The disappearing switcheroo

Gail and I often think about the different dynamics of TTC #1 vs. TTC #2. I wrote before about how somehow TTC this time had much more of a taint of selfishness, that somehow, when it is perfectly clear that I can fully love and parent a child whom I didn't birth, and yet feel dead set to carry our second come hell or high water, it lays bare the fact that the reasons I want this are kind of selfish. I suppose selfish is harsh, but as Gail says slightly more diplomatically, they are at least very personal, and are kind of self-centered. But here's the thing, Gail's desire for pregnancy was ALSO selfish, or personal, or kind of self-centered, but we didn't know it back then because we were both so excited to become parents together. It was the act of "switching up" for number 2 that exposed this, and I don't think we would have noticed if Gail had carried again. In that case, it would have just been more of the same, and if anything, she would have gotten extra points for being self-sacrificing and willing to put her body through the work of carrying again.

When I read all the stories of lesbian two-mom families, families that take so much work and love to build, I can't help but notice patterns that I'm not sure that we as a community really notice as a whole. One that I've noticed is that in families that may originally plan to "take turns," a planned second pregnancy often fails to materialize, or does, but it's a repeat for the mom who already gave birth. There are so many possible reasons for this, not least of which is the extreme cost, in money, time, emotional energy, and hard work it takes for us to get pregnant. But there are other factors, too, and they are impossible to see when making those early decisions about who will "go first."

In our case, Gail, who was just as insistent on a second kid as me, definitely started dragging her feet on TTC #2 after Leigh was born. We had originally thought to try for something like two-year spacing (as if you have very much control over such things) and she quickly started lobbying that we wait longer. There were all sorts of issues. Money, job and school transitions, the stress of TTC, and sure those were all factors, but the nasty jealous part of me was still thinking, "Sure, you can wait. You already gave birth; for all you care we could never have another." During the conversations over those months I demanded all different kinds of proof that she was on board for number two, some of them perhaps unreasonable, but I think my fear that she might bail on our plan was actually NOT unreasonable. It definitely happens. We had a different set of motivations, and mine were much stronger, whereas heading into number one, we were both 100% on the same boat.

Now it turned out that my body decided for us that we needed to wait. And to Gail's credit, she was the one who fussed at me to start charting when Leigh was only about six months old. I thought snarky things like, "well...you don't even want another one anyway, why should I wake up every day to take my damn temperature?" and really, that response was just masking my own desire not to face up to how bad my cycles really were. Once I charted for a while, and faced facts, it was important to me to give acupuncture a real chance before heading in for drugs; I was now on Gail's preferred schedule, but for my own reasons.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but maybe I'm saying that in a family where both moms plan to give birth, the one who goes first really does have a lot of power over how things progress (and this is assuming the best of legal circumstances). By the time you get to planning for number two, the mom who carried number one has proven fertility. At every slight bump in the TTC road, you both wonder, would this be easier if we just went back to the way we did it before? You also already have a child, a child whose needs you must prioritize. Money is tighter and you know how much childcare costs. Maybe you would have gone all the way to IVF in a heartbeat the first time, but the second time it seems too drastic, and too expensive considering you already have a child to support. And there are the donor issues that come up so often when trying for another kid. If you only have x vials, are you willing to risk them on unproven fertility? Will you move back to your original set-up if you run out, to ensure that your kids will have some genetic link? There's also the inevitable discomfort with taking on a new role, even if not for parenting, certainly during pregnancy. If things are working like they are, and you've finally negotiated your respective places in your family, perhaps in deference to or defiance of biology, it can be hard to face the prospect of finding your way down a new parenting path.

I know every family faces this stuff differently, and that only a small subset of two-mom families even contain two women that both want to give birth, and also manage to avoid the fertility nightmares that can make such a plan impossible. But I think the fact remains (albeit based unscientifically on broad generalizations from our own experience and meta-analysis of way too much blog reading), that once one mom has birthed a first child, she's probably more likely to birth a second, even if that wasn't originally in the plans. We felt many of these pressures, and we really had all of the cards stacked in our favor. I guess I may really mean stacked in my favor, since I'm writing about my own chances to achieve this pregnancy I wanted so much. I had ample donor supply, a relatively idyllic legal situation, enough money to keep trying, and a partner who shared my commitment to having another kid and wasn't chomping at the bit to get pregnant again herself. And even with all of that, we could have easily ended up with Gail pregnant again, despite our intentions at the outset. I am grateful that we got here....and will be even more grateful when I stop puking in the morning. (hello Universe! I'm pushing 15 weeks! Isn't this supposed to stop?)

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.

Acupuncture poster child, Part II

(See some of the backstory in Part I)

My first cycle with acupuncturist Li was excruciating. It was extremely long, and when I started bleeding at work on the first day of my period, the pain was so extreme I nearly passed out. My new boss (I had only been on the job about a month, fabulous first impression, no?) nearly called an ambulance but I managed to convince her not to, and instead she kindly gave me a ride home since a bike ride was clearly impossible. The period lasted longer than usual, and was heavier than usual. I was miserable. Li was thrilled.

The very next cycle, my temps started to move up a bit, I ovulated, and the next period wasn't nearly as bad. She moved me through several rounds of herbs meant to do various things I didn't comprehend (what does "tonify blood" mean?). In the year or so that I was with Li before the cycle that worked, I only missed ovulation on one cycle. As my cycles regularized (about 32-36 days), my mucus improved, and it became possible (though not necessarily easy) to identify ovulation with signs and a vast collection of OPKs, I started to have hope my body really could do this. Gail and I decided to still get basic labs with an RE (which we had not done for Gail), which I did in March 08. The RE gave me the all clear, despite being fairly dubious as to why my hormone levels were fine after I had described my history (and asking for Li's contact info for her other patients). I told Li we were ready to try. After all, we'd given her far more than the three cycles she had originally asked for, and she said, I kid you not, "You don't try this time. You will have a miscarriage." After much badgering I managed to get out of her that she wanted my post-ovulation temps higher, consistently above 98, and was concerned I did not have adequate progesterone yet. I put it off one more cycle but I had been waiting so long. You can only push a girl so far, and I don't know many women who would wait through nearly a year of acupuncture before trying at all. I decided my body might not be perfect, but I had semi-reliable fertility signs and did ovulate regularly now. We decided that if I could identify ovulation, we would try. Li reluctantly agreed, but wanted me to use progesterone cream on that first try.

At that point, Li and I had gotten into a bit of a battle of the wills. I felt so dependent on her. She had done for me something I thought was impossible and I was deeply indebted to her. But on the other hand, plenty of straight women had even worse cycles and got pregnant just fine. I knew that if I never tried, I really would never get pregnant. As I moved slowly through 3 cycles of trying, interrupted by break cycles due to travel and one anovulatory cycle, she gradually seemed to approve more and more of each try, and I felt a little less like I was fighting her tooth and nail. But on the cycle that worked, she still thought maybe we shouldn't try because I'd been sick and recently traveled, even though she said my hormones were great. But we did it anyway, because I finally actually got that OPK smiley face, and it was our last shot at the three year spacing I so coveted. Obviously, I'm so glad that we did. I can't believe that starting where I did a year and a half ago, I ended up getting pregnant without meds, on the 4th cycle trying. Now when I see Li, she's practically busting at the seams with pride, though at my visit to try to fix this constant nausea last week, her first words were "Why you carry that heavy bag!? Don't ride your bike! Walk slowly!!" I hadn't seen her in over a month, and it felt kind of like when you come home from college, and your mom starts to nag you right away. You know it's out of love and concern, but you're still annoyed.

So there you have it. I probably had no business getting pregnant without meds, with frozen sperm. If I were someone else, If I were older, had a different history or didn't have such deep concerns about the medical system and its inherent undisclosed risks, maybe it wouldn't have been worth the time, work and money (at least $3600 total for acupuncture alone). I certainly don't begrudge those who head to the RE right out of the gate, and if we'd gone on for several more unmedicated cycles unsuccessfully, we would have been there, too, and grateful for the help. But I am so glad that we gave my body this chance. Along the way, Li fixed longstanding problems with headaches and evened me out a bit emotionally, somehow helping me gain a reserve of calm I thought was only possible for folks with less fiery temperaments. Is acupuncture a cure all? Probably not. It has yet to fix my morning sickness, and I could really do without that. Is it potentially powerful if you can give it time to work? In my case at least, with a skilled practitioner, yes. But even I got impatient, and I was bound and determined to give it a full shot, so I'm sure that means it isn't for everyone. If you're in the thick of trying, it is excruciating to give up one cycle, let alone 3, or 6. I'm happy to provide a referral (if you still want one after I described all that nagging) to other Eastern MA folks. I swear by Li, even though she sometimes kind of drives me crazy.

Acupuncture poster child, Part I

I've gotten a several questions lately about my acupuncture treatment, so I thought I'd post them in case other folks are looking for information. I'm kind of an acupuncture poster child, and I don't mean to imply, in that way that anecdotal evidence does, that acupuncture will work for everyone else just as well. But what happened was absolutely true for me and my body, albeit in an n=1 sort of way.

I started tracking my menstrual cycles in Jan 07 in anticipation of starting to try as early as August 07. It quickly became apparent my cycles were not as they should be. This shouldn't have come as a surprise. I already knew that I bled inconsistently and, when I was younger, sometimes so heavily that I had to stay home from work or school. I had excruciatingly painful periods, the kind of pain that ibuprofen couldn't touch and that sometimes made work impossible. In the past I had been on prescription drugs known to cause PCOS and hormonal/menstrual problems (not that I was told of these risks when they were prescribed, and not that my doctors ever inquired about how these drugs were impacting my cycles). But the drugs had been out of my system for a while, and I was much healthier than in the past, so I still felt surprised my cycles weren't behaving. I had been in some measure of denial about what a long road it might be to get this particular body pregnant, and seeing my crappy cycles, laid out in black and white, on Gail's homemade spreadsheet, was crushing.

My temps were so low we had to make a new custom chart, often in the mid-96's, and only rarely out of the low 97's, even when I got that coveted biphasic ovulation chart. My cycles ran between about 19 and 40 days, and luteal phases, when they happened, could be as short as 8 days. I could identify biphasic patterns suggestive of ovulation in about a third of my cycles, if that, and even on those cycles, OPKs did not seem to predict ovulation. I had no meaningful quantity of cervical mucus, and my uterus was positioned such that feeling my cervix, either for mucus or position/softness was impossible. Absolutely nothing was lining up and I started to ask around about REs, bitter that I was probably going to have to start the process at the doctors office with lots of drugs, instead of on our own, as we had conceived Leigh.

But I decided that since we weren't yet actively ready to try, and since I felt so seriously about only seeing an RE if I really needed the help, I would first give acupuncture a solid go. Acupuncture had helped to regulate my cycles in the past, had fixed Gail's short luteal phase in only 2-3 cycles, and started Gail's labor when she went 10 days overdue. I started in Spring of 07 with the practitioner who had fixed Gail's cycle, and though I think her work helped to regulate me a bit, she didn't seem to understand my problems. She kept giving me herbs to take pre- and post-ovulation when it wasn't at all clear or predictable when I ovulated, and never seemed to take meaningful diagnostic information (either asking questions, or doing those usual chinese medicine things like taking my pulse or looking at my tongue). I felt like I couldn't get any information out of her. After a few cycles with her, I switched to the practitioner, named Li, who had started Gail's labor and I had heard from a friend would tell me exactly what she thought, for good or ill.

When I walked into my first appointment with Li, she exclaimed over how horribly red my face was (I had just biked to the appointment...sheesh!). She asked me if I was quick to anger (umm....kind of) and seemed concerned with the color of my hair ("too red!"). She had lots of concerns over how much water seemed to be retained in my (relatively slim) abdomen and kept putting my finger on my belly after she had placed the needles, saying, "See? Feel that? It is so wet." I couldn't feel a thing. She looked at my charts, and muttered things about needing to "clean me out" and made me swear that I wouldn't try for at least three cycles. She peppered the conversation with barely intelligible tales of women with horrible problems she had fixed. All of this was made even more surreal by the fact that the appointment took place in her office that had recently suffered a fire started in the restaurant next door, and thus had no electricity, no plumbing and no heat. But I heard she was a miracle worker. And I needed a miracle...

To be continued in Part II

One of the reasons why

If I had written before this worked, about my personal reasons for wanting so badly to be pregnant (other than the obvious reason that Gail and I wanted another child), my reasons would have had a lot to do with pregnancy being a way to reconnect with my body, and as a way to have evidence that my body worked, after years of neglect and mistreatment. I've implied before, that I've not been treated kindly at the hands of western medical care. In particular, by agreeing to care that I did, for nearly a decade, for a condition it turned out I didn't even have, I exposed my body to extremely dangerous drugs that damaged my overall health and may have also damaged my reproductive health. I worked extremely hard for many years to extract myself from that system of "care" in a way that protected my body from further harm. Once I was free, I was so angry at myself for having been sucked in, for being so naive and accepting, for just believing what I was told without understanding the deep risks to which I was exposing my body. Honestly, I have yet to completely forgive myself, and still have healing to do. But some piece of that healing, and some piece of why I did not want to go on fertility meds unless absolutely necessary, was wanting to have some sort of evidence that my body was healed, even if my heart wasn't. I hoped that maybe pregnancy and birth would be a way to reconnect with my body, a way to redevelop a trust that I had long ago betrayed.

Somehow this seems so over-dramatic and perhaps ill-advised when it is written out, especially since so much can go so wrong during pregnancy and birth, that it's probably best to avoid putting too much pressure on the proceedings. But lesbians have to work so hard to get knocked up anyway, there's no way many of us head into this with reasonable expectations.

But here I am now, feeling crappy in the first trimester. I'm so thrilled that we have an actual baby in here, the kind with a heartbeat, but I'm still finding the experience itself challenging, and I'm trying to see if even now, I can find a way to use even the crappy parts as a way to reconnect. So far, I'm trying to listen to my body, to sleep because it says it needs to, to feed it. I'm trying not to be angry that I feel this way, and remember that so far it seems I'm doing a pretty good job growing our kid. Maybe for now, that's enough. I'm getting the feeling that as far as paths of reconciliation go, I may have picked a rocky one. Maybe I should have just stuck with the yoga.

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.

What we did right without knowing it: Part I

I don't want to sound too whiny about not "going first" as they say, because truly, Gail bearing our first child ended up being by far the best choice for our family, but not necessarily for the reason that prompted us to make that decision in the first place.

Our motivating decisions around "birthing order" were 100% age determined. Gail has 6 1/2 years on me, and the clock was ticking. I wasn't yet out of my 20's when we started planning in earnest, so I had a little more time.

Soon after we started down this road, I realized I hadn't really understood what I'd signed on for. This was by no means the way I had ever expected to become a mother, and the feelings that I had during the pregnancy kind of blindsided me. It was way harder than I expected. I felt invisible and unnecessary. The constant comments by our SMBC lesbian friend who was pregnant at the same time that clearly implied I was peripheral, kind of a perk for Gail, but by no means an essential member of our family, really got under my skin (to be clear, I'm all for SMBC, and many of those comments were probably not ill intentioned, but they still stung). I had deep fears about how I would come to mother this child, how I would be seen by the world, how I would be seen by our families, how I would be seen by our child. Gail walked around to constant accolades and questions about due date (which of course, got annoying for her eventually), but when I told anyone I was "expecting", the best I got were blank stares, confused congratulations, and a quick change of topic. I had to constantly remind people that, no, I couldn't take on anymore projects because my BABY WAS DUE ANY DAY. They couldn't quite process it. After all, wouldn't Gail be taking care of the baby? Why couldn't I take on just this one more thing? After all, I wasn't pregnant. A close friend actually told me I shouldn't take any leave, since wasn't I more like a dad anyway? (to which I say, no, I'm not a dad, and also dads should also be supported to take leave). Ah, but there I go getting whiny again which was not my point.

Though actually, it kind of is my point. Gail is just a bit more likely than me to keep complicated feelings to herself (which is not to say she can't "process" with the best of them, quality lesbian that she is). Alas, the same would never be said of me. Not in a million years. One of the things that we did right without knowing it was having me, the one who is more likely to speak up if something feels strange or unexpected, walk the road less traveled. Pregnancy and birth are really hard, but they are common. Most women become mothers that way, so there are stories, there is support. There really isn't much out there for us non-bio-moms, and what is out there, isn't too encouraging (thank god I found chicory during the pregnancy). We needed me to notice what was strange and complicated about this path, and to point out the ways that it our family isn't like all of the others. Gail, bless her, totally met me on this. She didn't take my worries and over-analysis as any kind of threat. She didn't let my occasional black mood take away from the joy she experienced while pregnant (she sure was a sparkly and peppy pregnant lady, I tell you. She walked 3-4 miles in the pride parade, a couple days before Leigh was due, in the rain, smiling & laughing. Amazing.). Instead, Gail realized I was noticing real stuff, and jumped right in. As a result, by the time Leigh actually arrived, we had worked through a lot of our buried beliefs about motherhood, and decided they didn't really reflect what our family was going to be. We anticipated some spots where we might hit rough patches, and had a lot of practice talking about how this was going. It ended up being so much smoother once Leigh arrived than either of us expected, precisely because we had worked through so much, and thought of a few good strategies ahead of time. That wouldn't have happened so smoothly if I wasn't so...well...let's say vocal...and perceptive. (It's kind of like how we don't say that Leigh is "bossy," instead, she has "leadership skills")

Parts II & III to come: Accidental Economic Advantages & Accidental Implications of Naming

The Summary

We are a lesbian couple, Gail and Lyn, parenting our two-year-old daughter, Leigh. We are also trying to grow our family by one. Gail gave birth to Leigh in 6/06. Leigh was conceived on the second try, at home, with frozen, so I'm afraid we may owe the universe back for how easy it was the first time around.

It has taken over one year of acupuncture even to get me ovulating regularly. HSG and CD3 blood work prior to trying came back fine, though during the HSG the doctor wouldn't shut up about how tipped my uterus was, which I didn't particularly appreciate. We didn't even bother with the RE visit when trying for Leigh, but my history of irregular and painful periods prompted us to check. We did two rounds of ICI (2 vials per cycle) at home in the spring with no luck, and switched to IUI (no meds) at a women's clinic over the summer. We missed May due to travel messing up my ovulation, June due to travel, clinic IUI #1 was in July, and August is out due to travel again. We're sick of missing cycles so there will be no travel in the fall. I've already turned down a conference invitation and a speaking invitation for the fall, with extremely vague excuses.

For many reasons, some historical, some reasonable, and some not so reasonable, I have a strong aversion to doctors. It is extremely important to me to give my body a decent try at this without meds and fortunately, for now, available vials aren't an issue. It was a big step for me to even move from home to unmedicated IUI at a non-interventionist clinic, which we did primarily to get on the health insurance clock in case we need help down the road (our insurance doesn't count home tries with frozen no matter how impeccable the timing.)

I've been reading lesbian TTC and family blogs voraciously since we were expecting Leigh and I wanted desperately to find other moms like me. I remember calling Gail at the office the day I found Chicory at An Accident of Hope. Back then, I think there were like 2 or 3 blogs by non-bio-moms. Sassa was only 7 months old then. I've often commented as dlvc, sometimes recently as Lyn. Now we're finally jumping into the fray. Please bear with us though while we spruce things up around here.