The Payoff

We've written a lot about Gail's adventures in re-lactating for Ira, and at our last check-in, it still wasn't clear we were going to get a big payoff from all of that work (piles of herbs and pills, way too much quality time with that pump). At this point, it's still not clear we'll get a huge benefit, but we are starting to see some real perks for both of us.

The most obvious payoff is that (starting a week ago) we are now able to trade complete nights of caring for Ira, who nurses 2-4 times per night. As you'll recall, better sharing of nighttime care was one of Gail's primary motivations, and was something we struggled with when Leigh was a baby. While it would have been possible to trade whole nights by pumping ahead and/or supplementing a bit with formula (and we'd recommend doing so to families that contain more than one parent once supply is established), it does make things nicer that Gail can simply nurse Ira instead of fussing with bottles. Of the three nights that she has done so far, on two of them she had enough milk on her own to keep him happy. On one night, she did need to use a few extra ounces to supplement, and it was kind of a pain, but they did fine. On that night, I heard Ira getting fussy from my perch on the living room futon, reminded myself that Gail had plenty of milk in there (she had set up the supplemental nurser with some extra milk in a cooler at the beginning of the night for just such an eventuality), and relished my chance to just go back to sleep. On the two other nights, I didn't hear a peep.

Logistically, on my "off" nights, (i.e. the nights I sleep!), it seems to work well for me to pump before I go to bed and once in the early morning. That generates enough milk to cover his feedings (I'm still trying not to lose supply even though Ira didn't actually need my milk for those feedings), keep me comfortable, and not interrupt my sleep too much. I set up the pump right by the futon and pump with the lights out in order to stay sleepy. It is way faster and easier than doing a whole feeding for a baby this age, and I don't have to do that whole wondering "does that grunt mean he's hungry?" routine that totally kills my sleep even if Ira is sleeping fine. The pump doesn't really grunt at all.

One of the most wonderful things about this set up is that we can both look forward to both kinds of nights. It is very sweet and cuddly to do night feedings for a young baby. Ira is generally pretty calm and feeds well at night (his daytime feedings are often a bit fussier). He is super cute and snuggly, and I love staring at him in the half light of early morning. I get to love it even more since I know that even though I'm tired after being up every couple hours, I'll get a solid 8-9 hours the next night. After three full nights of sleep (alternating with baby nights of half-sleep), I feel like I'm already starting to pay off some of that sleep debt. I'm nicer. I'm a better parent to Leigh. I might even start to regrow some brain cells. I also love it that Gail is getting those same sleepy snuggles, as well as the rest that she needs.

I craved more of those nighttime snuggles with Leigh, and they were hard for Gail to share for a variety of reasons. Now that I'm on this side, I feel similar pressures. When Gail suggested that it might be time to trade whole nights with Ira instead of having her do one feeding, I balked. My stated reason was that it seemed too hard and like the pumping would be too demanding. But there was also a piece of me that didn't want to give up control. It was only a momentary hesitation before I agreed, but it was definitely there. But now that we're making trading nights work, it feels fabulous. Yes, we could have done it with bottles, but I'm not sure we would have. I think it would have been harder for me to get over my initial hesitation, and Gail wouldn't have had quite as much power to lobby to take on more than just one night feeding.

So, Gail, thanks for all your hard work, thanks for the sleep, and thanks for taking such great care of our son.

Do they ever talk about anything else?

Yes, this is yet another post about sharing nursing of Ira. I swear we think about more than nursing around here, with all two brain cells that we possess between us in our current sleep deprived state, but since we haven't found anyone who has documented this particular process (two-mom family, one mom birthing, other mom re-lactates, both moms nurse one baby), we're trying to put our limited blogging energies towards this topic.

Here's the update: Ira will be 5 weeks old tomorrow, and Gail has been doing one feeding a day for a little over a week. Initially things did not go particularly smoothly because Ira was pretty miffed that her supply is not overflowing. We added a supplemental nurser (with a little of Gail's own expressed milk). That made for a few smooth feedings, and got her good stimulation to promote her supply. Two nights ago, we shifted to Gail taking the early morning nighttime feeding (between 4 and 5am) and found out that if she skips her 1am pumping, she actually has enough for a feeding on her own, is still only getting up one time, and I get a longer stretch of morning sleep. To make up for missing that feeding, I'm pumping directly after Ira's 1-2 am feeding, and directly after the 7-8 am feeding, which more than makes up for it. I'd probably be fine just pumping after the 1am, but I'm still kind of paranoid about losing supply.

What is challenging so far:

1. Getting started nursing is challenging for many (I'd venture most) new mom & baby pairs. In this case, we're going through that difficulty twice, and the contrast between our bodies adds complication. Ira has to learn to deal with my fast let-down and medium-large supply, as well as Gail's slower let-down and less generous supply. That's a lot of extra complexity.
   
2. Gail's feeding with the supplemental nurser are definitely much more cumbersome than bottle feedings would be, so for daytime feedings when Ira seems to need the SNS for now, there is absolutely no "convenience" payoff to Gail for nursing.
   
3. There are a lot of logistics to work out in terms of how to time who feeds and pumps when. It's hard to think through everything, and for now, while Gail is trying to increase her supply, and I'm trying not to lose mine, there is a LOT of pumping going on in our house. Previously this was all falling to Gail and now I get to share the joy (actually, I think pumping is fun in a weird way, except for washing pump parts. Our hope is that ultimately we can cut back on this, once we see how much Ira needs from each of us.
   
4. Related to point three, the complicated logistics can make it hard to feel like we've really hit a rhythm. Ira and I were just barely getting into the swing of things before we threw this in, which can make it hard to know when he's full, when he's hungry, and how long it will be until he's hungry again, but we probably would have been adding bottles in at this point anyway, which can cause the same problems.
   
5. Related to points 3 & 4, changing up the rhythm and adding pumping feeds my worry about supply, especially with Ira doing a typical 4-6 week baby uptick in fussiness. It's pretty clear both from his weight gain and from what I get while pumping that there are no problems on this front, but that doesn't keep me from worrying some.
   

Indications there may be light at the end of the tunnel:

1. The challenging emotions that I was having about Gail nursing were blessedly brief. Now that we're started, I only feel happy when they have a good feeding, and glad to help troubleshoot.
   
2. Building in even just one feeding a day for Gail has automatically helped my interactions with Leigh. In the last week I've made breakfast with her (pleasantly) twice, just like old times, while Gail was busy feeding Ira.
   
3. Once we figured out that Gail has enough milk to feed Ira without the SNS in the early morning, we both felt fabulous the next day. Gail felt great because she'd finally had a really satisfying feeding. I felt great because I got a slightly longer chunk of sleep. That was the first glimmer of a real payoff for all of this work (though the point would be very well made that the sleep payoff could have come just as easily with a bottle).
   

At this point it really isn't at all clear that this will give a payoff commensurate with the amount of effort we (and particularly Gail) have put in. On a daily basis, Gail is still pumping a ton, and enduring sometimes very fussy feedings (though at this point, so am I a fair portion of the time). If things don't smooth out once we're back at work, and she's getting long stretches (three solo days a week), and it's still this much work, we may let it go. But for now, we're still on the bandwagon and it looks like there is at least a little hope we may get some of the benefits for our family that we were hoping for (faster bonding for Gail and Ira, more uncomplicated one-on-one time for me and Leigh, better sharing of nighttime parenting...and most importantly, a damned impressive party trick. You have to admit it is pretty cool to both be out and about and both be able to nurse, which we did at a parent group last week).

One final note, it would be very hard to be in Gail's shoes if you had never nursed before. Even highly successful induction likely doesn't result in full supply, and several of these early feedings have been extremely frustrating. If it were also a first experience nursing, all while your partner has copious milk, and while trying to get up an running as a parent for the first time, I could imagine it not going well at all, and possibly doing more harm than good. Our experience has made me not regret at all that I did not induce lactation for Leigh. Given all of the other stuff I was working out about being a non-bio-mom, it would have been really hard, especially given my personality, and likely for not much payoff in terms of bonding, since we bonded so well anyway. I feel like our original lesson still stands: Nursing is great for bonding, but primarily because it guarantees time with your baby. Ultimately, time is what is important.

Is this the new normal? (Warning: Very Whiny)

I've been having a serious attitude problem since I got back in town from a conference last week. Every evening, when it's time to do our get-house-and-life under control routine after Leigh is tucked in, I just want to crawl in bed myself. Instead, I trudge through, very grumpily. I'm really not good company right now. And sure, some of this is pregnancy fatigue. After all, sometime soon here I officially turn the 3rd trimester corner, but a lot of it is just feeling really overwhelmed, and like we're already so buried we'll never get our lives back together.

Let's review how life has gone since that coveted BFP:
0) Lots of excitement and happiness. Enjoying lack of 50 million appointments.
1) Serious puking and pregnancy ick until about 16 weeks. Gail holds up OK and we lower standards dramatically, but house and life still slide toward chaos. (and for us, functional house (i.e. clean clothes, decent food, mess only couple inches deep) is essential for a moderate level of sanity.)
2) Entire family taken down by 8 weeks of viral bronchitis. All remaining holds on vaguely organized/functional life are lost.
3) Start to feel better. Get our lives slightly put back together.
4) Develop mysterious leg pain that makes walking extremely difficult. We don't have a car. Gail takes Leigh to/from daycare and does most of the weekend work for a couple weeks so that I can sit on my duff with ice on my legs.
5) Start to feel better. Get our lives slightly put back together.
6) The nose incident. Blessedly rapid recovery, but lose work time just before important conference.
7) Giant work crunch before conference. House and life slide further into chaos despite Gail's astounding efforts to keep the tide at bay while I neglect everything in favor of not making a fool of myself at said conference.
8) Gail gets really sick (4 days of 102-103 fever) while I'm gone at said conference and any progress we've made at all in keeping life in order is completely lost despite the kind caretaking of mother-in-law in my absence.
9) It dawns on us that we've done more or less nothing to prepare for our new arrival, other than wax eloquent on our blog.

I fear we are now *less* prepared for our new arrival than we were pre-pregnancy. And there is not really any light at the end of the tunnel. My next grant deadline crunch starts now. A family reunion is thrown in for good measure. Gail is currently at the "easy" part of her semester and that will change momentarily. Even under the best of circumstances, assuming optimum health, there is absolutely no way to fit the bare minimum of preparation jobs into the remaining weekends (which really only contain one working day due to shabbat).

Then we'll have a new baby, and our tenuous hold on sanity and order will slip even further.

Now, my mother-in-law might disagree, but despite being mathematicians, Gail and I don't demand a perfectly regimented life to stay sane and happy. We can maintain a certain level of chill in quite a few circumstances. But one of the things that helps us do that is that we generally have our life together enough to know our finances are roughly under control, laundry has not taken over the entire household, there is food in the house, and we know what is for dinner. I'm starting to realize that all of those things may not be true at the same time for the next...well...I'd rather not think about how long. It really just makes me want to give up and crawl into bed. Any inspiration for a much needed attitude adjustment welcome, but do be gentle. Assume all proper caveats (thrilled about the pregnancy, excited for Leigh to have a sibling, honored and blessed to be parenting with Gail, just really overwhelmed and crabby right now).

Note to self

For future reference, do not schedule the yearly condo meeting, kindly hosted in your own unit, for well "after" bedtime, anywhere remotely near the transition from crib to "big bed," especially considering the other two units in your building house child-free bachelors.

Fingers crossed for the late Shabbat dinner we're hosting for our congregation next week.

2 moms, 4 breasts, 1 baby

On Gail's post about gearing up to lactate again, Lex made a really interesting comment (and thanks to Lex for the clever post title). A somewhat condensed version of her comment:

"I'm quite curious as to what your plan is...for how to balance who nurses the baby when. Being able to nurse our baby is incredibly important to me, but I also want to be careful to not get in the way of the baby's nursing relationship with my wife. And, having been the only one to nurse our three other children...I'm aware of a slight feeling that maybe I should just let this be something that only my wife can do this time. She has said that she wants me to nurse the baby sometimes, but we haven't talked about it a whole lot because it is a somewhat charged topic...

My thought was to do something along the lines of what you all are planning: to try to nurse the baby sometime after the first 3-4 weeks... But I'm worried that we'll get to that point and my wife will not want me to nurse, or it will just seem too complicated and easier to stick with what we've been doing. My wife is planning to go back to work when the baby is 6 months old, and ideally I'd like to be the one to nurse the baby when I'm home alone with the baby, and I know that it will be really important to establish a nursing relationship before 6 months if that's going to happen. It all feels more complicated than I want it to . . . the idea of two moms and four breasts nursing one (very lucky) baby just sounds so easy and perfect, but I'm finding that the reality is much more confusing..."

There are two sets of issues issues here. The first is straight up logistics. The second set of issues though is more sticky, the questions of who should decide if both moms will nurse and how to prioritize and navigate potentially contradictory desires, which are more or less questions of "territory." Those issues are a lot bigger, so in this post, I'll start with our thinking about logistics.

Roughly speaking, it looks like leaves are panning out such that we'll both be home for the summer (I'll get 8 weeks), and then in the fall we'll have a schedule where I'm home two days and Gail is home three (both of us needing to get some work done on those home days). We should be able to maintain something similar through to the next September (probably needing to stretch with a one or two day a week Nanny spring semester) when we'd feel comfortable starting daycare at our neighborhood center where Leigh goes. Leigh will continue at daycare, either on her current three day schedule, or possibly a 5 day schedule starting in September, with whoever is home trying to get her home fairly early so there's some slight hope evenings will go smoothly (Ha!).

The general gist as it is relevant to Lex's comment, is that after eight weeks, during weekdays, only one of us will be with the baby, so that mom will be nursing. Our hope is that by both nursing, we will divide pumping duties, perhaps each only having to pump once or twice on a day away (as opposed to the three or four Gail had to do for Leigh) in order to make sure there is sufficient breastmilk around and maintain each of our supplies at a reasonable level. Gail will plan to be start nursing at maybe four to six weeks in order to be set by the time I'm away more often, but we'll have to play that by ear. One of our main goals for both nursing is that we'll be able to handle nights better than we did with Leigh (overall we handled nights OK, but it's one of the spots we both wish we had a do-over). We'll hope to trade off nights (or partial nights) "on duty" once Gail is up and running, with whoever is "off-duty" pumping ASAP in the morning. Weekends will have to be ad hoc, but hopefully both of us nursing will make them easier, not harder, and allow both of us to have nice chunks of time to spend with Leigh.

All of this is our theoretical "best case scenario." For this scenario to work, we're making the following gigantic assumptions:
1) I have no trouble getting started nursing and establish solid supply quickly (Though if breast growth is any indication, I'm all set. These things are huge!)
2) Inducing works for Gail
3) We're both able to maintain sufficient supply by nursing only half a baby (and pumping, though hopefully not pumping a whole second half-a-baby worth).
4) We have a healthy baby that arrives full term and ready to nurse.

Despite my enthusiasm for this plan (and as you'll recall, I was the one pestering Gail to consider it), Gail reminded me the other day that we do need to tread with caution, because chances are that all will not go perfectly smoothly. We consider this an ideal worth laying the groundwork for, but we are still planning to prioritize my nursing relationship with this baby, as it is likely my only shot at this experience, and it is one I've wanted for a long time. Depending on how things go, this prioritization may end up reducing the amount that Gail contributes. If the med side effects prove intolerable for Gail, or if she develops the problems with plugged ducts that plagued her time nursing Leigh (and caused a nasty abscess. I promise, you don't want the details), than we'll drop it. Her health is more important than this pipe dream. I'll pump more and we'll find other ways to handle nighttime duties. If we have a baby with health challenges, or who arrives early, it's hard to know whether both being prepared to nurse is a plus or a minus, so we'll have to figure that out if we get there. Mostly though, we're heading in with some confidence in our abilities to negotiate complicated logistics and surprising emotions as a team. We also love a challenge, and feeling like we're blazing a new path.

More later on the sticky emotional issues around decisions like this.

The inevitable awkward questions

Gail's post got me thinking about how we handle the inevitable somewhat awkward conversations that come up due to our family structure. As she wrote, we've both noticed they come up much more now that we're back in pregnancy (and later, little baby) land. I noticed some time ago that we had developed some mix of official and unofficial guidelines:

1) Before Leigh's arrival we decided that divulging who gave birth to her was not forbidden. I understand why some families choose this route, but we feel strongly that Leigh should not have to feel secretive about her family structure, and so we need to model that for her (though see comment 4 on how we handle donor questions, which is different).

2) That said, when discussing such matters, we are careful in our language. We do not say that Gail is Leigh's "bio-mom"--rather we might say that Gail nursed Leigh, or that Gail gave birth to Leigh, so that her genetic link (and fallout from that link) is not also presented as representing her motherhood of Leigh. Her motherhood of Leigh is based on the same stuff mine is, the day in and day out love and hands on parenting. Along the same lines, I don't refer to myself in casual conversation as Leigh's "non-bio-mom." I'm just a mom (or Mama as the case may be). That said, in conversation with peer parents around the nitty gritty issues that come up around buidling our family this way, I will refer to myself as a non-bio-mom or and "NGP" (non-gestational-parent, my dad coined that one)--but only with people who understand our family structure.

3) In response to subtle prying on first meetings, say someone new at the playground, or a new work colleague, I usually don't divulge information on how we formed our family, either regarding our donor, or who carried Leigh. I understand people are curious, but you need to wait until at least a second meeting. We want people to see both of us parenting before we give information that might lead you to decide one of us is the "real" mom. My least favorite type of prying is resemblance talk. Seriously. I hate it when Gail and I show up somewhere with Leigh, and someone pointedly makes a comment about her hair or eye color (brown and brown) and then says she looks just like me (red and blue), pointedly staring at me for clarifying information, while Gail is standing right there (with her brown hair and brown eyes--yes, this really happens). It really drives me crazy and I make special note of who does such things and vow never to give them any tidbit of information ever. However, if I'm out with Leigh alone, and someone casually says she looks like me, I secretly glow and take it as a compliment.

4) We do not provide any details on donor information (other than we went with frozen). Not which bank. No tidbits from the profile. Nothing about appearance. We feel very strongly that that information belongs to our kid(s) and they should decide who should know and how to handle the information as they grow. It belongs to them, not us. And if anyone asks, that is what we tell them. I know other families handle this differently, meeting up with donor siblings early for example, and sharing all information freely from infancy, and I can see the attraction there. But for us, it feels a little wrong to have a whole slew of people knowing potentially sensitive information about Leigh that she doesn't even understand yet. Note, this does not contradict number 1, because we don't feel that Leigh should have to be secretive about her donor information. But we don't want to decide for her who and what people outside of our family will know. If another queer couple or single mom working towards TTC asks us how we made decisions around donor selection, we will definitely talk to them about it, and will probably give them more info (e.g. the thinking we did on ID release vs. not), but that is only for folks trying to work their way through the same decisions.

I'm sure there are more unofficial or official guidelines that I'm not really thinking of right now. Most of this stuff we just make up as we go along really. And we have no idea yet how this will shift as Leigh grows and understands more about her family. But for now, it works. I'd love to hear other folks thoughts on those inevitable awkward questions.

Meet the midwife

Last Friday we had our first consult with our probable home-birth midwife. She was the "second" midwife at Leigh's birth, and provided a much needed calming influence during that rather arduous journey. Leigh's birth story merits it's own post (or two or three), but the very simplified story is that after planning for a home birth, two solid nights of beautiful but grueling labor for Gail at home, we transferred to the back-up hospital and Leigh was able to make her appearance with intervention but without surgery. It was both astounding and frightening. This particular midwife had a great way of supporting me as I was supporting Gail. She was supporting Gail also of course, but her presence was what kept me hanging on and able to be present for Gail during that long second night of labor. I'm not always a particularly easy person to support, and am extremely sensitive to the moods and emotions of other folks, for good or ill, so we consider this a pretty good indication that I might actually listen and respond to her during a labor, and that she would calm me down instead of ratcheting me up.

The consult contained both good news and bad news.

Good news:
1) She'd be thrilled to work with us.

2) We can afford her.

3) She has office hours close by our home (important, since we don't drive).

4) We'll probably get some insurance coverage (never guaranteed with a home birth, but probable and she's had some success with my insurer).

Bad news:

1) She has plans to be out of town (on the OTHER coast) for 2-3 days just after the due date. We're thinking we may try to meet the probable back-up midwife to make sure we feel comfortable with her. The back-up midwife will also probably be our "second" midwife at the birth if preferred midwife is in town, so we'll be meeting her anyway, and we know she and our midwife have compatible styles. But we do still need to think on it.

2) The medical back-up situation for local home birth midwives has seriously gone south since Leigh's birth. For Leigh, we were able to have all labs done at a local hospital/birth center, and to transfer directly into labor and delivery where they knew our situation and had access to our records. It was overall fairly smooth, the hospital treated us well, and we were able to receive hospital midwife care as opposed to whatever random OB was on call (which is what happens if you transfer through an emergency room without a pre-existing back up relationship). Things have changed dramatically though in the last few years, and at the moment, the only practice willing to provide official back-up is over an hours drive south, which is obviously too far for an emergency transfer (but isn't too far for going way post-date, say, and needing a ultrasound, or induction). This practice has something like a 7% C-section rate, so it would be worth the (rental car) drive, particularly if we end up needing induction. Otherwise, for labs or a last minute emergency transfer (like we had with Leigh), we need to cobble things together. I'll be consulting with an OB who I've heard is sometimes supportive of home birth at the most probable emergency transfer hospital. If she was willing to do some labs and minimal OB care, at least the hospital would have my records. If that fails, I may go through my family doc for labs (who is affiliated with a different hospital) and either have labs transferred or just hand carry them if we transfer. In any case, any emergency transfer will be through an emergency room to whichever OB is on call, but that seems to just be the lay of the land these days. I hadn't realized how spoiled we were last time.

There is also a "big meeting" with one of the most wonderful miwife-supportive OBs in the area who is apparently lobbying her hospital to be able to provide back-up in November, so maybe the situation will change. Who knows. We have close midwife friends, and have been peripheral to this world for long enough to pick up that back-up situations change, based on all kinds of things you can't predict. Even with this less than ideal situation, I'd still feel safer starting at home (for both me, the baby, Gail and Leigh for that matter) than setting foot initially in any hospital or birth center, given our state's 33.3% C-section rate, not to mention my (admittedly slightly unreasonable) discomfort with medical situations.

Blech.

I had a secret (or not so secret) hope that maybe I'd get to dodge the bullet on feeling crappy the first trimester. I'm not sure what I was basing that hope on...perhaps my general good health, and dilligent use of acupuncture. But here we are, 6 weeks on the dot, and it looks like I'm heading down hill.

I've started just taking the elevator...even if it is just one floor..and find myself feeling personally offended by the existence of stairs.

I was talking with my boss in the hall this morning about something very compelling and scientific, surely, nodding at all the right times, and even saying a reasonably intelligent thing once or twice...but I was really thinking "I really just need to sit down for a second or I think I might puke." (though I have yet to actually puke, knock wood)

Our usual evening chore routine, which really doesn't take long (maybe an hour?), feels like a marathon. Gail is picking up some of my slack, but I hate leaving slack. And yeah, I did TONS of chores when she was pregnant, but we didn't have a toddler then...there were many fewer chores and we operated with a much larger margin of error between standard operations and "the-house-is-a-complete-wreck-nothing-is-getting-done-I'm-going-
completely-insane." One strategy right now is to save the "sitting down" jobs for me, but there are only so many of those.

I know we'll find our stride, and I know I'll feel better eventually...but six more weeks of this (or worse?) feels a bit daunting....

(with the caveat that I am still beyond thrilled to have exactly this problem...and I suppose feeling crappy is somewhat reassuring)

What we did right without knowing it, Part II (aka Accidental Economic Advantages)

Along with putting the slightly more communicative of us on the less traveled parenting path (i.e. me as the non-bio-mom, see Part I), another thing we did right without knowing it, was to have the mom with the most economic power bear the child.

In a straight family in which mom gives birth, mom is pulled towards primary care-taking due to both economic pressures and biological pressures (and a whole lot of socialization). Women still make less money in general than men, and women tend to marry men who will be "good providers." Thus, even if a straight couple heads into parenting with ideals of sharing parenting equally (and there are studies that show many modern parents often intend just this), countering both an economic gradient that values a men's work more, and a biological gradient in which women understandably take on the work of pregnancy and nursing, and thus become experts in baby care early on, most straight families fall into a traditional division of labor (Lisa Belkin's NYtimes Magazine article on Shared Parenting sums up some of this nicely).

In our case, the biological pressures pushed Gail towards care-taking, but the economic pressures pushed me towards care-taking. I was still in grad school, but was through courses and on research support. I needed to write my thesis, but that can be pretty amazingly flexible, and no one really cares if you need to add a year to grad school anyway in my corner of academics, so it made economic sense for me to bear a lot of the care-taking burden once Gail headed back to work, to her nice, real job with benefits. As a result, I got LOTS of time with Leigh. We seriously bonded. Really fast. Because I was with her a lot. I quickly caught up to Gail's slight head start due to pregnancy and nursing (and to be clear, I was "behind" while Gail was home. I hadn't realized how much I was deferring to her until she wasn't in the house anymore during the day, which is not to say it wasn't wonderful that we were all home together for a time). It would have taken much longer to get to a point where we were both competent caretakers, who really felt like parents, without my having that extended one-on-one time. Not impossible, mind you. Just not as fast, and not as likely. That counterbalancing of "gradients" (economic and biological) pulling towards care-taking, ended up pulling us exactly to the middle. We are able to truly share Leigh's care, and love doing it. Now we wouldn't have it any other way, but I'm not sure that would have happened if I had headed back to work immediately after the birth, or if I hadn't stood up for my own role as Leigh's mom, and requested leave time and flexibility in working arrangement from my advisor.

As a result of this experience, one of our biggest pieces of advice (should anyone ask...and sometimes they do...) to both queer and straight parents who want to truly share parenting is for the non-birthing parent to take a SOLO parental leave, even if it means a financial sacrifice, and even if it is frowned upon at work. Many companies have paternity or parental leave policies that are simply never used by dads or other non-birthing parents. For a two-mom family, where the legal situation is more precarious, if you are in a state with second-parent-adoption, non-bio-mom is entitled to FMLA leave (though probably unpaid). Even if you aren't in that position, some employers will be reasonable if you ask. My advisor was under no obligation to support me financially for a parental leave, since I wasn't technically an employee, FMLA didn't apply and my institution didn't have any parental leave policies on the books for grad students, but she did. She wouldn't have offered though. I had to ask.

Should this hopeful June addition stick around (we're a week out from the positive test, and so far so good), we plan to do something similar on this round, with Gail taking on more of the infant care duties after I head back to work after leave, but this time we'll do it on purpose instead of accidentally.

Weekend Update

Thanks to all for the well wishes for us relative newcomers to lesbian parent blog-land. Sorry for the radio silence over the weekend. We don't do computers on shabbat and Sunday often gets away from us. There has been no appearance of AF (my usual day to start would have been Saturday). We succumbed to two more tests (Sat and Sun) and they are getting darker. (We don't remember using so many with Leigh. I think that's because we were apart for about 4 days just after the positive, and couldn't egg each other on). I quit temping, at Gail's "suggestion" (it came with a very stern look that makes suggestion seem like an understatement. I know she's right. We killed ourselves over every tiny temp fluctuation with Leigh, until our midwife made the rather obvious suggestion that we chuck the thermometer).

On symptom watch we have: (1) general queasiness, particularly in the subway, (2) fatigue (but not yet the bone-crushing sort I've heard about), (3) strangely bigger/heavy boobs, and freakily sensitive nipples.

Gail needs a symptom watch too, as she has been perhaps more tired than I am, and both of us are dumb as posts, walking around bumping into things. She keeps saying "I shouldn't feel like this...you're the one with the hormones" to which I say pish posh. I was a mess when we found out about Leigh. A really happy mess. So fall apart as much as you need to, but let's try not to both completely de-convolve at exactly the same time. I think we both feel like the whole world should quit moving for just a second while we figure out what is going on. That's not really possible with a toddler on board.

I've been back and forth about whether or not to head in for a beta (I'm 14 dpo today). On principle, I would prefer not to. In general, if things seem fine, Gail and I do better with less information. We had virtually no prenatal testing with Leigh, not even an ultrasound. When Leigh was a baby, we told our pediatrician not to give us any info about Leigh's height/weight percentiles or developmental schedule unless she was worried. We just didn't want to think about it unless we needed to, don't want to constantly compare her to other kids, and figure the worry is better spent when there is an actual problem. Yes, I know we're kind of freaks, but it is how we work best. I called the clinic this morning, and they don't seem to want a blood test, so for now we're skipping it.

We're already having to do some thinking about who/how/when to tell (other than, you know, the whole internet and the couple friends in-the-know). There are several people that we are going to need to tell basically ASAP about this, even though it might be better to wait. My family is planning a huge get-together far away just before the due date (assuming this sticks) that my sisters are already shopping for plane tickets for. So for logistical reasons, my family needs to know, in case we can either change time or location of get-together to make it workable for us. My work places me near some potentially hazardous chemicals, depending on how we structure experiments, so I need to have a talk with my bosses sooner than later for health reasons. Especially since we're in the initial stages of planning some work right now and can plan it to be much safer if I speak up now. Ugh. I sort of can't even think about it, though for now it's a nice problem to have.

This turned into a rather scattered post, but we are a bit befuddled here, and are likely to remain so for a bit (or indefinitely?). Ah, so befuddled, that I forgot to say "shana tova" to other folks who celebrate Rosh Hashanah. May you have a sweet new year. We have much to be thankful for and look forward to here at first time second time.