy, and Japan in the evil Axis. So, you can only have three, and a secret handshake. Ours is wickedly cool." International reaction to Bush's Axis of Evil declaration was swift, as within minutes, France surrendered.
Elsewhere, peer-conscious nations rushed to gain triumvirate status in what has become a game of geopolitical chairs. Cuba, Sudan and Serbia announced that they had formed the "Axis of Somewhat Evil," forcing Somalia to join with Uganda and Myanmar in the "Axis of Occasionally Evil," while Bulgaria, Indonesia and Russia established the "Axis of Not So Much Evil Really as Just Generally Disagreeable."
With the criteria suddenly expanded and all the desirable clubs filling up, Sierra Leone, El Salvador, and Rwanda applied to be called the "Axis of Countries That Aren't the Worst But Certainly Won't Be Asked to Host the Olympics."
Canada, Mexico and Australia formed the "Axis of Nation That Are Actually Quite Nice But Secretly Have Some Nasty Thoughts About America," while Scotland, New Zealand and Spain established the "Axis of Countries That Want Sheep to Wear Lipstick." "That's not a threat, really, just something we like to do," said Scottish Executive First Minister Jack McConnell.
While wondering if the other nations of the world weren't perhaps making fun of him, a cautious Bush granted approval for most axis, although he rejected the establishment of the "Axis of Countries Whose Names End in 'Guay," accusing one of its members of filing a false application. Officials from Paraguay, Uruguay, and Chadguay denied the charges.
Israel, meanwhile, insisted it didn't want to join any Axis, but privately world leaders said that's only because no one asked them.

It's Bloody Cold

.... and periodly the pipes in our master bath will freeze. Okay, so we leave those on with a little drip, which isn't particularly good for the septic system, but maybe better than pipes bursting.

Now, this morning, the toilet appears to be frozen. The toilet. Appears. To be frozen.

This is a sign that it is too damn cold.

What do we do about a frozen toilet? (As partner put it, it seems like the "poop chute" is the frozen part since the tank refills.)

Shit.

8:30 = Luxury

Yesterday I went to my friend M's house for a chat and some tea. She lives right around the corner from me, which is great fun since we are old friends and are both living in a different city than the one in which we grew up. M and I have been friends since at least freshman year in high school-- and this is starting to sound like an impressively long time.And although I love the city we are in, it's notoriously difficult to meet people here.

M has a baby, seven month old who is a real cutie pie. He seems good natured and easy going, just like M to tell the truth. His grandparents were there and I had more fun watching how they interacted with the baby than anything else. To be a little cliche about it, they doted on him and were clearly in love. M's dad was eager to come help when the babe started swim lessons ("Tell J I'll come and take pictures.") And M's mom-- well, I think grandma love is something special, and she's got it for this kid.

While I was there, M told us about how her baby is now waking up at 6:00 am and there's nothing she can do about. He's up and that's that. Sometimes she can sit in the rocker in the room, and he'll fall back asleep, but mostly, 6 am is his new wake up time. I sat on her couch and nodded, in a kind of detached psychotherapist way about this information, trying to appear neutral, but all the while my brain was racing. Six am! Six am! For good! For good! I'll have to get up at six am if my own baby does this. And our baby probably will!

Uhhheeeug.

I know that babies wake up early. Or wake up when you want to be asleep is probably more to the point. My youngest brother is 10 years younger than I am, so I remember his baby years quite well. He used to wake at 4 am for the day. At the time, my mother was smoking (gasp!) and she said she'd go downstairs with baby brother, have two cokes and a pack of cigarettes before the sun even came up. Once the paper delivery person knocked on the door at 5:30 am. Her car had gone kaput down the street, and she walked back to our house because she knew that mom was up every morning and she knew she wouldn't be waking anyone up. (And also that mom would not be scary!) The only reason my mom tells this story is because of the paper delivery person; that is the only out of the ordinary fact. Not that Brother 2 woke up at 4 am, for the day.

Partner and I like to sleep. It's 8:40 on a weekday, and I only just hear her shuffling down the hall. I usually get up a bit earlier, and on the days I teach, I am actually out of the house by 6, but that's twice a week. In the summer, I am up really early, but in the dead of winter we are like two hibernating bears.

I hope we have a little cub who likes to hibernate too. Otherwise, we just need to move someplace warmer.

No Sure Things...

That's what I am going to start telling myself. I have spent a certain portion of my free Friday today reading blogs, and a number of them deal with infertility. I have always suspected a certain level of infertility with myself (and that's perhaps a subject for down the road, but not today), yet I realized this afternoon that I fully expect my partner will be really fertile and conceive almost immediately.

In the past however any months as we have been trying to "set things up" I have had this timeline in my head.I have been thinking that all we need to do is get done with this legal business, get the sperm, squirt some inside Partner, and she'd be pregnant: Presto! We know all about ovulating, and even with the midwife we had this long conversation about fertility is "all about the mucus" and that the ovulation kits are probably overboard if you just know where you are with the mucus. Okay, I think to myself, we just keep a look out for the mucus, and bam! Partner=with child.

Clearly I am in for a rocky road, because I think it's hardly ever that easy, and I am going to really pray and hope and try to keep hope that it will be that easy for her, but I need to start to realigning my expectations.

Tomorrow night we are having our friends M and B to dinner. They want us to go with them to Menorca the first week of May and do some diving with them. Of course, we will go, but we've said we might not be diving since Partner might be prego. I have also (as I think I noted in the first post here) been doing some research about flying in the first trimester. We talked about our potential spring trip and noted that Partner might not be able to imbibe, and how that might shape the trip. Ah. What arrogance. What flying in the face of the fates. Who says Partner will be pregnant by this point? Me? Puh-leaze.

And all along I thought the hard part was going to be dealing the legalities. At least the legal system proports to have some logic about it. The human body? Who can tell...

Sage-Femme

Alors... Today we went to the midwife. (I also went to the dentist. All along I have thought I hated the dentist, when I really hate the hygienist.) The midwife, unlike the lawyer, makes me more excited and less scared. We had quite a few questions, and even though she didn't know the answer, she was willing to look. In fact, when Partner was changing into her beautiful blue open back gown (socks on!), the midwife emailed another midwife in the practice in search of some answers. In fact, she said she emailed this other midwife and said, "We gotta get together and talk!" I like that. I like women. (Understatement, perhaps?)

Some of the questions:

1. [deleted]
2. [deleted]
3. [deleted]
4. Does the U-hospital have an alternative birthing unit? (No?!?!)
5. Have you treated lesbians before? Does it bother you?

Whew. That's a short list of what we really asked, but she didn't know answers for any of the sperm questions, except to tell us what we already knew. (See above: regarding "fresh") . Sigh. I wanted answers about sperm. Still, it felt productive, and good to have this preliminary appointment completed.

One question that I asked, and surprised myself with, was "Are there any men in your midwife collective?" Now, in November, Partner was visiting a good friend in another state who had some other lesbian friends visit and rage about men who wanted to become midwives. And when Partner told me about this, I thought it sounded ridiculous. Who cares if a man wants to become a midwife? If he is drawn to what midwives stand for, and feels that is his calling, I don't think he should be denied. Fair play, I say. Go for it. I know some pretty damn sensitive men that I would love to have as a midwife. More sensitive than some ob/gyns I have been to in my thirty-two years. For example: As a younger person, I was really quite athletic, and in particular, a swimmer. A butterflier. I lifted weights. I was fit. Then I went to the ob/gyn who told me there was no way she could examine my breasts because they were too lumpy. They are FIBROUS! Not very big at the time, (unlike now!) and I walked out of there feeling awful. Abnormal. My damn boobs. What an insensitive doctor. Did it make a difference she was a women? No. Was she anymore sensitive to my plight as a young woman? No. See?

So, why would such a question pop out of my mouth today? It totally made me sound separatist and way more militant than I am. I like men! I don't care! In fact, if she'd there were male midwives in their group, I probably would have wanted to meet them!

My question didn't phase her, and neither did my stammering about it afterwards, where I hemmed and hawed about how it didn't matter, and blah blah blah whatever other banalities came out of my mouth. She just nodded, and smiled, this little wise smile. I liked her, and decided I liked others of her ilk too.

She is the sage-femme.

Retained v Restrained

Perhaps the lawyer is not retained after all. Now, don't get me wrong, we're still retaining the lawyer, but the agreement goes a bit forward into issues we aren't quite getting into yet, [....blah blah blah edited]

And fears abound, and I try not to dwell on them too much since Partner and I have both said we need to "trust the universe" a little in order to go ahead on this. But there are so many unknowns, and unsures, and I think that any time anyone has a child, that is probably the case, but it just seems so much more in our case, and I hate that. I know that the anger about this will kick in at some point, but I suppose right now I am too busy and focused on getting kid in Partner's belly that anger seems superfluous at this juncture. (Doesn't that sound like it should be party of the retainer? Client agrees that anger is superfluous at this juncture.)

I had no real fears until we sat in attorney's office, and it was really nice and grand, just the way I wanted it to look and feel, and the attorney talked to us, and seemed very competent, and for some reason, it suddenly made me terrified. As if all the fears we have about someone coming back for the baby after it is born became more real. [more edits] But the thing is, with all the recent laws passed, including the dastardly Prop 2 here in Michigan, and with King George sitting quite comfortably, the whole tenor of the land has just seemed to shift to more unfriendly than ever. I can just see the AFA bursting into the delivery room and whisking newborn kid away: "You're not fit to be parents, you lesbian witches!! We had a mandate from God delivered by the President, and if you aren't with us, you're against us!" Jesus. Does it seem so unlikely to you??

One day I just sat down and cried thinking about having a baby and then someone taking it away from us. (I know; I have always been dramatic. Really dramatic. But still.)

We had Shabbos dinner with some friends on Friday, who invited another lesbian couple over who happened to have a child, a really darling girl, and are expecting another child soon. J, one of the parents of this child, told us that she worried before giving birth too, about having a baby in this world of homophobes, but in reality, what's she's found is that having a child reduces everyone's homophobia, because in the end, everyone just loves the child. Hm.

I could go on like this for days, and will, since it's looking at some of these types of fears and questions that will form the central premise of this blog.

I should have never read A Theory of Relativity.

Anyway, the lawyer is not retained, [delete] Partner has not seen fertility doc, [delete] and we wanted to have Partner start trying in February, and things are moving too slowly. Frustrating, even through my fears, frustrating.

I Am an Adult Today: Two Reasons Why

1. It's raining this morning. There was an umbrella in my car.

That's a good enough reason for me, but perhaps some people were always this prepared. Okay, I know that some people were always that prepared since I was friends with those type of people in high school. They were good people to be friends with when I could barely keep track of my car, little less an umbrella in the car. And my car was a total piggery-- really disgusting dirty back then. It still ain't a paragon of cleanliness, but I promise, it's better than it was when I was 17. (My friends who had umbrellas in their cars at sixteen had clean cars then, and have clean cars now. I can attest to this.) [On another side bar note: If I can't keep my car clean now, childless, what will it be like with child in tow. I delude myself thinking I will be better then, but the reality is, I probably won't.]

2. An 8:00 class does not seem early to me anymore.

At one point in my undergraduate life (okay, two points, but everyone who knows me knows that my freshman year doesn't really count as a year of school since I was such a... a... well, fuck up really.) So at one point in my undergraduate life, I registered for an 8 am class: Chemistry. A stupid class for me take anyway-- It wasn't required for me, and I only took it because I had poetic notions about chemistry being part of "everything" and my grandfather was a chemist, and la-di-dah. It was a weeder class at the University of Michigan. Lots of pre-med students, and I had no business, as a liberal arts interloper, being part of them. The first time I missed class, I asked the girl who sat next to me in lecture for the notes. She said, "Are you kidding me?" and hunched over her notebook. I missed a lot of Chem lectures. 8:00 am just seemed too damn early. I had to walk a mere FIVE minutes from my home to get to the lecture. When I went to class, I woke up at 7:45 and often just put clothes on over my pajamas. I remember ranting at lunch about the University who would schedule classes so early, and made pronouncements about the wise nature of certain Ivy League schools who did not hold classes so early. I wished I was at those schools.

Now, of course, I ask to teach 8:00 classes. I get up at 5 am, in my office at 7. I hold office hours before class-- I tell my students to do what they need to do in order to get there on time. I sneer at such excuses as "My alarm didn't go off!" (which I used myself) or "I slept through my alarm clock!" (which I also used myself, and often was really true!). Okay, and there are students who are never late for class, and who also show up at early am office hours, but for me, not thinking this is odd, or not feeling that 8 am is too early is a sign that I am "grown up" in the way I always thought "grown up" would be.

Again-- I wonder how my feelings about "time" will change again with baby. Last night I couldn't sleep until about 1:00. (My current book is really engaging) and I kept rolling over and looking at Partner, and moaning, "I can't bloody believe I can't sleep." I usually nod off with no problem. Insominia is not something I have with any regularity. I was annoyed because I would only be getting four hours sleep. Something tells me the day will come when I will look with nostalgia on four hours sleep.

Getting Sperm

There's a lot we have to do around here before bringing a baby into this house. One, I am in the "office" right now that we both agree is an ideal baby room. So, one thing that we'd need to do is figure out where all this stuff goes. Two huge (IKEA) desks, which were perfect in our old house, but are cramped in the new house, which is, somewhat ironically, bigger than the old house. This space as an office is not ideal. One bookcase, again IKEA, and cheap, but it holds books, so who cares? And one HUGE lateral file cabinet. Then the room will need to be painted. It's a lovely room really, with a cathedral ceiling, and a fan, and a nice window open to the front yard. It will be charming as a baby room-- I think I'd like to paint it a nice buttery yellow. The carpet is blue. I can imagine it in summer, with the window open, but the shades (which we will also have to get) closed, the fan on-- the baby sleeping. It's quiet in our neighborhood. Only six houses on a cul-de-sac, so we don't have traffic or too many lawn noises. Nice.

So, the office will have to move.

And then I have worries about the cats-- how will they adapt to the baby? People with pets have kids all the time, and we have really really great cats. One of them, "the boy," is a wonder. Totally a snuggler, and wants to have love all the time. He'll even take it on my terms too, which makes him a total darling of a cat, since most cats only want attention on their own terms. So, the cats-- we'll have figure that out.

Then we're thinking of a trip to Spain in April, which means a pregnancy could be in early stages at that point. I think SCUBA would be out of the question, but even with flying there seems to be some questions. Is it safe, or not?

Okay, and I know I know I know these are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to having a baby and the things we have to think about and do and question. But the really big question for us right now is about the sperm.

We got a donor. Why is this important? Well... because we are two women, who are "married", so to speak, and now we want a child. We have a lawyer on retainer right as of now. Partner has an appointment on Thursday for check up, general health, and questions. Quite possibly she could start trying in February or March. Heady heady stuff.

So, I'm going to try and keep track of some "stuff" on here. Feelings, emotions, problems, etc. I am really hoping that other people with children, pregnant woman, other gay and lesbian families, etc, find this blog and comment. Help. Or read. Or even people who don't have any children or want children. Whatever. But mostly, I want to track this experience. This scary ride into childing.