Category: Family
Happy Mother’s Day
Thank you to all of the mothers I know. Thank you to my mother, Tracy, for loving me unconditionally, for teaching me that getting lost can be the beginning of an adventure, that there’s always room for more people, that giving can be a calling. Thank you to my stepmother, Stephanie, for showing my weird little family unflinching love and acceptance, for having a bottomless well of energy, for giving me a second family filled with more siblings and more people to love. Thank you to my sister, Alyssa, for starting the next generation, for going through a difficult pregnancy and childbirth with stubborn strength, for sending me pictures of my niece regularly.
Thank you to all of the women writing on this blog. Each of them has shared beautiful stories of mothering that make me proud to be a part of this project. They are all different on the surface, but unapologetic in who they are. They have made me laugh, made me cry and made me happy that the internet exists. This has been an amazing experience and I’m excited for the future of this site.
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Taking the [monetary] Plunge
Swipe swipe, we just charged $2000 to my HSA card for sperm. Yup. Aside from my car, which doesn’t really count because I’m still paying for it, this is the single largest purchase of my life. The money doesn’t bother me, it’s essentially free money, a perk of my job, it’s the true committment to this that only money or pregnancy can denote.
We had an appointment with the real baby doctor on Thursday. He’s kind of a weird guy, which I guess you’d have to be to inject previously frozen sperm into women all day, but still, he’s weird. The appointment was, for lack of a better word, easy. We sat down in his office, he had three different flip books to explain the reproductive system and the different choices we had for sans mans pregnancy. He went through them, allowing plenty of awkward silences for our minds to wonder, and for us to ask, what were probably, really dumb questions, nevermind make inappropriate jokes. Continue reading
Breastfeeding: There’s not always a horror story!
Any mother, or would-be mother who spends any amount of time on the internet has read plenty of opinions about breastfeeding. The prevailing attitude seems to be along the lines of, “OMG BREASTFEED YOUR BABY OR YOU ARE THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD AND YOUR CHILDREN WILL NEVER BE SUCCESSFUL IN LIFE.” This general point is stated so pervasively and so, um, passionately, that it’s creating somewhat of a reflexive backlash. Now, very few people are challenging the “breast is best” idea because, science. Instead, what’s happening is that women who can’t or don’t breastfeed for whatever reason, or even women who haven’t yet given birth, are feeling attacked.
Now think about what happens when you’re fighting with your significant other: You feel attacked. You get defensive. You look for anything you can to tear down the other person’s argument. In the case of breastfeeding, there are enough horror stories floating around that just about any pro-breastfeeding argument can be dismissed with two words: cracked nipples.
If it’s not cracked nipples, it’s not enough milk production, or mastitis, or no sleep, or any number of unpleasant side effects that make the idea of shaking up some formula seem more and more appealing. Hell, even people who do manage to successfully breastfeed often have to deal with physical pain and other yuckiness. All of this is compounded by the fact that very few women are actually properly educated about breastfeeding before having a child. What? A lack of female reproductive health education in America? You don’t say!
Sure You Can Call Me God.
I’m not religious. My parents aren’t religious. I grew up believing in evolution and that babies came from vaginas. My parents were really into honesty and frank conversations with us. They told us about religions and that it was a thing that would affect our lives if we chose to participate or not. I had a very vague idea of who this god fella was supposed to be.
I went to church a lot as a kid, I had friends who’s families were religious and I was really into sleepovers on Saturday nights. I was totally into going to church with them. I found it to be really amusing and kind of like gym class, lots of standing up and sitting down and sometimes singing and then hugging strangers who were really concerned that I looked like a boy. It was an experience like no other to me. My family didn’t do that, ever, at all. We spent our Sunday morning eating sausage gravy and climbing trees. Continue reading
On Bullshit Holidays
Ah, here we are. Nearing the second weekend in May, which means we are nearing the second bullshit Hallmark holiday of the year: Mother’s Day. (The first, clearly, is Valentine’s Day, which is The Worst, without question.) (And, obviously, the third is Father’s Day.) Here, on this day, we are to honor our mothers by “letting” her take a break and giving her some flowers that are going to wilt within days and bring her breakfast in bed and maybe some chocolate, too. The OTHER 364 days in the year (or 365, if we’re celebrating Leap Year), your mom can suck it.
Before you start thinking that I’m some party-pooping-holiday-hater, let me assure that I am not. Real holidays are my fucking JAM. Halloween? DRESS UP AND CANDY! Thanksgiving? CAN I PLEASE MAKE THE PUMPKIN CHEESECAKE? Christmas? FOOD AND PRESENTS OMG. New Years? DRESS UP AND CHAMPAGNE! 4th of July? LET ME STAY INSIDE BECAUSE AIR CONDITIONING AND AMERICA. Is it my birthday? GIMME ALL DAT CAKE. So what’s my deal? Let me explain. Continue reading
Sunday Family Funday
About a month ago I wandered into the local 99 cent store looking for nothing in particular, which is always a bad idea because 567 random things that I am only buying because, “they are soooo cheap” can quickly add up at 99 cents each! This time I scored 6 medium sized terracotta flower pots, a tomato Topsy Turvy, and some tomato seedlings. Since I have the black thumb of death I figured it would be fun for Ben and I to get crafty, paint the pots and maybe grow something in them. Well, we did! We painted the pots, and went to Lowe’s to pick out some flowers to plant but Ben thought that flowers weren’t cool enough and said we should grow some things that we could eventually eat. I know nothing about keeping common house plants alive and actually killed a cactus once so gardening is definitely not something that I would add to my resume. I gave in to my little negotiator and we left Lowe’s with a huge bag of potting soil (that I ripped an even huger hole in when I was trying to shove it into the trunk of my car), 2 cucumber seedlings, a watermelon seedling and more tomato plants, because my kid is a tomato junkie and will eat them until his guts explode. Continue reading
Motherhood: Just…let go.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret… No mother EVER has “it” (aka: their shit) together. I know this because I am a mother and I try to keep it together, but that’s IMPOSSIBLE. I find it a lot easier to just…let go.
I accept the facts that I am never going to have clean clothes, there is always the possibility of a meltdown from someone (including myself), and I am going to need at least one vice (like beer!) to get through it all.
I thought I was pretty good at keeping things in control before I had kids. I could go out in public with clean clothes, and jewelry, and washed hair and do what I actually set out to do.
Even after I had my daughter, I did pretty well. I could hide the spit up on my shoulder with layers of cardigans and I could try to pretend that I was involved in a real conversation when I was actually just trying to maintain eye contact because I had only gotten three hours of sleep the night before.
But, now that I have two kids, I’ve decided to let go of all of that. I’m pretty sure that I ALWAYS look discheveled. And I know that I am going to have a hard time forming complete sentences and that one of my kids is not going to get what he or she wants right when he/she asks for it. And all of that is okay. I know that, eventually, all of this will get easier. And I will have “it” MORE together.
But, for now, I’m good with letting go.
Inequity Insurance.
The following services are not covered:
Health services and associated expenses for infertility treatments including:
● In vitro fertilization
● Artificial insemination
● Embryo transport; and
● Donor ovum and semen and related costs including collection, preparation and storage of.
I’m not infertile. Please see I STILL HAVE A UTERUS for more information about my oven. Every time I call my insurance company, every time I look at the information from the doctor, every time I go to HR to ask my millions of questions, I want to scream I’M NOT FUCKING INFERTILE.
Infertility primarily refers to the biological inability of a person to contribute to conception. Infertility may also refer to the state of a woman who is unable to carry a pregnancy to full term. Continue reading
The Autism Chronicles: Welcome to the Monkeyhouse
I’ve struggled with writing this post for over a week for a multitude of reasons. I don’t want to define the boys by their diagnosis; I don’t want to act like an expert; I don’t want to sound whiny; I don’t want to rattle off a list of symptoms like that expresses how our lives are. There’s just no way to do this gracefully in my head, so here’s a clumsy snapshot of the boys.
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Jumping Hoops
It’s endless, it seems, the hoops that we continually have to jump through as a gay couple. Adding children to that mix it gets even more treacherous.
In some places it’s relatively simple for same sex couples to have kids together. I’d have a baby, Virginia would adopt the baby. We’d both share parental rights.
In some places, like the one where we live, this is illegal for same sex couples. In order for Virginia to go through the second parent adoption process I would have to legally give up my rights to our kids. Instead we get to draw up a series of documents, that are all at the liberty of some Baptist judge to honor.
A Co-Parenting Agreement.
A Domestic Partnership Agreement.
Hospital Visitation Authorization. Continue reading
Put Your Damn Pants On! 