Boxing Day

I am a day late posting this week. But I have a good reason. Mostly, that I didn’t want to turn on the computer yesterday. Which seems like a good enough reason to me. I was far too busy watching movies, snacking, and snuggling with my family to bother checking in with the rest of the world.

I love Christmas. LOVE it. The lights, the decorations, the cookies, the stuffing of too many family members around mismatched tables pushed together, the silly coloured hats that come in Christmas crackers, the gratitude for a year passed, the hopefulness of the year to come, the excitement of that perfect gift that you can’t wait to give, the surprise of that thoughtful gift you didn’t expect to get, sneaking my dad’s Toffifee chocolates – I love it all.  

My grandmother. She hates having her picture taken. I love taking her picture.

But what I love most about Christmas, my absolute most favorite-est part of the whole holiday season, is Boxing Day. Recently Mac’s dad told me that Boxing Day isn’t an American Holiday. Wikipedia tells me that it began as the day following Christmas when wealthy people in the UK gave their servants a box containing a gift. In present day Canada it’s mostly about shopping (similar to Black Friday in the US).

However, my parents live in one of the few remaining cities in Ontario that legally prohibits stores from opening on December 26^th. It’s a contentious issue for the city and I am not weighing in on whether or not the law should be changed. But, because we were always forced to stay at home instead of heading out to over-crowded malls my family started a tradition of vegging out all day. And this year Mac got to join in. Although snacking (i.e. breastfeeding on demand) and staying in pajamas all day isn’t exactly special for Mac I still like to think that he got into the spirit with the rest of us.

So, when I should have been writing this blog I was instead lying on a mattress pulled into the family room next to my wife and my sweet smelling baby who fell asleep nursing (which goes against pretty much all baby sleep advice ever and I don’t care because he just looked so darn cute). My parents were sprawled out on couches around us, cheesy movies were playing on my Dad’s ridiculously large TV (which prompted my wife to comment that it was like bringing a bed to the movie theatre), my belly was very full and so was my heart. 

Mac taking a nap between his moms

Whatever you are celebrating this season - Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Festivus, Saturday - I hope that you were able to take some time out to spend some quiet time with those you love as well. And if you haven’t yet please turn off the computer and go do it now. You worked hard this year. You deserve a day off.

Happy Holidays! 

Making my son play with electric lights for the sake of a great holiday picture. I should be expecting my Parent of the Year Award any day now.

Check out Mac's adorable Christmas day suit.

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Shopping for Sperm on the Internet (Prequel Part 2)

If you missed the first part of this story you can read it here.

So where do lesbians turn when they are trying to meet the father of their unborn children? The internet. Obviously. You can find anything on the internet. Want a poodle/shih tzu/great dane/Labrador retriever cross puppy? You can find that online. Want someone to clean your apartment naked while humming Christmas carols? You can find that online too. But what about sperm? We knew that we could find it online if we looked hard enough but we had to wonder what kind of guys were out there, sitting at their computers, wanting to give it away. The answer, we quickly learned, was all sorts of guys. We put up a few ads on free sites meant to connect potential mothers and fathers. Mostly we got a lot of messages from men wanting to have a three-way. We got one message from a guy who had a picture of his penis as his profile picture (I’m not kidding) and couldn’t stop talking about the fact that he coached hockey and how much he loved to be around children. There’s something unnerving about a grown man talking about his love for children while exposing his genitals. There was another man from Bangladesh who asked me to send him a money order so that he could send me his sperm in the post. Like it would just show up in a Ziploc baggie inside a manila envelope. One of my favorite potential donor-dads bragged about his athletic building. What is an athletic building you ask? Read for yourself!

A Grandparent’s Love Knows No Distance

“A house needs a grandma in it.”

                        Louisa May Alcott

Mac had a visit from his Grandmother this week. He has three so I guess I should clarify. My mom came for a visit.  She read him stories and rocked him. She cooked and cuddled. Even though this visit coincided with his month four vaccination he still had a great time soaking up every moment of his Gramma’s love. And so did I. I will never get tired of watching the people I love loving my kid. Never.

In the four months that he has been alive, and in the nine months before he was born, I called my mother Gramma. I wrote it in cards. I told her that her grandson couldn’t wait to see her. I listened as she told me how happy she was to be a grandmother. I have been keenly aware that she is, in fact, a grandmother. But for some reason it has taken a while for that understanding to move beyond the intellect and into the visceral. This week it sunk in.

Memories of my own childhood and my four grandparents came flooding back. They loved me in a way that was so pure and so complete that I knew, without question, that there was nothing I could ever do to make them love me any less (the very words said by my Gramma when I came out in fact). 

I remembered my Ammie (a name that stuck after my cousin couldn’t say Nanny) and the way that her Oscar de la Renta perfume tickled the back of my throat while the soft smell of vanilla on her hands could warm me up from the inside out. I thought of my Poppa and how I would cuddle up next to him on the couch. He sat in the same spot on the couch - it was his spot. And that tiny sliver of cushion next to him - that was my spot.  A book lover from the very start I would ask all of them to read to me incessantly. But my Poppa was smarter than his young granddaughter. He told me that he had to quit school to work as a boy so he never learned to read. When I saw him reading the paper years later I was so proud of him for “learning to read.” 

Me and my Poppa

All of my grandparents lived close by and I spent a lot of time with them. I can remember my mom over-hearing me on the phone one day saying “can I sleep over at your house tonight?” Thinking that I was talking to one of my little friends she quickly informed me that we don’t invite ourselves over to other people’s homes. I told her I was only talking to Poppa and that he was already on his way over to pick me up.

That last memory came with heaviness in my heart when I realized that Mac wouldn’t have the same experience. He has six grandparents but none of them live in our city. He can totally rock Skype and FaceTime, and can even see his grandparents looking larger than life on the TV screen, but that’s not quite the same as in person.

And then I looked over at my mom whose silly faces were yielding huge smile rewards from my sweet little boy and realized that one day I just might over-hear Mac on the phone asking if he can go for a sleepover. Passing on the manners that my Mama taught me I will remind him that we don’t invite ourselves over to other people’s homes. He will just look at me and say “I was only talking to Gramma and she’s already on her way over to pick me up. She’ll be here in six hours.”

Mac and his Hall grandparents

Mac and his Green grandparents

Mac's Nanny who has passed but watches over him

Mac and his Ireland grandparents

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*For some reason this one post has become a target of major amounts of spam. Instead of deleting 100 comments per day I have closed comments on this post. Thanks for reading!

Prequel Part 1

The Baby Plan

I’d like to tell you about our back-story. It’s a good story about how a couple of married lesbians in Ottawa managed to find the perfect Dad for their yet-to-be-conceived child living in New York City. But it’s a long one that will require several blog entries and I’d like to keep Mondays for updates on Mac and my experience of being his Mama. So I will tell you this story, in parts, on other days.  Here is the first part of Mac: The Prequel.

It started with a list. I titled it “The Baby Plan” and proceeded to fill the whiteboard in our kitchen with things that we should, or could, do before getting pregnant. I filled this list with important things like start taking a prenatal vitamin and make space in the office for a nursery.  After reading several books on the topic of conception the board took on a life of its own. There is no shortage of advice out there for women trying to conceive. One book told me that having good spinal alignment could help my uterus and fallopian tubes work better. So going to a chiropractor was added to the list. Another book told me that acupuncture could help so that made it on the list too. I read a whole book on charting my cycles and, of course, charting was also added to the list. An internet page told me that pregnant women shouldn’t have dental work done so a dental check-up was added to the list as well. The list continued to grow book by book and google search after google search. At its largest it contained things like switch to an alkalizing diet and listen to fertility hypnosis.  My best friend’s husband was visiting one day and I couldn’t help but laugh when he finally turned to me and said: “Um, Kristin, if you plan on getting pregnant at the dentist you are doing it wrong.”

This time last year 'cracker' was a curse word

When we found out we were pregnant I thought that I should start a blog. A lot of people in our lives had questions (like how, exactly, do lesbians get pregnant anyway?) and I figured that a blog would be a good place to answer those questions. But as the pregnancy progressed and the nausea set in (followed by insomnia, ribs that stretched out 6 inches and sciatica) I quickly realized that keeping a pregnancy blog would have been all wha.wha.wha.I.hurt.wha.wha.wha.I’m.Sick.wha.wha. And the internet has enough of that. But I did keep some personal notes on the experience. And it’s fun to look back at what was happening in my body at this time last year. Let me take you back to the second week of December, 2010:
 

Dear baby: If you would like to have a sibling at any point in the future you may want to stop making your mama so sick.

Dear wife (and the rest of the world): No, I do not want a cracker.

This week has been awful. I am now puking up to 8 times a day. Usually I can keep count. Some days I can’t. People who are around me for any length of time are certain that I am going to end up in the hospital due to dehydration. I can see why they would think that but I’m confident that I can manage through the next few weeks on a steady flow of smoothies. I couldn’t possibly be any more thankful for my wife who is making them on demand. Currently, this avocado, mango and banana smoothie is saving my life.

The most annoying thing about puking all day is not the constant nausea, it’s not the fact that I need to brush my teeth 10 times a day and that toothpaste makes me gag, it’s not even the embarrassing puking in public. The most annoying thing about puking all day is being bombarded with well meaning people trying to get me to eat crackers. I feel like a parrot. And Polly does NOT want a cracker. I blame TV. Pregnant women on TV eat crackers and magically feel better. I could practically puke just typing the word cracker. My wife has bought into this cracker-hoop-la and there are currently enough crackers in our house to get us through some kind of apocalyptic Armageddon.  At least 10 times a day she suggests that I should try some crackers. So, finally, yesterday I relented. If it was so important to her that I eat a cracker then I felt it was my wifely duty to indulge her. I agreed that I’d eat a cracker and she practically skipped to the kitchen to get me some. She returned with a plate of fruit and a handful of crackers. I picked up the hard, dry, piece of toasted wheat and put it in my mouth. It was awful. I finished it, smiled at her and then immediately ran to the bathroom to puke.

She has not since offered me a cracker.

Oh how things have changed! When I was pregnant I knew the payoff would be great but I wasn’t entirely aware of just how spectacular it would be. If I had known, I might have complained less. But here we are, one year later, and the only one puking in this house is the babe. And he was worth it. Gosh he was worth it. 

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Meet Mac’s Auntie Rishma. She’s in charge of sports.

"I don’t think one parent can raise a child. I don’t think two parents can raise a child. You really need the whole village." -  Toni Morrison

This weekend Mac had a visit from his Auntie Rishma. She’s in charge of teaching him about sports.  Someone has to because his moms sure don’t know much about them. I know, strange right? Two lesbian moms and neither of them know the difference between icing and a first down. Truth be told one of his moms (the one writing this blog) just had to google “sporting terminology” to come up with the words icing and first down. Luckily for our son we come from, and have built, a great family that can pick up our slack.

Early on in my pregnancy Rishma decided that if she was in charge of sports she should also get to influence what teams he will cheer for. This seemed like a reasonable request to us.  She told us that he would be cheering for the Edmonton Oilers and the Pittsburgh Steelers.  We have embraced her request and started to collect pint-sized team-based paraphernalia. However, Mac’s uncles Brit and Dan have voiced their objections with hopes of him cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins respectively. Ultimately, of course, Mac will make-up his own mind when he’s ready. Or, maybe he'll find other things that interest him and not enjoy sports at all.

In the meantime, I may not be much for watching sporting events (I may even be the kind of person who says “sporting events”) but I am all for adorable pictures of my baby dressed to match his aunt.

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Out-law In-laws

This weekend Mac met some of his dad’s family. Who are also Mac’s family.  And I guess are now our family too. How strange it is to have a second set of in-laws. In-laws who aren’t actually related by law at all. Out-law in-laws.

They arrived on Friday, traveling from Ohio and New York, boarding planes and crossing borders just to meet our little turkey who captivated his audience with amazing feats of grabbing, drooling and cooing. We welcomed them to Canada with some Canadian cuisine. They eyed the cheese curds with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism but were quickly won over by their squeaky charm. However, the ketchup chips were met with a less enthusiastic response. We ate tourtiere, maple baked beans and Nanaimo bars. Some Moosehead beer and Canada Dry Gingerale was consumed. Nobody braved the Dan Akroyd Wine. Mostly we sat and admired the perfectly plump baby. And we talked and got to know our new family a little better. 

People often ask us why we chose to use a known donor instead of a sperm bank. Why we purposefully decided to invite a whole other family into our lives. Why we complicated the legality of our family. This weekend reminded of me why. When we started all this baby-making-planning we knew (or at least I knew and hoped Tracy would be convinced) that having our child know his/her father could be great if we could find the right guy. I was less sure that we could find that right guy. The story of how we found him is a tale of its own. One that I will tell another day. But the point is that we did find him. And although we put a lot of thought into what kind of man we wanted in our life we gave shockingly little thought to the fact that we would also be interacting with his family.  But we lucked out and our great guy also came with a great family. 

This weekend I watched as my son was passed around between his six adoring grandparents, as they patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) waited their turn to be the next to hold him and my heart swelled. And at the end of the evening my new out-law mother-in-law rested her hand on my arm and quietly whispered “you have a great son.” I returned her smile and with all of the love and understanding that passes from one mother to another responded with “so do you.” 

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Post-Baby Mommy Birthdays

My wife’s birthday is coming up this week. However, we will be hosting Mac’s dad and his family for their first visit with the baby on her big day. Clearly, her 37^th birthday will be lost in the shuffle of examining perfect baby toes and chubby baby legs.  So we celebrated a week early.

My last pre-Mac birthday came about a month before his arrival and I can remember a well-intentioned woman saying to me that I should enjoy it because it would be the last birthday that would ever be all about me. I already share my birthday with the birthday of our country so I’m used to it not being all about me anyway. But I am stubbornly resistant to that kind of mommy martyrdom. I loathe the complaints that go something like now that I am a mom I will never again have a decent haircut, I shave my legs with a kitchen knife so that my baby can have organic strained peas and meeting friends for coffee is a luxury that only childless people can indulge in.  When you have children your priorities change (no doubt about it) but I never understood the need to change who you are entirely. And, to be honest, when I was a childless lesbian wishing that we could “accidentally” find ourselves pregnant I found those complaints just plain irritating. If having a child is so terrible, please, pass ‘em over here!

 

So, I was determined to make my wife’s first post-Mac birthday all about her. If there are any Scorpios in your life you will understand the need for celebration. If she could get away with it, Tracy would wear a crown and declare it “The Week of Celebrating Tracy’s Awesomeness” from Saturday to Saturday.  But she had to settle for a day. The morning began with Baked Banana Oatmeal (which  you should totally make - see recipe below) and delicious vanilla coffee.

 Then Auntie TaTa took over Mac-duty for the afternoon so that we could indulge in a couple’s massage and take a leisurely walk around downtown while sipping lattes and holding hands. The afternoon was absolutely lovely and left us both feeling relaxed and recharged. We finished off the night by heading out for dinner with Mac and his Auntie TaTa. 

And, of course, there were presents. Tracy is saving up for various techno gadgets so I bought her a Future Shop gift card that I crafted into a snow globe.  The letters on the bottom read TDawg. Nobody really calls her that (other than the lovely Rishma). But I’m sure she’d like it if you did. 

Tracy may not get 7 days to celebrate her awesomeness. But I can give her 7 reasons why she is, in fact, awesome.

1.     She is super fantastic at wrapping presents (we’re talking colour coordinated paper and ribbons, homemade tags and no tape lines)

2.     She has a real talent for turning a sad Adele song into a dance party (OK, that was Mac’s contribution to the list. I think sometimes he cries just to make the dance party start).

3.     She has really great friends. Which says a lot about her. And is a huge bonus for me.

4.     She has that gene that lets her figure out how things work. You know that moment where this thingamajig doesn’t fit in that whatchyamacallit and somehow they both need to attach to the doodad. Give it all to Tracy and she’ll make it work. In fact you could give her a piece of Ikea furniture without the instructions and she’d get it put together.  I like that gene. My dad has that gene.  It makes me feel safe

5.     She’s hot. It’s true and needed to be said.

6.     She has willpower like you wouldn’t believe!

7.     And the best for last: She’s pretty hilarious. As her little cousin said once “Tracy you are so funny. You should go on tour with Ellen.” 

The birthday girl:

Baked Banana Oatmeal

-       3 mashed bananas (If you are using those black ones in the freezer that you are keeping in case you someday want to make banana bread then you won’t need sweetener for this recipe. If you are using yellow bananas then sweeten to taste)

-       1 cup milk (soy, skim, whatever)

-       1 egg (or equivalent egg substitute)

-       1 tsp vanilla

-       1 tsp baking powder

-       2 cups quick oats

-       cinnamon to sprinkle

Spray a baking pan with non-stick spray. Mix all the wet ingredients together in the pan. In a separate bowl mix the baking powder and oats. Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake at 350 for 28 minutes (until edges are crunchy).
 .
This recipe is enough for two people. If one of those people is a hungry nursing mama double the recipe

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365 Days Ago

It’s not quite Monday. But today deserved its own post. Exactly one year ago today we made a Mac. 365 days ago the fertility math lined up, the basal body temperature charts pointed to today being the day, the little squares on the fertility monitor lit up bright pink and the ovulation test stick showed a smiley face. One year ago today my wife and Mac’s (soon-to-be) Dad did an awkward sperm-in-an-artichoke-jar handoff in the hallway while I got myself ready for the big insemination. My wife and I giggled at the strangeness of sperm in our bedroom. And we laid quietly after it was over hoping that his sperm and my egg were hitting it off like it was the best blind date ever.

One year ago today my house was filled with laughter as we got to know our new friend and the father of our yet to be known child. We drank coffee and tea and dreamed of what was to come. One year later that tiny sperm and egg have grown into 14 pounds of pure perfection. Today my house is filled with baby giggles and mommy laughter. And the reality is better than we could have ever dreamed. 

The three of us (the tiny zygote is present but we will not find out for two more weeks)  November 12th, 2010

The four of us October 22nd, 2011

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The Fourth Trimester

Did you see the episode of Friends when Rachel realizes that the baby is due any day and although she read everything she could about pregnancy she forgot to read about actually taking care of a baby? We had that moment too. Somewhere around 35 weeks when we realized that we were only two weeks away from being considered full term. So I pulled out the baby care books that generous people had lent and gifted to me and started reading. But the thing about reading parenting books when your parent status is still pending is that it all seems entirely theoretical. Tips and tricks on how to soothe a crying baby seem redundant when you are still convinced that you will soon be giving birth to a baby that sleeps through the night from day one and is so at peace with his new life and amazing moms that he will rarely, if ever, cry.

So I put the books away and my wife and I bought the DVD The Happiest Baby on the Block by Harvey Karp. Hundreds of written pages on turning an unhappy baby into a happy baby just weren’t enticing enough for us to sink our teeth into but we figured we could give an hour of our lives to at least watching the Coles Notes version. We watched as Harvey Karp described the first three months of a baby’s life as “The Fourth Trimester.” He explained that babies actually need a fourth trimester to finish growing before they are ready for the world. And that since they come out of our bodies after only three it is the parents’ job to make the baby feel as if he is still in the womb for the first three months of his life. He then gave a lot of (as it turns out incredibly useful) suggestions on how to make your baby feel like he is still in your womb. We took mental note of the tips on swaddling and shushing and on-demand feeding but mostly we thought that the term “fourth trimester” was little more than a cute play on words.

And then Mac was born. The first two weeks were spent in sleepy bliss as the tiny, warm, newborn was passed from adoring family member to tear-stricken friend and back again. We woke him every three hours to eat and he was asleep again before finishing his meal. And then…. He woke up.  And cried. A lot. All of a sudden the lovey-dovey-snuggly Look! We made a baby! time was over and our days and nights were spent minimizing the crying. If he was awake he was either crying or on the verge of it. And he fought naps like they were about to take him hostage in enemy territory. He quickly made it clear that he would only sleep while we walked. So we put him in the carrier and we walked. Just like my walking had lulled him to sleep when he was in utero, being snuggled close to my chest in the Ergo carrier convinced him to visit dreamland on the outside. Some days I walked for four hours. And then Tracy would get home from work and we would walk for two more.

Truth be told there was a lot of beauty in those walks. There is something indescribably wonderful about feeling your warm sleepy baby cuddle next to your chest with his hands nearly wrapped around you in a hug. To smell his hair and feel his breathing pattern shift to match your own. It is all of the magic of pregnancy without the nausea, vomiting, splitting ribs and sciatic pain. But there was fear too. Our son was born in August and our Canadian winter was fast approaching.

When we weren’t walking we were bouncing. Our son scoffed at fancy baby accessories like swings and bouncy chairs preferring instead the warm arms of his auntie Tata who spent hours every evening bouncing him into a state of complacency. She bounced him until her arms hurt and then denied that they hurt and bounced him some more.

We swaddled him, we shushed him, and we swayed with him in our arms. We recreated the womb to the best of our abilities. We were smack dab in the middle of the fourth trimester.  But the thing about trimesters is that, just when you think you will be in the middle of one for the rest of your life, they end. In the middle of my first trimester, when the term “morning sickness” seemed like a horribly deceptive name for the morning, noon, evening, and overnight sickness that I was dealing with was at its worst I thought it would be like that forever. And then week 12 hit and soon I was only throwing up once a day. And at the end of my third trimester when my precious, tiny, baby felt like an elephant pushing on my sciatic nerve I was sure I’d be the first woman in history to be pregnant forever. And then I wasn’t.

The same thing happened to our fourth trimester. One day I put him down in his playpen so I could brush my teeth before heading out for a walk. I expected him to cry. He always cried when we put him down. Except he didn’t. And the next day I decided to give that fancy swing another try. And he fell asleep in it. Suddenly there were periods of wakefulness where he didn’t seem on the verge of screaming at any second. My wife and I exchanged hopeful glances. We were too afraid to give voice to what was happening as we feared that it could just be a fluke and the crying could start again at any moment. But it didn’t. And his Auntie Tata got to actually sit down in our home and occasionally drink a cup of coffee during a visit.

The fourth trimester was ending. But the other thing about trimesters is that after they end there is a reward. When the first trimester ends you get a burst of energy. When the second trimester ends you get to consistently feel the life inside of you move and kick and punch. When the third trimester ends you get the spectacular reward of holding your baby in your arms. And when the fourth trimester ends you get this...

 

 

Smiles. All.the.time. And what an amazing reward that is.

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