Apparently I'm nuts

I understand that it is hardly ideal to be a single parent.  I get that it isn't something that you should necessarily shoot for.  But I am constantly surprised by people's reaction when I tell them that I am planning on getting pregnant again (GASP!!) without being in a relationship.  Maybe I am too laid back about the whole thing, or maybe I happen to understand my circumstances better than the average joe that is making these comments.  Or maybe I am not doing a good enough job of explaining myself.  But I often feel like I am trying to convince people that it really is a good idea to do just a little LSD every single night of my life, rather than bring another child into this world.

If I look around to the families of people I know (not necessarily my close friends and family, but rather people they know etc...) I sometimes see a situation where the Mother and Father of the family have some SERIOUS issues in life.  Maybe these issues are in their relationship, maybe these issues are from their own childhood, or maybe they just don't live a very healthy lifestyle and are therefore teaching their children to do the same.  However because they happen to be part of a couple, people automatically think it's a great idea for them to have another baby.  Why is it that a couple who's marriage is in deep trouble, and the two people involved treat each other like crap, they are going to be better parents than I?  Just because of the two people?  Is that really it?  I can't tell you how many people assume that I should put my baby-making plans on hold until I meet someone else.  But really, if I think about that, then that is pushing back my baby quest for several years.  It takes time to meet someone and decide if they are worthy of dating, and then even more time to make sure they are the right fit for you.  And then once you have ideally passed that point, then you are in the throws of a new relationship and that is hardly the time to throw a pregnancy and a child into the mix.  So even if I met someone fabulous this afternoon, it would be at least a couple of years before I would try and have a baby with that person.  And let's face it, I am not getting any younger.  Neither is my son.  I don't want to have my kids over 5 years apart.  That works for a ton of families and I am not judging, but it wouldn't work for me.

I also have to admit that since I had my first baby with The Ex, I am somewhat comparing my situation with her to what my situation would have been like without her.  And although she is a wonderful mother to our son, having to take care of her and our relationship while having a baby was tough.  I won't go into too many details but let's just say that The Ex needed A LOT of attention and she needed to know that she was number one all the time.  She didn't want to share me with a baby and therefore expected me to still take care of her while I was also taking care of a newborn.  It doesn't help that our relationship had already been damaged by the infertility treatments (and other things of course), but I remember after I had The Boy I honestly felt that it would have been easier to JUST take care of this new little baby I had.  She wasn't thrilled with the idea of breast feeding, so I didn't (I pumped.  And pumped and pumped.  For a long time.  I wasn't willing to give up on our baby having breast milk, but I would concede on the actual boob suckage thing), she didn't want the baby to stay in the room with us after he was born, so he didn't.  Looking back, I would do a whole lot of things different now, but at the time I was trying to take care of a relationship at the same time, and also allow her to be a parent and make some of the big decisions.

So to me, the idea of doing this on my own, without having to take care of anyone else and worry about anyone else's feelings is just lovely.  Sounds great.  Sign me up.  Perhaps if I had a different situation with The Boy and The Ex then I would know what I was missing (that being a helpful and committed partner).  But I really was on my own then.  I was on my own and I also was trying to save a failing marriage at the same time.  That wasn't fun .  So the thought of doing this on my own?  Not horrible.  I am not fooling myself thinking it will be all flowers and bliss.  No way.  I know there are times when it is going to suck.  Big time.  But I don't think it will suck any worse than it did last time.  And I think it all turned out pretty spectacular last time.  I love being a parent to that little boy more than anything else in the world.  And I think I can offer that to another little person just waiting to join our family.  And even if everyone else thinks I am nuts, I can't wait to try and make that happen.

PS--I am on cycle day 16 or 17 and still haven't tested positive for ovulation yet.  WTF?

Back in the stirrups again

I had an appointment with my OB yesterday to talk about getting pregnant again.  She checked out all the lady bits and we talked about moving forward.  I guess I should take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the new donor I have found.  A client of mine has a good friend that is willing to be a donor for me and the hopefully second child.  I have not met him in person yet, but have spoken to him on the phone.  He is ready and willing to do whatever I need him to do.  So I talked to my OB about what tests and things that need to be done before we begin inseminations.  Basically since I am not feeling like it is necessary for him to do a full work up (he has 4 healthy kids already) the only thing we need to do is get all the STD tests and HIV etc...  He doesn't have health insurance so we talked about where to send him for the tests and she wrote down specifically what I should ask for.

I am still shooting for having August be the first month I try to get pregnant.  Now that I have this information from my doctor, I need to call donor and talk to him and make sure that he is still cool with that time table.  But I am tracking my cycle this month just to get an idea of when I will ovulate in August so that I can give him some days that I expect I will need him.  I POAS yesterday, which was day 13 I believe, and I didn't test positive for ovulation.  I haven't tested yet this morning, but my cycle has historically been pretty exact so I would imagine that I will test positive either today or tomorrow.  Although I would love it if we could push this cycle back in some way.  See if I continue with the exact 28 day cycle that I have had for the last 5 months then I would be doing inseminations around the 9th and 10th of August.  Here's the problem...I already have a trip scheduled up to my cabin in the mountains for that weekend.  So if we could just get this cycle to be a couple of days later then we would move into a Monday or Tuesday for inseminations which would work MUCH better for my vacationing plans.  :)  We will just have to wait and see. 

The Baby Daddy

So all of us lesbians out there who have gotten pregnant by someone OTHER than a man we were in love with have to deal with this other person/number/vial and how it affects our children's lives. I think we are all smart enough to know that at some point, our children will come to us and say, "Okay so I know you have always said that I am lucky enough to have two mommies, but I just learned in science class that you can't so much make a baby without a man..." What do we do then? This is obviously different for every single couple and every single situation.

This is how it shaped up regarding my son and his "Dad." When we agreed to use Donor as a donor we talked at great length about how we would handle the future. Before The Boy was born we were all in agreement that the donor would be a part of our lives, much like all of our other close friends. But where The Boy was concerned, until he was old enough to really understand and grasp our situation, he would remain just that: a good friend. I remember specifically asking Donor how much he would like to be involved in his future child's life. His answer to me was, "You know how if you go to a park and your sitting on a park bench behind the playground watching the kids play? That is how I would like to be in your lives. You and Ex (that adds a whole other element to it, doesn't it?) will be the ones in the playground with him, raising him, but I will be sitting on the park bench behind you, watching him grow and play." Seemed like a decent answer to me at the time. So we went forward and decided that one day we would explain to him that "friend _____" is really the person who allowed us to have you as our son. We would explain to him that his Moms loved each other very much and had tried to have a baby for so long and that thanks to donor, we were able to bring him into the world and we are so thankful for that.

Well of course things changed once The Boy was actually here. As a baby, The Boy was the spitting image of his father. I often wondered if there was any of me in there (this has changed as he has gotten older). When Donor saw this little boy, his "viewing from afar" attitude changed and he all of a sudden thought that we were in a 3 person relationship and that he had just as much right to make decisions and parent this child as Ex and I had. Obviously this caused some tension. It is not my intention to get into all that has transpired between the 3 of us since The Boy has been here.

One of the original things we decided was that Donor would not be referred to as "Daddy" until much later, when our son was old enough to understand the dynamic of our relationship. As things were tense and battles lines were being drawn and people were digging their heels in the sand, this was something that Donor brought up. He felt like he should get to be known as Dad from the very beginning. He didn't see why that would be a problem. There wasn't another Dad in the picture so it was important for him to have that title. In all honesty, Donor really never saw The Boy and he was so young it was kind of a moot point. Over the years, he has started referring to himself as "Daddy" and I just kind of kept my mouth shut. Pick my battles I told myself. And again, he has seen The Boy MAYBE 5 times in the last year so it really isn't something that comes up too often.

The last time he visited he spoke to Ex after his visit and said that while the visit was lovely, he wondered if I could please start referring to him as Daddy instead of his name when it came to The Boy. Ex came to me and asked me to do this going forward. I told her the truth, "I honestly don't know if I can do that." She explained that since we see him so infrequently, it would just be easier to mutter that word in his presence and then go back to doing what we were doing when he wasn't around. I didn't agree to start calling him that, but I also didn't say I refused. So how I have handled it is that I simply don't refer to him when he's here. I used to say to The Boy, "Go show _______ your new toy..." (and I would use his name, not Daddy). Now I just don't say that. I say, "Why don't you go get your new toy to show off?"

When Ex and I split up, this became even more of an issue for me. Our son is still very young and since he is part of a lesbian family, he is learning that his family is different. However, in mainstream life (school/daycare, friends, other families) he hears a lot about this "Mommy and Daddy" thing. He is cool with the Mommy part, but the other part... See here's the thing. I am very protective of our family unit (even if it is split up) and for The Boy to constantly hear about Mommy and Daddy, I just don't want him to be confused. If he knows Donor as "Daddy," then when he hears these things he will assume that Donor has a bigger place in his life than he does. He will assume he is a parental unit when, in fact, he is not. And where does that leave Ex? And her place in his family? Ex is a great Mom to our son and to belittle her as his parent and let Donor take some of that shine, just makes me sick to my stomach.

So Ex is traveling right now for work and she sent me a text yesterday that said she got a message from Donor and that we need to call him back because he wants to say hi and talk to The Boy. Obviously since The Boy is with me, I have to be the one to make that call. And I didn't call him last night. I thought a lot about why I didn't call and it comes down to one thing. I know he will want me to put The Boy on the phone and them prompt him to say "Hi to Daddy." I just don't know if I can do that. I don't know why I have such strong feelings about this, but I do. I will call him tonight and check in and I will let him talk to The Boy, but I just don't know if I can make myself prompt him to "say hi to Daddy..."

How do you guys out there handle this? Am I making too big a deal out of it, or should I hold onto my convictions and continue to protect the family unit that we have with Mom, Mommy and The Boy? Help!

A Holiday for Two

I am talking about myself and my son.  This was the first Holiday weekend that we did without his Mom here as well.  We had a nice lazy Friday morning just the two of us.  We hung out in bed and watched some TV and then of course, we (he) played some trains.  That evening we ended up having a wonderful mix of people at our house that included The Boy's Mom, my parents, my best gay boyfriends, my 85 year old grandmother and some of my parents' friends.  Random group but it just worked.  We enjoyed lots of yummy food, lots of adult beverages and just had a nice time.  The boy played in his pool and just had a great evening as well.  (Boy pictured in pool above).

Saturday morning I was a little down.  I don't know if it is the post-party letdown, or just the fact that sometimes the mornings are still pretty sad for me.  Once The Boy goes down for his morning nap, it is just me with my thoughts.  This was always when I spent time with the ex.  Lazy mornings of just the two of us after the boy had gone back down for a nap.  So sometimes that is a hard time of day for me.  Fortunately my BFF called me up and we met for a pedicure which just turned the day around.  A nice toe painting job goes a long way in making any day better.  That night I just hung out with my boy.  It was great.  We watched a movie and did some trains and read some books.  We goofed off and ate dinner late and just had a great night.  The second pic of him was taken late Saturday afternoon as he was just hanging out in his crib having some quiet time with his trains.  He looks like such a big boy in this picture.

Sunday brought normal family chaos.  We met to get all 5 grand kids together this morning to attempt to get a picture of all of them for my father's birthday (this was NOT an easy thing to do to say the least), which we were celebrating later tonight (Sunday).  Amazingly enough the pictures were fairly painless and we were able to get 3 different poses of all of the kids looking decent.  I found that amazing.  Big props to the guy the took the picture.  He was high-fiving all the kids and then jumping back and they loved it.  Of course The Boy has a train in his hand, but at least he sat where he was supposed to.  Then a few hours later we went over to my brother's house to celebrate my Dad's birthday.  I am trying to keep my family talk to a minimum on this blog but suffice it to say, it is always an interesting evening.  The last picture is of all 5 kids enjoying an ice cream cone after dinner at my brother's house this evening.

Hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday!

It's started already

The boy woke up from his nap and after I had changed his diaper (uhggg!) and gotten him dressed he told me he wanted to get back in his bed.  I figured, whatever, and put him in there.  I left and was cleaning up around the house and I just went back into his room to ask him if he was ready to get up yet.

I walked in and he is laying on his back, head at the wrong side of his bed, with his right arm all the way down into his diaper.  He looked up at me and smiled.  I said, "Hi honey.  Whatcha doing?"  He grinned and proclaimed, "I paying with my pee pee."  So you are my son, so you are...  I thought it about for a second and smiled back and said, "Okay, have fun."  As I walked out of the room he called, "Bye Mommy."  "Bye Baby," I answered back.

Bye baby indeed...hello little boy.

Happy 4th of July

I hope everyone has a happy and safe holiday.  Easy on the fireworks; here in California we already have WAY more fires than we can handle.  Have a wonderful day with friends and family.  In honor of the holiday I will offer up my first official picture of The Boy on my blog.  I am sure my 4 readers will really appreciate it.  :)

The Boy and his eating

So when The Boy was born he weighed 7 lbs.  He was always a fat little dude.  People used to joke that my breast milk must be made out of cream.  He had rolls upon rolls upon rolls of precious baby fat.  I remember when he used to be in the Bjorn I would squish the little rolls of fat above his kneecaps.  For a reference point, at 9 months of age he weighed in at 19.1 lbs.

Right around that time he got a nasty flu bug.  He couldn't keep anything down for days.  It got pretty bad.  The only thing he wanted was his milk and his doctors said that was horrible for his stomach.  (A stupid Mommy tried to challenge this concept once and was almost immediately proven that the doctors did indeed know what they were talking about on this one).  So we went on what was the first of many a hunger strike in his life.  To this day, this one was the worst.  I remember we FINALLY found that he would drink some chicken broth.  He was about to be checked into the hospital for dehydration at that point and I was following him around with a medicine dropper full of water and squeezing it into his mouth whenever he would come in my path.  But finally he took a couple of spoonfuls of chicken broth off my spoon, and then he took several spoonfuls of it, and eventually he drank it directly out of his bottle.  That chicken broth saved us that time.  But for some reason, after this, we had to go back to literally square one with food.  After that flu he could not keep ANYTHING down.  So we had to go back to rice cereal.  And then add in one vegetable, and then another, and then one fruit...  We had to go back to the beginning and start all over again.  At over 9 months old.  We moved forward from there, but that was the first notice of anything being weird.

Around a year of age I began to realize that he wasn't swallowing anything of substance.  He could swallow his baby food just fine, but he was a year old and couldn't swallow a cheerio.  He would continually put them in his mouth and move them around in there and then they would just come back out of his mouth and fall out.  He would continue like he didn't know anything had happened and put another one in his mouth.  He just kept going like this.  He thought he was eating.  He just wasn't getting anything of substance.  We talked to our pediatrician at a year old who recommended an amazing food specialist.

This would be the beginning of a long term relationship with this Pediatric Clinic and my son.  He still goes there two days a week for speech therapy.  But this was when his journey began.  He saw a "food specialist," and we would come in at lunch time and she would evaluate his "suck, chew, swallow" technique and try and give us tips on how to do things differently.  This woman was amazing and would answer all of our questions and try and make me feel better during the process (hard thing to deal when your kid doesn't know HOW to eat).

For what seemed like forever, I made this boy food every single night and put it in front of him to watch him try and eat it.  And every single night after he "ate" I would clean up virtually every single thing that I put on his plate.  I had no concept of kids that actually finished things that were put in front of them.  Again, for reference, at 18 months of age, he weighed in at 19.4 lbs.  Gained virtually nothing in 9 months.  I won't bore you with all the checkups, but as of last week, at 2 1/2 years old, he only weighs 23 lbs.  That's only 4 pounds heavier than he was when he was 9 months old.  My vain in life people...this child's weight sometimes seems to be my life's mission.

I remember that shredded cheese was the first thing he was able to swallow.  After that he moved onto things like tuna salad, or chicken salad.  Stayed with the shredded theme for a while.  My son was also VERY late in getting teeth.  So he didn't have a whole lot of teeth to chew with at this point either.  As the teeth came in, so did the workings of his muscles.  He slowly started adding more and more into what he was able to chew and eat.  I would say that by the time he was two, and his teeth had all come in, he could eat chew and swallow like any other kid his age.  As of today he is physically able to eat anything he wants.  He's two, so he makes that challenging and that is another post in and of itself.  But he can chew and swallow normally.  Although I sometimes do notice that his mouth gets tired of chewing and he seems to take a little break and talk for a while, or play with his food, and then go back and eat more.  He takes a long time to eat a meal and is definitely more of a grazer than a "sit down and chow" kind of guy.

But during it all I learned that the most important thing I could do as a Mom was to never let my son know that he had any issues with eating at all.  We kept dinnertime fun.  We left the mood light.  We let him play in his food (a tool to allow his jaw to relax in between eating so he doesn't get too tired and quit), and we NEVER ever told him that he had to eat or finish anything.  When he said he was done, we obeyed that.  He set the tone.  So every night he thought that he sat down and had a normal dinner and ate like everyone else.  To this day, he has no clue that he eats any different than anyone else out there.  He doesn't know that he has any issues with food (although, dear god, does he have issues), and he enjoys dinnertime.  We both do.  We sit down every single night, just the two of us now, and we have dinner together and some times we sing songs, and some times we read one of his books together, and sometimes I just listen to the endless rambling thoughts that come out of his head but that still make no sense.  (Run-on much?)  Food itself?  My biggest challenge in life where it relates to my son.  But dinnertime?  My most favorite time of the day.  I guess that's saying something.