Oh, baby!

Of all the things that we hope to accomplish before we leave the Bay Area, moving with a bun in the oven is very likely the craziest. It is also our most closely guarded secret. The process of creating a baby is an emotional roller coaster when it's going well, and devastating when it's not. The last thing that we need are naysayers telling us that we're nuts, reckless, etc...

Talk to the hand 'cause my uterus ain't listenin'.

Our decision to do this pre-move is partly based on the resources available to us here in the Bay Area - a lesbian-owned sperm bank, a lesbian owned midwifery practice that offers LGBTQ childbirth classes and more lesbian families than you can shake a stick at. It's also all very familiar. We've been down this road once (with fantastic results!) and given the complexity, oh, lets be positive and call it the "richness", of our current lives, it's not something that we're willing to give up.

When we conceived our daughter five years ago, our only major source of stress was our border collie.

Now we have a mortgage.
We have to pay insanely high property taxes.
We have jobs with greater responsibilities.
We are feeling the pressure to make something spectacular happen in our lives.
We're older.
Oh, and we have a freakin' kid.

Despite these challenges, we really want our daughter to have a sibling. We want to experience the joy of babyhood one more time. To kick start the process, we went to a class last week held by those wonderful lesbian conception and childbirth educators. It was all about learning to recognize the signs of ovulation and fertility to increase your chances of conception. Great class, but what did we do the minute the class was over? We we to a bar, sat our asses down with some wine and dissected the other three couples there.

The couple on the couch? Breaking up.
That kind of butch looking chick on the end? Obviously uncomfortable with her gender identity.
That stern woman and her partner? Is-sues!! OMG, and how old is she anyway?

Terrible, I know. Why do women do this to each other? 

I've gotten off track. My point is this. We believe in our decision, no matter how nutty it might seem from a distance. I believe in my body, as the vessel that will hopefully deliver us a healthy baby, to be up to the task - I truly believe that this is just a critical as good timing.

I haven't decided yet how much I plan to share about the process. There are many, many women out there blogging about TTC. I enjoy them. I enjoy reading about what is happening and what they are thinking, but I can get obsessed, jealous and despondent. I know this about myself. I am working on it, but I'm not quite there yet.

I also don't want the TTC process to become my whole life. There is a really high chance that it won't happen the first time, or the second or maybe even the third and I need to be able to maintain some balance. I want to write about the experience, but I don't want to become it. I guess I'll just see how it unfolds.

Thinking fertile thoughts,
Elsie