GUSH!

The race is on, Poppy!

Meds giveaway!

I think we've held on to our extra F0llustim long enough. First, we were keeping it because we weren't sure if this pregnancy would stick. Then we held on a little longer because we toyed with the idea of having Elizabeth create and freeze some embryos for use a few years down the road. We've finally decided that we're not going to use it before it expires on 9/2011, so we have two 900 pens of f0llustim up for grabs. Please e-mail me (gaybyrabies at yahoo dot com) if you are interested. I can send both pens to one person, or split it up. I'll determine who gets it mostly on a first come, first served basis. However, since it costs a small fortune for me to overnight this stuff, priority will go to anyone on my blog roll. Of course, anyone who needs the meds is welcome to ask. My only conditions are that:

A) You are seeing a doctor, I don't want to be responsible for anyone self medicating with this stuff.

B) You don't sell it. I could really use the money too, but I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

The gender post

Sometimes, I'm struck by how little Elizabeth and I know about our babies. We've managed to get this far, through all of the extra ultrasounds that twins get, without learning the sex of the babies. I thought I'd have some kind of mother's intuition and get a strong feeling one way or the other, but so far, I can't say that I have an inkling about who is in there.

As happy as I am to be surprised on the day that they're born, there is a part of me that wishes I knew. Although I love and appreciate all of the clothes we've gotten from friends and family, I'm getting eager to buy things that are a bit more gender specific. There are only so many gender neutral things available at BRU, (which seems to be the only place people shop for showers) so we have so many duplicate items. The colors that have been deemed "neutral" are a bit boring after a while too. No bold greens or oranges, just a sea of orange and lime sherbet colored onesies. Lately when we've stopped at any store that sells baby items, we've been drawn to the clothing - particularly the really gender specific items, like impossibly tiny ladybug sundresses and cupcake onesies, or bulldog and dinosaur outfits. I have to admit, some of them are quite cute. But I can't bring myself to buy them without knowing who's in there.

Let me say that I have absolutely no preference of one sex over the other when it comes to these babies. I know that there are many families (same-sex and hetero, nobody on my blog roll of course) who view girls as the top prize, and baby boys as a distant second. It breaks my heart to see some people who are truly disappointed when they come back from their anatomy scan and must report that they are carrying a baby boy. I've always felt a bit defensive when it comes to baby boys. I think it comes from hearing stories about my crazy grandmother. My grandmother had three daughters, and no sons. She was thrilled when I was born, but when her second grandchild, my brother, was born a year later she refused to hold him for the first three months of his life simply because he was a boy. When my aunt, who had struggled with infertility for years was finally approved for adoption, my grandmother asked "what are you going to do if it's a boy?" And when I approached her, overflowing with joy to tell her that she was soon going to be a great-grandmother to twins, the first words out of her mouth were "I suppose they're both boys?" My jaw hit the floor. I was 12 weeks along at that point and had done my best to remain as detached as possible from these babies, mostly as a defense mechanism because I was so afraid of losing them. But in that moment, I suddenly felt so connected to my babies and protective of them. I had to convey to her that there was no way I would love a son any less than I would love a daughter. Even if I'm not quite sure how to teach him to pee standing up.

Nothin'

I have a question for all of you ladies out there who've already had babies. Did you have any sense in the day(s) before your babies were born that your time was coming? I'm a little over 37 weeks along here, and for far I've got nothing. I haven't felt a single contraction, not even a little Braxton Hicks. I haven't felt any of the signs of labor on the list stuck to my fridge. Truly, I am happy to keep these babies baking for as long as I can. Overall, my body has done really well with this pregnancy thing, and I'm still fairly comfortable. But I'm starting to get a bit impatient, wondering when these babies plan on arriving.

Phew!

At long last, I have started my maternity leave! I worked full time through week 36, which left me absolutely exhausted. At the end of the day, I had no energy left to comment on blogs, let alone post to my own. I do NOT recommend working that long if you're pregnant with twins. My last week on the job was particularly tough, because so many of my co-workers called out sick or took vacation time and I was left to pick up the slack. I also had to try to wrap up all of the loose ends relating to my job, and attempt to train people to cover for me while I am away. Not fun my friends, not fun at all.

I think the stress of that final week at work is part of what led me to have a high blood pressure reading at my OB checkup. Upon getting the high reading, the nurse instructed me to lay on my left side, and then she scurried off to get the doctor. So I did my best to lay on my left side on the uncomfortable, inclined exam table for about 15 minutes. I was freaking out. I was afraid I'd be sent off for a c-section that afternoon. There was no way my blood pressure was going to go down in 15 minutes. Sure enough, it was still elevated when the doctor came in, so I was sent off to the hospital for monitoring. Fortunately, my blood pressure went back to normal when I was at the hospital and all of my bloodwork came back normal. Dodged a major bullet there. You can bet I've been behaving myself after that. I've spent the past few days chilling on the couch watching TV with the dogs, drinking as much water as I can.

I still can't believe these babies will be here so soon. Looking at my ticker freaks me out. Even freakier? Looking at my blogroll and realizing that I'm the next to go!

working backward to first names

Like any good lesbian couple, Elizabeth and I have had a running list of potential baby names for years. We're lucky that we have similar taste- we both want something that's less common, but not completely out there. We want a name that's easy to pronounce and we're not into the very creative alternative spellings (definitely no little Jayssin or Emmuhleigh in our future).

After we had our first appointment at the fertility factory, we went home and made a big list of names on our computer that we would add to periodically. It seemed so easy! We'd hear interesting names all the time and add them to the list. The list got longer and longer. We were prepared for octuplets. But then I got pregnant, and the idea of naming a child was no longer an abstract thing that we'd do sometime in the future. Suddenly some of those names didn't seem quite right. They were perfect for some other child, but somehow they just didn't seem like the right fit for OUR children. Choosing a name became much more complicated. The kids will be stuck with this name for the rest of their lives, or at least until they turn 18 and can change it. We have plenty of names that we like, but very few that we really love. And what if we look at our babies for the first time, and they just don't fit any of the names we've chosen? Gotta remember to pack that baby name book in the hospital bag.

We had a boy name that we absolutely loved for close to 5 years now. We had the perfect middle name to go with it. When we first checked, it was down near 100 in terms of popularity. But then it started climbing on the list to hit #25, and I heard of several other people who used this name. We had to abandon the name because it was just becoming too popular for our liking. (Elizabeth hated having such a popular name growing up.) Now I brace myself every time someone I know, in real life or in blogland is about to have a baby. I don't want to find that another name we love is becoming too popular.

We've decided that we're keeping our name choices to ourselves until the babies are born. People are way too opinionated about names, and tend to forget that it's our right to name our babies whatever we choose. We've gotten a lot more flack on our decision to keep quiet on our name ideas than we have on keeping the sex of the babies a surprise. Is it that unusual to keep your name lists secret? How did you / do you plan to choose your baby's name? For those of you who already have children, did you feel absolutely certain about a name before you gave it to your baby or was it more of a last minute decision? This is way tougher than I thought it would be!

Last Names

One night not too long ago, I awoke in a panic. I had gotten a call from our lawyer earlier that day, letting me know that the court had "misplaced" my name change documents and we'd have to re-submit the paperwork. I've been meaning to change my last name for a long time, but with my due date drawing ever closer it's taken on a new sense of urgency.

I can't stand the thought of my babies having my father's last name, even if it turned out to be a temporary thing until we got paperwork straightened out. My father has been almost absent from my life, but pops up just enough to make things complicated. I was 5 when he got another woman pregnant with what turned out to be my half sister. My mother kicked him out of the house. He was supposed to see me and my brother on weekends, but would cancel frequently. Sometimes, he wouldn't even tell us he needed to cancel. My brother and I would wait like fools in the elementary school lobby for him to come pick us up, only to have the secretary shake her head and sigh and drive us home an hour later when he failed to show.

Over the years we saw him less and less. After I left for college at 18, the visits slowed to a pace of about one or two per year. Now I see him for a few hours a year sometime around my Christmas / New Years break at work. He spends most of those brief hours trying to make me feel guilty about how little I see him, even though he is the one who has always failed to return my calls and breaks plans at the last minute. It made me sad when I was a kid- I would get my hopes up that he would come through but wind up feeling rejected. As I got older, I recognized my father for the pathetic person he is. I stopped feeling like I needed a daddy, so his unreliability and disinterest in my life no longer hurts the way it did when I was in pigtails.

I was lucky, I have a wonderful mother and didn't need to rely on him. I think the one who was really hurt by his absence is my half sister Ella. Ella and her mother moved out of state when Ella was almost 4. When he did remember to pay child support for her it was next to nothing, even though he knew that her mother was financially and emotionally unstable. At 24, Ella is a culinary school dropout. She is unable to find work and has few adult life skills. This is mostly due to the fact that she had no role model to teach her how to be a responsible adult. She also suffers from depression, and has some of the worst luck of anyone I know. She has a tendency to drop off the face of the planet for weeks at a time. I found out yesterday from my brother that her most recent absence was due to illness. She had a severe staph infection which spread to her bones and cartilage and she's now wheelchair bound, living in a motel. My father knew of her condition, but did not once make time to visit her and didn't let anyone else in the family know she was sick. So for the past two days, I've been beyond angry with that man. There is no way he deserves to be honored as a grandfather, no way he deserves to have his name passed down.

My court date finally came through, and is set for next Friday. We always knew we wanted everyone in our family to have the same last name, and toyed with a lot of ideas before coming up with a solution that worked. We thought about hyphenating, but that would have meant a 6 syllable last name. Waaaay too much of a mouthful, especially since Elizabeth's last name is Polish and has more z's than vowels. We thought about combining part of her name with part of my name (i.e. banana + vanilla = banilla) but the results were laughable. We didn't want one of us to take the other's last name, because we were worried it would make one of us seem too dominant. In the end, we looked at as many different last names in our family trees as we could come up with, and decided on a favorite. So next Friday, we will both be using my grandfather's name as our last name. Hopefully the babies will stay put until then.