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The Queer & Pregnant thread -- June, July, and August

22K views 467 replies 37 participants last post by  indigoscot 
#1 ·
Okay folks, the list is here! If you want to be added, just post in bold with your name and due date.

Queer and Pregnant

May 2008
Thismama, due 5/2008
mamastotwo (Liz & Janet), twins(!) due 5/2008
MsJodi (Jodi, DP Maureen), due 5/2/2008
TheGirls (Angela & Kelly), due 5/8/2008
rightkindofme (Krissy), due 5/25/08

June 2008
kk (DP Annie, Baby Daddy Rob), due 6/23/2008
MollyKenzie (DP Kari), twins(!) due late June

July 2008
Mamimapster, due 7/15/2008

August 2008
Solejean (Peggy, DP Lydia), due 8/1/2008
AngelaM (Angela), due 8/4/2008

September 2008
Scalpel (Jess, DP Darcie), due 9/4/2008
Cookie, due 9/14/2008
Venustx, due 9/23/2008 - oh my god it's triplets!!
Roxie, due 9/27/08
baby_baby_mommy, due 9/29/2008

October 2008
TryingMammas, due 10/2008
Becca, due 10/16/08
HeddyBee, due 10/19/2008

November 2008
Melissa and Susan - due 11/21/08
Cartesia - due 11/27/2008

December 2008
Deah, due 12/4/2008
JenInMpls (DP Jo), due 12/8/2008
MujerMamaMismo, due 12/14/2008
Simcon, due 12/20/2008

January 2009
2happymamas - Jill & Kerri, due 1/3/2009

February 2009
Starling and Diesel, due 2/14/2009

March 2009
Pigirl, due 3/8/2009
Erica12009, due 3/8/2009
Pranava 3/14/2008
Giggleblue 3/14/2009

April 2009
MamaCaveBear

May 2009
Lemurmommies, Due 05/01/2009

Graduates!!! Yeeeahaaa!!
NZmumof2 (Anna, DP Leah), Florence born 1/23/2008
Jentina (Jen & Sarah), Ellis Thomas born 2/20/2008

Recovering from Losses, to Rejoin Us Soon

Jen
travelgirlz
Snoopy13 (JD)
 
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#103 ·
yay solejean!!! He sounds lovely!!! Mazeltov!


giggleblue, here is a scissors, please, PLEASE, cut yourself some slack. You are pregnant, you're not supposed to be holding it all together. You are SUPPOSED to be an emotional wreck. Your progesterone is surging and it's going to make you feel like a total freak. Your partner will have to take you with several grains of salt. And why are midwives not calling you back?! You could just go give birth on an island... perhaps you want to drive to Tennessee and give birth at The Farm with Ina May Gaskin? That could be a lot like an island...

re: baby dreams: yes, I am personally too aware of how they are so right... I had 3 with my first: 1, that he was a boy, blue-eyed and long (very true); 2, that I would have trouble nursing (very, very true) and 3, a nightmare I just chalked up to anxiety, I saw him being cut out of my body as I floated along the ceiling of the operating suite at the birth center I was at. Sadly, also completely accurate. Because of the baby dreams I have had, I already gave up on my notion of a home birth with this one, because I dreamed that I was laboring in a clinical setting, and it was all so positive. It helped me resolve my whole obsession with home birth which was becoming a real bone of contention with my partner. I have woken up from all of my dreams with this baby just feeling giddy on endorphins. I've also dreamt that I will have a successful VBAC. That was a long time ago that I dreamt that.

OK, power nap time... baby brother is kicking me, and dp and ds are out of the house delivering beer to our neighbor who is going to put my 3.75-yo to work on Sunday while our doula comes and talks with us...
 
#104 ·
the midwife called me back this evening and will be by on monday to do a house visit and answer any questions that we have.

i think things have just been really strained around our parts, and i feel really guilty for being pregnant. i mean, she wants this experience more than i do, and i feel a disconnect this tww, like i'm not there with her anymore.

i can tell that she's not as excited as i would want her to be, and that kinda makes me sad. and i'm not as patient and loving and all that jazz. i just don't feel like being bothered 99% of the time. i just have my own demons i guess.

my family issues are kinda spiraling out of control again, and i just don't feel like being bothered with my mother either, who insists that i will "reap what i sow" which leads me to wonder what exactly she sowed.

i don't know. i feel sometimes like the whole ttc thing is such a strain on the family unit. i feel like we have a disconnect because we both aren't in the same place anymore. i don't know. i'm just feeling kinda blah. perhaps i need to find something for dinner.
 
#105 ·
Giggleblue put down the thermometer. I understand where you are. Dp went out of town the day after our bfp and I started spotting by midnight. After a rough weekend alone we went for our first us on the following Monday and it was TWINS. The spotting was the second baby setting up shop (5wks5days). I
just put 2 1 year old boys to bed. Enjoy the early days, comfort dp as much as you can, she will be your savior later. By the way you ladies are admirable for ttc together, my dp and I would have killed each other.
I am actually from tennessee and my first pregnancy was followed by a midwife from the farm and it was an amazing experience. Sadly, that pregnancy ended @ 14 weeks but the care I received and the connection I felt to my baby gave me the strength to try again. That was in 1996, today I have a beautiful 8 year old, and my miracle boys conceived with fresh donor sperm, my dp's brother, drug free. God loves lesbians!
 
#106 ·
: Chase!
Congratulations solejean.

giggleblue: I read your blog entry before you removed it. I'm so sorry. That was an awful situation and your mother sounds toxic. Do whatever you have to do to protect yourself from people who will bring you down. This time is too special to waste energy on those who suck it!
 
#107 ·
thanks for understanding, MujerMamaMismo.

i just wanted someone to understand instead of tell me how horrible of a person i was. sometimes, you do what works right then, and you try to make the best of two different choices that you were given.

i guess some peple don't understand that. i've always tried to see things from the other shoes - i've looked at life through the eyes of the drunk driver, the girl who choose the abortion, the parent who committed suicide. i was never any of those people, but i don't judge them, because i can see it through their eyes, their side.

i agree, she is toxic. and i'm distancing myself the best way i know how. funny, i had all these ideals of what my mom would be like as a grandmother, and now, now i don't want her anywhere near me. no where in my area. no where close to me. not even under the sound of her voice or the end of her text message.

but all some people see is the cover - the outer layer.
 
#109 ·
giggle blue - I am sorry about your mom, and your stress right now. I feel for your partner too, I would feel very strange if *my* partner was pregnant and I was not. It would feel odd and a little uncomfortable. Which is how you must be feeling as well...oy. What a situation. I personally ended my relationship with my mom years ago, as it was too toxic to continue, and since then things have only gotten better for me in my relationship with my self, and with others. She does not know about our daughter or this upcoming baby. And she won't. But there are definitely things I have been through in the last 15 months especially that I WISH I had had a mother to be with me through, because my partner was not able. sigh.

You know I was not part of a DDC with my daughter, but this time I was so excited to be part of one that I jumped in. And so far I think we have had 2 miscarriages already? That freaks me the crap out! I go in there to putter around and kabam! I feel the crushing loss some poor woman is going through having lost her baby. Oh I hope I NEVER go through that myself, I don't know what I would do...
 
#110 ·
giggleblue, I think you're right, and that there is no greater exercise for us as humans than to put ourselves in the place of others and consider how they might be feeling or why they might act or think the way they do, instead of judging...

but if their behavior is hurting us, I think it's completely reasonable to cut off contact. I wish my DP didn't feel so beholden to her mother as an only child and took all of the horrible, painful crap she takes because she feels an obligation as her offspring. My MIL is such a b**** to my DP.

My friend had to cut herself off from her family because they are so homophobic and cruel to her, and it's been a long journey since she's stopped talking to them. That's the times her friends hear from her most, is when she's missing her family. I hope you have enough created family around you to support you, and I hope you can find some wonderful older women in your life to serve in that grandma role...

:
 
#114 ·
thank you everyone for your support. jen, i read your comment on my blog and perhaps we are due for some therapy. i'm working on trying to be more aware of how my actions effect dp, and also am trying to relate to her feelings that she has right now. it must be hard to not be pregnant when someone else is. i know last month, she doubted her body function a lot.

before we said that we would go to a RE if this month didn't work, but i think we are going to try again at home. we had timing issues before, so i almost want to say the last two inseminations don't count.
 
#115 ·
You know, of course, that you were really lucky to get pregnant on your 2nd try... I hope she's not SERIOUSLY thinking something is wrong with her - the chances of conceiving via IUI with frozen hovers around 20% if you're at peak fertility, iirc. And timing everything perfectly is hard... and even when you've got the timing perfect, it doesn't necessarily work.

It is hard to not be pregnant when others around you are. Our very best friends, a straight couple, tried for 5 years to get pregnant and the final year they used a lot of medical intervention - clomid, trigger shots, ultrasounds, IUIs with his sperm, IUIs with donor sperm... no baby. Then we got pregnant that year, and that was the worst feeling to me... how do i tell my straight friend, for whom it should have been so easy to get pregnant, that I'm knocked up and I don't even have any sperm in my relationship? I know she did a LOT of personal work to come to terms with all of these people around her having babies and the fact that she wasn't. Like years.

But of course, your dp doesn't want to hear now from you, the pregnant one, that all she has to do is be patient...

I think I gotta stop with being full of advice today.
 
#116 ·
A little comic relief (on the topic of morning sickness, my one and only thought these days). I'm doing what all the books say, and eating saltines in the morning before I get out of bed. Turns out one of our cats likes saltines, too. (I've tried to explain to her the difference between omnivore and carnivore, but she's not having it.) So now each morning as I'm crunching away I also have to keep her little furry head out of the saltine package, because she keeps trying to stick her face in there and grab a cracker for herself. It's becoming one of my favorite parts of waking up.

Also, it turns out my DP wasn't having sympathetic morning sickness after all. It was pretty bad iron-deficiency anemia. Doh. I think I maybe a little bit somewhat redeemed my bad "it's all in your head" wife self by being the one to figure the anemia thing out, but still. Oof. He's on iron now and feeling much better = phew.

Solejean, congratulations!


And giggleblue, hang in there. I think a lot of us have experienced similar sorts of family situations-- I know I've had quite the struggle with my father-- so please know you're not alone here. Try to be kind to yourself while you're working through it all, eh?

p.s. pranava, put the thermometer away. Move it far from the bed, so you know you can't get an accurate temp, and won't be as tempted.
 
#117 ·
mmm, kitty saltine love... we had a cat who would lick the salt off of the saltines. You had to examine the cracker closely to see whether it had been licked before you ate it.

glad the anemia is being dealt with!!

Into my head just wandered the thought: how is (are?) starling&diesel doing?
 
#118 ·
Hey folks,

Sorry I've been so out of touch. I just got back from 9 days on Cape Cod, which was really, really, really wonderful. I was a bit nervous about being two hours from home during week 37, but it was all just fine, and I feel refreshed and relaxed in the way that only the ocean can make me. I went swimming every single day, most of them at Herring Cove in Provincetown, and it was so nice to be in the water, and also so nice to be on a beach surrounded by queers. Not only did we not get funny looks, but everyone kept looking at my belly and then at my tranny boyfriend holding my hand and *smiling* at us. I know that I shouldn't be so excited about this, it should just be par for the course, but it really felt good just to be "normal" for a week.

Now I'm at 38 weeks and am feeling pretty ready to be done. Though my actual due date is August 4th, I've been visualizing August 1st. Yes, I know, first babies come late, blah blah blah. I'm still holding out hope.

Solejean- Congratulations! I am so thrilled to have another graduate here!

Jen- Congrats on your boy! I too had a lot of weird premonition dreams with this pregnancy (starting with one at 2dpo that I left my baby at the coat check...). I know that your DS will get really excited soon about having a brother.

Giggleblue- I'm sorry to hear both that you're having family stress and stress over having gotten pregnant already when your partner hasn't. I want to echo what Jen said- two cycles is soooo totally normal, especially if your timing might have been off. I think it's really easy to start pathologizing our bodies in the ttc process, imagining all of these things wrong that actually aren't. I wish you both peace and clarity (and, of course, shared morning sickness, very soon
).

Pranava- I echo all the others here- put the thermometer down. It's just going to make you crazy. One thing I finally had to come to terms with was that it didn't really matter how many times I took my temperature or looked at the lines on an HPT. If my pregnancy was going to stick, it would stick. If it wasn't, it wouldn't. It's really hard to let go of the idea that you can know, can control the whole thing somehow. You're in the hardest part right now, but you're going to get through it, and soon enough, you'll hear the baby's heartbeat and feel soooo reassured.


And that's my news. I'm sorry if I've missed people- I feel like I'm still catching up on the real world after a week's vacation. And, it occurs to me that I COULD BE NEXT! Oh my. Oh my...
 
#119 ·
thank god i'm not at the saltines yet! although i know that the cat would be there, if only to make the little baggie crinkle. he's a sucker for crinkle!

we have a meeting this afternoon with a midwife. i haven't so much decided if we are going to go with her or not. our main hang up is price and the fact that it more than likely would not be covered by our insurance. well, perhaps a portion, if billed correctly, but that's something we seriously need to discuss.

as it stands, with dp being a teacher, she wouldn't get paid maternity leave, which is odd given the fact that she is salaried. it just doesn't make sense to me, but i can see how that could happen. if that's the case, we would more than likely need to save the money to pay said midwife, so that we could survive the following months with two babes.

so as that stands, we aren't completely sure, but i'm sure we will have more of an answer after we talk with her.

i've put the "family situation" behind me as of now. i'm not going to worry about it. i have too much other stuff going on. all will be well, even if it's only well in my mind.

angelam - hold the hope for your august 1 due date! visualization always helps!
 
#120 ·
giggleblue - there should be some provision in her contract for "paternity leave" (big eye roll there but we've all been there...) or adoptive family leave... my dp used to work at a very conservative Catholic institution and she still found that she was entitled to 2 weeks of adoptive parent leave. So maybe a call to HR is in order. Also I am sure that the rules would change if she were the one carrying...?

And I wanted to tell you that those 12-packs of Target washcloths (butt rags!) I suggested to you for the cloth diapering arsenal are on sale this week for $2.49.

Angela - mmm, swimming every day. I have to get in touch with our local YWCA and see if we can get a scholarship so that we can re-join so I can swim. We canceled our membership so that we would have the $ to send ds to preschool. I'm missing it. I can't believe how close you are to holding that baby in your arms!
: good labor vibes now in case you need them suddenly...!

My son adjusted quickly to the notion of having a brother and is now fairly psyched that he will get to share a room with him. Thank heavens for that, as we have a 2-br house!
 
#121 ·
AAM update: I think my m/s is actually a little better these days. My midwife started me on B6 last Thursday, and I don't feel *good* by any stretch, but I don't feel as pukey, either. I've put back on the weight I lost, and I actually enjoyed myself during whole stretches of yesterday. I have a two-day business trip to Boston this Thu/Friday, and I've been really worried about being able to keep my self together for the duration (fancy dinner, presentations, the works), but maybe there's hope....
In any case, I might tell folks at work that I'm pg before the end of this trimester after all, if our ultrasound next week goes okay. It's just so much energy to hide feeling this lousy, you know? Those of you later in pregnancies, how did you handle telling at work?
 
#122 ·
Hi Pi!

I'm still only 10 weeks and a bit, but I thought I'd chime in about telling at work. At my paramedic job, I told my Unit Chief right away, just in case I had to book off on short notice, or if I was suddenly unable to work. I've told my various work partners on a need-to-know basis, like one time when we had to do a three hour lights and sirens drive up and then down a winding mountain pass ... i was in the back for about five minutes before I was going to throw up (it was about 7am, when my m/s was the worst). I made my partner pull over and I told her that I had to drive. I later told her why. I also told a couple partners early on when I wasn't sure if I'd have to pull over the ambulance and puke at the side of the road. All told, I've maybe blabbed to about five of my paramedic colleagues. My DP on the other hand, has told her entire restaurant staff AND anyone else who will listen.

I've also been avoiding very heavy lifts and making patients walk whenever possible, just to be on the safe side. And I told the nurse at the local clinic who was a certified MW in Australia ... our midwife is three hours away, so the one here (she can't practice as a mw, too far from resources) is going to be our unofficial backup.

As for my other job ... I'm a professional writer, and I haven't told a soul. Not a soul. I'm a little worried that it will affect a contract that I'm working on with my publisher. I haven't even told my agent. I was at a writer's festival this weekend, and while I was on stage, I kept thinking that the audience must be sitting there thinking how chunky I've gotten as of late. Ah well.

Trust your instincts, mama pi.
 
#124 ·
Hi Pran! So good to see the mass exodus from the TTC board to here!
:

You've chucked your thermometer out, right, hon?

The m/s has pretty much stopped ... which, of course, makes me nervous. But I've still got tonnes of food aversions (I have to flee the house when DP is cooking, and she's a professional chef!) and my pasty chalk-white self is covered in bright blue veins, like I'm being colonized from the inside out, and I pee every two hours at night and my boobs are not my own ... they are some other, more shapely woman's. So I guess I'm still pregnant! No bleeding, no cramping, no pain (other than ligament pain ... ouch) so I suppose all is well.

We traded DP's super butch off-road truck (can't put a car seat in it) for a rather sedate Escape yesterday, so we're thinking positive. Although we're not buying anything major (other than dealing with the vehicle!). Each time we visit the midwife we buy something from the consignment store next door to the midwife clinic. DP is so cute about it, it makes me cry. She bought tiny little socks with grinning whales on them, and showed them to everyone! Awwww ... bestill my hormone-addled heart. I love her. She's so cool.
 
#125 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by starling&diesel View Post
Each time we visit the midwife we buy something from the consignment store next door to the midwife clinic. DP is so cute about it, it makes me cry. She bought tiny little socks with grinning whales on them, and showed them to everyone! Awwww ... bestill my hormone-addled heart. I love her. She's so cool.
I hear you on the little socks thing. My DP bought little socks that say "I Love Daddy," and has been carrying them with him to work, sleeping with them under the pillow, etc. He even danced them on my stomach during the 10-minute post-IUI wait, the IUI that got us pregnant. It makes me tear up, even thinking about it. Ain't love grand?
 
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