MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Best Christmas present;
Baby kicked wifeys hand as we laid in bed Christmas Eve.

Go see something beautiful...

... my friend said. And so I will. Sylvie Guillem will be dancing Thursday night. And I will sit on first row. And see if baby loves movement as much as I do. See if baby feels beauty, music and lines following her heart beats.
And maybe I can give her something beyond the physcial and scientific. And maybe art will protect her heart and her blood better than any shot of anti D profylax.

Royal Blood

Thursday night I got home from work and had a cryptic letter from KI in the mail. (KI is the big uni hospital here in Sthlm). The letter says "your baby is Rh positive and you are scheduled for anti D profylax"
Rh-WHAT? Profy-WHAT?

I tried to get a hold of someone at KI and my midwife but of course no one answers their phone and no one calls back to explain anything.

THANK GOD for Google!!!!

The only thing that makes sense is that I must be Rh negative as my blood type, though no one has told me this despite of leaving a million blood samples before even choosing a donor for this baby.
15% of the worlds population is Rh negative, the rest is Rh positive. They call it "royal blood" since it's most common within the royals courts of Europe (in-breeding is what I'm thinking!). It is also called royal since the blood type is the most sought after in blood donations, since it doesn't react with either Rh neg or Rh pos blood in donations. Meaning it is safe for everyone to use.
Rh pos blood is not compatible with Rh neg blood. So if you are Rh neg you can only have Rh neg blood transfusions, with Rh pos it's either way.

And if you are a Rh neg mother and carry a Rh pos baby, you are in big trouble.

This means my body can react to my babys blood, possibly form anti bodies against it and kill my babys blood cells. Leaving the baby w anything from mild jaundice to severe anemia which will kill her.

Both my parents are Rh positive, so I must be a strange mutation of recessive genes.

I, OF COURSE, thought of blood type when choosing a donor and our donor is a regular O positive, like most of the worlds population. I thought that with a common blood type, you can't go wrong.
Not knowing that I had a rare one.

What a Shock.
And what a shocking way to find out, I didn't even know this existed, or that the blood that was drawn from me at the midwife was for this purpose. I was in the dark and had no idea what that impersonal note form KI meant. I thought my baby had some weird disease. (While actually, she is normal, and I am the odd one).

And we were so careful in choosing donor, and I tried to think of EVERYTHING to make the best possible decision for the baby, to give her the best start in life. And then I, and my blood, turned out to be the biggest threat to her.
Had I known about this possible complication, we could have just chosen a Rh negative donor and there would have been nothing to worry about.

I read book after book on how to chose a donor, and there's not a word about this anywhere. Something that's potentionally LEATHAL to our baby. There are however 100 pages on how to, as a lesbian, "become friends with the sperm" to concieve more easily. Give me a break!

Anyways, now the worst shock is over and I can actually sleep at night, and not just cry til 3 in the morning, feeling like I'm killing my baby w my stupid blood type.

From what I can find out by googling, the Anti D profylax is a sort of "vaccination" apparently, that will help my blood to not form anti bodies to my baby. So hopefully everything will be ok.

This has not exactly made me trust the healthcare system more. I didn't think my scepticism couldn't run any deeper, but apparently it could. What else are they not telling me that might harm or kill my baby? What other questions do I not know to ask that would give me crucial information concerning the well being of our baby? And I feel so STUPID for not just googling " blood type, pregnancy" before choosing a donor. It would have been so easy. And I would have had this info. Instead I figured anyone would TELL me, when I asked if there was something to consider besides the things we already thought of.

Anyways, I'll get the Anti D shot, hopefully there will be no complications and the baby won't notice a thing, except for having a hysterical mother with ruined nerves that behaves like a lunatic every other day.

POP goes the belly!

I look insanely pregnant. The belly must have popped during the weekend. I'm still not well, woke up with a cold sweat and a murder headache, so it's another day in bed. Now I'm more leaning towards it being the flu. My muscles and glands hurt too.

Won't people at work be thoroughly surprised when I show up super pregnant after being home w the flu for a couple of days!
My friend suggested I say I got visited by an angel. It is yule tide after all.

I keep forgetting I have this huge (and I mean giganormous!) bump. I keep thinking it might just be a case of bloating or indigestion. When I wake up in the morning I have completely forgotten about it and am startled when I head for the bathroom and realize my pyjama top keep sliding up over my new beer-belly shaped frame.

I have a favorite pair of pants; it's super soft maternity pants in purple velour with a high elastic waist. I look like something that got lost from the 70's.
Too bad I can't wear them at work.
Wifey has promised she's not ashamed of me when I wear them in public. Then she sings me this song, and I almost believe her.

18 weeks

And this is what I look like when I'm not hiding in circus tent cardigans at work. I had no idea I had such a bump going until wifey took this picture this morning.
Ok. I'm convinced.
We are def. pregnant.

The blog list...

... I don't know about the rest of the world, but here in Sweden there apparently is a blog list going around. A list of one post-a-day-topics to blog about. It is usually quite personal topics; describe yourself, your family, your first love etc. I've kept this blog semi anonymous.
I wanted to focus on is the lesbian baby making experience, not all the other parts of my life and self.

So I thought I'd make my own blog list concerning lesbian baby making. This is ofcourse because I am home sick from work and have time on my hand. I have time to nestle into my blankets, ponder that I seemed to have injured my hand squeezing too many oranges, put the laptop a safe distance from my baby bump (something about harmful radiation from laptops I read about in one of my fertiliy books) and blog away. Don't expect this diligence on an everyday basis.

If any of you readers have suggestions of topics, please feel free to add via comments!

*Chosing a Donor
*IUI
*Starting a (lesbian) family
*Discrimination
*Preganancy; tears, fears and joy
*Lesbo mamas reading tips
*What I dream of for our child
*What kind of world are we living in
*2 mamas; the "other mother"?
*What about men?

Unlike the blog lists I've seen, I probably won't blog one post a day, and I will most certainly mix it in with other blog post and random thoughts. I have a short attention span.
Speaking of, the snowfall outside my window is amazingly beautiful. Despite the odd exceptions (work drama, family conflicts, living in a tiny appartment) I am so happy and thankful.

Life without nausea and misscarriage terror is a brand new world. I'm finally starting to feel REALLY happy about the pregancy.
I was always happy you know, but perhaps on a more cognitive level. Like you KNOW you're happy, you are just too tired and nauseous to actually have energy to experience the emotion.

I've started to feel more like my old self again. The predominant feeling is no longer that I want to crawl away and die, but that I'd love to go to NYC to see NYC ballet again before baby arrives. I want to go skiing, I want to fix up our tiny home, I want to clear out all the clutter, I want to go to concerts, have fun, be active again.

I'm starting to realize that perhaps this just wasn't too easy and will of course end in a miscarriage. But that this strange journey will end up with us holding our very own little baby.

-15 degrees C

Is what my computor tells me the weather is like outside. I wouldn't know since I opted to stay in bed today. The new life starts here!
Gone is the " I always go to work unless I'm dead" attitude I had when I dated wifey and she wondered why I didn't stay home when I was sick. Now baby comes first. And baby needs me to get well, not to have a 4 month cold that worsen my astma and settles just in time for pollen season to start.

I'm staying under my 2 down covers and 2 wool blankets until I feel well again. Wifey is off to work. She's just been offered a job with the company she's been working with for the past few months. She's extatic. It seems like a really nice place and she gets to do what she loves.

Me, I'm sneezing along to the relaxation cd's I'm playing.
I love my hypnobirthing cd, and book.


I usually fall asleep as soon as I put it on. My mom says it doesn't matter, that the Russians did experiments that showed that the brain learns even while sleeping. So hopefully, sleeping to the cd every night counts as practicing daily.
If not, atleast I've conditioned myself to falling asleep as soon as I put it on. Which might come in handy between contractions.

I waver between feeling calm and even excited about birth, to think about all the horror stories and feel anxious and terrified. Certainly so many women can't be wrong about all the pain involved in childbirth?
Or is the body designed, like all other bodies in nature, to birth calmly, safely, efficently and painless, if you only let it?
Perhaps I will let go of all the fear and try to trust my body and see what happens.

Sometimes I'm still in disbelief about even being pregnant. Especially now that I don't feel nauseous all the time. (Coffee is even starting to smell good again!).Wifey reminds me I haven't had my period for 5 months and that we had 3 positive pregnancy tests.

I think of all the books I read before IUI, all the mental preparation that this was going to take a very, very long time, be very costly and we might still end up childless. After the first IUI I felt so broken hearted. I really FELT pregnant for the first few weeks. And I felt cheated by my body and my intuition. To my body's defence, the feeling, and all the symptomes dissappeared the week before my period.
So perhaps I did concieve, but the pregnancy was terminated.
One of my theories is that the timing was perhaps a bit TOO good the first time, and that a sperm that perhaps was not so viable, had a chance to penetrate the egg.
Who knows?
And who's to decide when and where life is to be? Is life less worth even if it's just a blastocyst not making it to pregnancy?
Is my baby less worthy of it's life should an ultrasound show that she might have a handicap?
I could never decide when my baby's life is out of chances, out of hope, out of faith.
So I opt not to know, but to trust. I love baby more than I thought ever possible. My quiet dream, nestled like a little bump on my lower abdomen.

One of the doctors at work said that ultrasound is a good way to bond with your child. I tried to respond something polite. But really, what a way to view women, women's bodies, pregnancy and babies!
I don't need to see baby on a blotted tv screen to feel attached. She's with me all the time.
I've loved her and longed for her all of my life. And as Nick Cave put it; I knew you'd find me, 'cause I longed you here.

When I worried about baby, when we first saw the midwife in week 10, the midwife said; she will never be as safe as she is when you are carrying her. Just wait until you have to leave her at daycare!

So I put my hands on my bump and feel safe, knowing that baby is safe.

The bun...

Either it's my new diet of hot cocoa and vörtbröd, or the baby is really growing now. I used to have a bump in the morning, when I woke up. Then the baby would sink into my body during the day. Now the bump is more permanent.
Even when I lay down on the sofa after work, the bump is still with me.

It is minus 10 degrees celsius in Sthlm now, moving towards minus 20 (that's 14 degrees farenheit moving towards minus 4, for you people across the Atlantic).
It's supercold, I would have worn my skipants to work if they hadn't been out in the country house.

I have a lurking cold, and since I'm a recovered work-o-holic I might actually call in sick to work tomorrow if it doesn't feel better by then. Stay at home when sick? Life is full of new experiences!

Wifey has forbidden me to drink orange juice. Apparently they all contain a substance that has been outlawed for 25 yrs due to being so harmful. Now I might HAVE to buy me a juice machine. Unless I want to develope carpal tunnel syndrome from squeezing half a ton of oranges by hand every morning.



I've wanted one since I read Martina Navratilovas book Shape Your Self, where she cured all sorts of ailments with fresh juice.
It will definately be good for the baby with fresh juice. Much better than huge amounts of hot cocoa.

Heaven...

... is feeling a bit hungry, and be able to load up a plate with brussel sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, mashed potatoes, gravy and turkey. Pop it in the microwave and eat it, looking out over the winter landscape.
I've always loved vegetables, but now we have a love affaire going that almost makes me teary eyed when I can load a plate with all the colors of the rainbow.
I have a craving for red peppers. But also a conflict. The organic peppers always taste of mold, and the non organic are one of the most heavily toxic vegetables. Actually Swedish health care don't recommend small children to eat peppers due to high amount of pesticides.
Why can't we just take care of our selves, each other and the planet and have normal food in the stores?

We have a ton of dishes and cleaning up to do. But, as I often remind wifey, relaxing is as important as getting things done.



I'm reading Ina May Gaskin's Guide to childbirth. It is both very comforting and distressing. Comforting in it's way to view childbirth. Distressing in knowing that this is not the way hospital births are encouraged. I get wild fantasies of barring the door to the delivery room with furniture to get to birth my baby uninterrupted, uninhibited and natural.
But, I am going to give them a fair chance. After the next visit to our midwife she's going to send a referral to the hospital so we can go visit and talk to the head midwife.

I would love the birth of our baby to be something to look forward to. Not something to dread and have nightmares about. How unlikely it seems that an entire baby can pass through your body. Still it apparently is a very successful mechanism considering how many people inhabit the planet.

Ina May on the success rate of their natural child birth apporach;
"And the more things you do that are right, the more synergic they become. Each may seem small to someone looking for a magic bullet. What? - Turn birth over to women? Feed them? Just let them sleep? Wait for them to go into labour? Don't scare them? Yet the combination of these simple protocols produces a gestalt that leads to relaxed, happy, enthusiastic mothers and healthy babies".

Glad advent!

Being a pregnant lady means nothing is allowed to stand between you and food. Thus I´m up before everyone else, enjoying a first breakfast. I suppose I will also enjoy a second breakfast after all of our guests that spent the night and wifey is up and about.
We had the most amazing dinner last night. I think wifey should open a turkey restaurant.
It is interesting how you pile up your plate and think; my God, how will I ever be able to eat all that? And then somehow you still go for seconds.
We were two preggos at the party last night, and after dinner we each took a couch and sprawled out. And since you´re pregnant, no one can say anything about it.

It was also nice to be able to walk around in regular clothes, and not hide behind huge cardigans. Ok , regular and regular, I got me some maternity tights and a skirt. But it was a liberating feeling to be among people who all knew why I look like I ate too much, even before dinner began.

I told my boss at work I´m pregnant. Recent events made me realize it doesn´t matter much either way. And I want to protect myself from getting tangled up in more misunderstandings and hostilities from management.
But I still don´t want to share it with all my co-workers.
One reason is I don´t need to hear all their horror stories of birth, another is I don´t feel up to educate heteroville on how come a lesbo can get pregnant.
Also, I don´t have personal relationships with most of the people at work. And being pregnant feels so private. It´s something for me and wifey to share with the ones close to us. I don´t want the rest of the world in on it. Not yet.

After the Christmas holidays it will probably be pretty obvious anyways. Until then baby is my little secret.

Oh well, now that I had my hot chocolate (I know the milk is good for the baby, but my sugar intake must have increased with 10 000 % since I started this dietary change) and my vörtbröd I might go back to bed for a nap. Pregnant ladies can do that you know. Go take a nap, in spite of having guests to entertain.

Today's dinner is...

... pizza sallad. Again. For those of you who never heard of this Swedish masterpiece; it's sort of like coleslaw, minus the mayo and carrots, and with a lot of vinegar.

Since I'm too tired/lazy/hungry to do the dishes before dinner, I'm eating it with a pair of chopsticks left over from some sushi take away.

As a pregnant lady food shopping has become a bit... impulsive, to say the least. I never know what I feel like eating until I see it and I either feel nauseous or ravenous.
Yesterday the grocery store's sallad shelf got me hooked. I bought about 7 different types of sallads, tomatoes, beans, sprouts and shreaded cabbage.

I added some hot chocolate and vörtbröd (Swedish christmas bread) to my pizza sallad dinner. A full meal? Who knows, but baby seems happy.
I felt her move today when I was working. Her heart dancing under mine. It feels funny. She must be doing jazz hands. I think we have a showgirl in the making. And as Bette Midler said; showgirl must go on! She's here to stay, my tiny dancer.

3 more days until Advent!

My advent star is shining in my window, I have hot chocolate and Ella Fitzgerald singing me christmas carols. Life is good in all the areas that matter. (At least I try to convince myself work doesn't matter, eventhough I have workoholic tendencies. But I'm in quick recovery, let me tell you).

Baby is growing, though I haven't felt her for a while. Last week and this past weekend she grew like crazy. Saturday morning I had a straining, strechy feeling in my uterus/abdomen all morning. I was thinking MY GOD, is THIS what it's going to feel like now that she's REALLY started growing? For 5 more months?

No one tell you these things. I don't know what I expected, and perhaps most women don't feel anything during their pregnancies. Perhaps I'm just the odd exception. But baby is here, and it's not going by unnoticed.

Sunday is first of Advent. Wifey has her yearly Thanksgivning-dinner on Saturday. We´re trying to make it more ours by inviting some of my friends too. Wifey's already off shopping turkey and cleaning our country house.

Then we´re off to December, with christmas concerts, Glögg-parties etc. Before we know it, we'll be heading back to the midwife for our second check-up. And then all the courses starts; profylax, baby care, rainbow parent group, visiting the hospital, nursing course etc.
It's a bit weird to wait until half the pregnancy is over, and then cram everything into the last 20 weeks.

Next week, week 18, would be the week for our routine ultrasound. Had we chosen to have one.
However, I read a bunch of research, pros and cons, made wifey read some too, and decided it is not for us.
I'm not a fanatic, I think ultrasound is great if you need it for medical reasons, I don't think it's going to kill my baby or impair it for life.
I just think the information you get from it is not anything we will find useful, and that it atleast will disturb baby and put her through stress, and some research suggest it's harmful.

I trust baby to be healthy, or my body to tell me otherwise. I nurture her with hot chocolate and christmas carols (still can't muster tea or coffee, though the smell doesn't make me want to barf any more). I love her with all my heart. Wifey sings to her, talks to her and hold her with her palm against my bump.
All will be fine. I feel stronger and calmer to have trusted my instinct to not have a routine ultrasound. To not let anxiety win.
Last time I trusted my instinct we ended up pregnant, without having my tubes flushed (another anxiety induced decision).

The nausea is almost all gone. The only foods I have difficulty eating is processed or artificial tasting food. Unfortunately this includes pre-natal vitamins. My body simply doesn't want them. I try to sneek them in from time to time, but don't stress out about it.

I think a turkey- dinner is just what the baby needs!

Focus shift

This weekend wifey told me I can't sit at home crying the rest of my life over the way I got treated at work. Like a bonafied behavioral therapist she instead took me shopping for the baby. We bought a tiny onesie for the baby and a pair of materity jeans for me. I even got my appetite back and bought me a piece of teryaki chicken.

I've decided not to care about work any more. I will show up and do a good job, as always, but I won't have any illusions that it will take me anywhere in this company.

I have an income, I have 2 blocks between home and work, I still like what I do and I'm still good at it. No office politics (or lack there of) can take that from me.

I also wanted to write about baby and how she dances under our hands at night when we lay in bed. Like tiny flutters of a butterfly, she moves agains our palms. She moves more when wifey holds her hand agains her. Like she wants to say hello to her other mommy. We dare to hope it's her, we dismiss it as digestion, we're convinced again that it's our tiny dancer moving inside me.
And then, ofcourse, this is the song she needs.

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"And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand..."

Hormones, work drama and tears

Lately I've mostly alternated between three basic states; crying, freaking out over my dying career and read horror stories about deliveries and the pain of giving birth; and thus freaking out over this too.

The old truth that as soon as one area of your life is going well, another one goes to hell has proven to be quite dependable. (Actually I think I read it in Bridget Jones' diary).

The short story of work drama is me being promised a job that was given to someone else a few weeks later. I'm not sure as to why, as my boss had no other explanation than what's done is done and she has no memory of ever promising me the job. Well, that does not make for much conversation.

I'm not exactly a pillar of stone now a days, even though the nausea and extreme fatigue has settled slightly, so I promply broke down in tears. I'm not usually the crying kind, but I (atleast like to think )am more of the stoic, nordic Greta Garbo/viking type. (Though I'm sure the vikings cried quite a lot when pregnant. And perhaps Greta cried too, for having to stay in the closet).

Work has gone from being one of my loves to a place of torment where I just sit and try to keep from bursting into tears until I can go home at 5. I feel silly for not being able to handle things in a more graceful way. But oh well, you can't beat the hormones. Crying is my number one leisure activity at the moment.

The book I've been reading lately to cheer myself up further is "Att möta förlossningsmärtan" (To handle the pain of delivery) by Gudrun Abascal; a famous Swedish midwife.
The book was like a really horrid traffic accident. Eventhough it makes you sick you can't stop staring.
The book is basically a description of how completely unbearable and horriffic the pain during delivery is. There is woman after woman describing how she wanted to kill herself, jump out of a window, how all her limbs felt like they were torn from her body etc all from the unmanageble pain.

Well. I feel confident and optimistic now.

To balance it out I also listened to my hypno birthing cd; a completely different approach. Unfortunately I got so relaxed I fell asleep and woke up with the hypno ladies voice in my ear (headphones) and got scared half to death. So much for relaxation.

I will leave you with one of my favorite crying soundtracks.

And btw; baby is growing like crazy, every morning she seems to have doubled in size, I'm still madly in love with my beautiful wife and I very seldom feel nauseaous, so it's not all that bad.

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Top 10 things I can no longer do;

1. Stay awake
2. Button my jeans, or any pants for that matter. I do the rubber-band trick
3. Eat less than 2 hrs apart, unless I want my old friend nausea to pop back up
4. Get any work done at work
5. Get anything at all done at home (when did I last do laundry? Before the wedding?)
6. Phantom how I will ever get an actual baby out of my body
7. Remember why I thought it was an excellent idea to put it in there to begin with
8. Physical activity without breaking a sweat/get a pulse/ feel faint after a nano second
9. Have weekend plans, I will only cancel and end up in bed napping anyways, might as well accept it
10. Write an actual text in my blogg. Fatigue makes me retreat to lists.

Things I still remember;
1. Love wifey
2. Love baby
3. Tomorrow is Friday = weekend = sleep!
Hurray!

TGIT!!!

Just one more day until the weekend!
Today I day-dreamed of being a housewife. With a maid. To take some of the workload off of wifey. All I want to do is nap all day long. I'm so tired I don't function properly.
By 3 o clock my day at work is over. I'm all spent. Then I have to simulate working for 2 more hours until I can go home, And it's not like I was up to speed to begin with.

The nausea has settled slightly. I'm still nauseous, but not 24/7. It gets worse when I don't constantly eat (clementines are my new addiction), when I'm tired or when I feel stressed.

One of the few collegues at work who knows I'm pregnant calls the baby Roy. She says it can be the new unisex name, kind of like Kim or Robin.

We talk in code, something like this;
Me; I had lunch with Roy today!
Collegue; That's nice, what did you have?
Me; Roy had a strong request for grated carrots and spinach. I had to go home and start peeling.
Collegue; Roy does have a particular taste. Is Roy still keen on nyponsoppa?

Me and wifey has a secret name for baby. It feels safest to keep it a secret, eventhough we're almost done w week 12 and the greatest risk of misscarriage should be over by now. It was my grandmothers nickname as a small child and it sounds great with wifeys last name.
I'm gonna change my last name to wifeys too. When I get around to it...
We should also try to get a bigger place. But somehow finding an appartment and moving does not seem doable right now.
Wifey works 17 hrs/day and I'm not much of a work asset as it were.

I don't think I look pregnant yet, but my shape has def. change, all my tops keep sliding up over my belly when I'm sitting down. But I actually lost weight. I'm not really worried as I constantly eat, and also have a lot of reserves for baby to live off of.
However, my tits made me cringe when I saw them in the bathroom mirror at work today. Whatever you do sisters, don't wear a pushup bra while pregnant! Unless you want someone off the street to offer you a job in adult entertainment. Atomic tities took on a whole new meaning.
Luckily the fall fashion in Sweden is filled with tunics, huge sweaters and cardigans as wide as circus tents.
There is still hope to keep Roy undercover until after salary negotiations. I think I can get away with faking obesity.

The ticker!

Make a pregnancy ticker

My head is spinning...

...from all the things I'm supposed to do and not do, eat and not eat, feel and not feel. And while you're trying to do all this doing and avoiding, remember to not stress out, since stress is harmful to you and your baby.

Btw, also do not google for pics of you fetus at a certain week. You will come across a bunch of pics of aborted fetuses and start crying. Again.
The picture is a model (not an actual fetus) of approx how big babys feet are right now. I wonder what size that is?

I had a moment the other night with wifey where I managed to forget everything about the pregnancy and felt like myself again for a couple of minutes. (Yes, she is a good kisser). But mostly, I'm so wrapped up in this I don't know where to begin. I'm too tired and nauseous to cook, but of course take away food and prepackade food is unhealthy/harmful for your baby. I can't eat bread anymore and just the thought of cheese makes my stomach turn. (It's Italy. Do those people ever eat anything that doesn't involve cheese, tomatoe or white bread?). So that rules out the sandwich strategy.

I'm so sensitive to smell, even wifeys empty coffee cup in the kitchen makes me want to vomit when I'm in the livingroom. (We def. need to get a bigger place).

Doing the dishes makes me sick. But having the dishes undone makes me even sicker. How does anyone survive being pregnant without having a live-in maid?

I worry about my astma being bad for the baby. I worry about the delivery since the more I read, the more I realize that absolutley everything I've wished for myself for my delivery is forbidden in this country (homebirths, waterbirths, birthing centers, having the same midwife during the pregnancy and delivery, or just having a constant midwife during the delivery, not having hospital staff and interns run in and out of your room, having some - ANY - kind of privacy and resemblance of a natural child birth, postponing cutting the umbilical cord until it stops pulsating, being left alone with your baby for an hour or two and not having it taken away to have baths and being weighed etc etc etc etc. Do I need to go on or do you get the picture? ).

Ok. It's time to not freak out. I'm sure we'll manage (survive) somehow. I'm sure my baby won't have cerebral palsy just because I used to work with handicaps in my youth and dreaded every minute of it. There is probably diffrent strategies at different hospitals and I might not need to run off and hide in the woods to birth my baby the way I want. That would be a bad idea btw since it will be birch pollen season and I will be allergic.

I'm just gonna take a deep breath. Trust that baby is feeling amazing (and that's why I feel so crappy). And do something about the things that's in my control. Like cleaning my messy house.

Also survived first day at work yesterday. It went ok besides not finding anything to eat for lunch and ending up eating a pre-packaged chicken sallad. Just to read this morning in my new pregnancy book that you should avoid prepackaged food. Especially chicken.
Oh well baby, I hope you have a strong genetic foundation and will survive all the things I put you through.

Piggelin

Nausea is keeping me from doing much now a days, such as blogging. I survive with the help of Piggelin popsicles - the only thing that seem to help, momentarily.

You give up a lot of things when you're a mother (to be). Such as birthdays.

My 33d birthday came and went. I spent it locked in our rental car in Rome, with the aircondition on full blast. Wifey wanted to see the Colosseum. Baby wanted to see the celing of the car and the inside of my eyelids. Baby won.
Besides being over heated, hungry, nauseous, exhausted, terrified that the cramps in my lower abdomen was an early sign of misscarriage, I still had the best birthday ever.
Married to the love of my life, pregnant and not having to show up for work. What more could one wish for?

Still, never go on vacation when you're newly pregnant. It's a total waste of money. All you manage to do is lay in bed and cry, wish you were home and could eat what you're craving, and obsess about misscarriages.
I was so miserable wifey started to remind me daily we were in Italy - not a third world country. Then she discovered a scorpion the size of a plum on our livingroom wall and agreed we should def. go home early.

We celebrated my birthday last night instead. I got a semi free pass from nausea most of the evening.
Wifey took me out for carrot cake and an authors night with Erica Jong. I dressed up, almost forgot I was nauseous and miserable and had a lovely, happy, evening.

Wifey also got me a Marimekko Pitekemäkko. A striped night gown I fell in love with on the ferry to Finland in my youth and dreamed I would sport as and old, rich, pregnant woman. ( In those days I imagine you needed to be rich to pay that much for a night gown. Now that I'm older and wiser, I know it's just about marrying the right woman).
And since wifey makes all my dreams come true, she took out her Ipod GPS and navigated to the Marimekko store.

So you see, I got all I wished for and more. I read (on the internet, where else?) that it can be difficult to be happy about your pregnancy when you're in the first trimester, tired, cranky and nauseous. Amen!

But sometimes, with a popsicle shoved in my mouth, and wifey rubbing my back, I'm the happiest I've ever been.

Raspberry baby in grapefruit womb...

Yes, that's right. According to the experts (google) my womb is now the size of a grapefruit. Do you people realize how big a grapefruit is? Try shoving it down your pants the next time you're in the grocery store. It's HUGE. (Yes, I actually tried it myself, not in the store but later at the house).

I had a miscarriage crises a week ago, but have calmed down now. Baby seems to be doing just fine. I feel constantly sick. "Morning" sickness is obviously just a phrase invented to lure women into pregnancy. It should really be referred to as 24/7 sickness, which would more properly describe it.
I can't even remember what it felt like not to be constantly nauseous.
How am I to function like a normal human being, feeling like this? Ok, I forgot. I'm not normal anymore. I'm somebody's mother.

Another noveau experience is violent nightmares. I scared wife half to death by screaming bloody murder and throwing myself on the floor w all the bedding approx. 15 min after I went to sleep the other night. Wifey got me back in to bed, still asleep I darted out of it again ( like a bat out of hell, Meatloaf might say). Wifey then tried to tuck me in tight to keep me off the floor, which made me half-way wake up and hiss at her " don't touch me! I feel nauseous!".
Wifey said she felt comforted by me acting like myself again and let me be.
Me? I don't remember a thing. For all I know I had a peaceful and restful night's sleep. Me and my raspberry.

I can hear the bells!

Tomorrow I'm a married woman and Klumpis will no longer be a bastard but a child born within a marriage.
Not a cilvil partnership, not a gay marriage but a proper marriage. Since Sweden came to her senses and made marriage gender neutral.

There is a lot of stress going into a wedding of course. But I'm mostly floating around in my own little bubble.
My body is whispering to me. I have baby growing inside me. How can I be bothered by life's petty details? All that matter is that Klumpis keeps growing, that wifey shows up tomorrow and that we survive until we're on our way to our honeymoon.

The weather is awful, we were hoping for an outdoor wedding. There is still hope I suppose. But I'm glad we got heaters for the tents.

Klumpis is now approx 3 weeks old. 5 weeks if you count the medical way. I think I'm gonna celebrate her 3 week conception-day w a nap.

Let the craziness begin!

I came home from my last day of work before my vacation starts. (Tomorrow we have a conference, so that really doesn't count as working).
I laid down on my sofa, opened the window to let some fresh air in. All of the sudden my appartment was buzzing with wasps.
I totally paniced, ran to the bathroom, locked myself in, put a towel against the opening on the bottom of the door and a piece of toilet paper in the keyhole. In case they were after me and wanted to get in!

Does that sound normal to you?

I then called wifey about a zillion times to ask when she was getting home to save me. She didn't answer.
However, a collegue from work rang and I told her the above. She recomended I get a weapon, e.g. hairspray and a towel, and faced my fear.
I asked her (she's a doctor) if you can act this crazy when you're pregnant. She said you can.

My anxiety sank a bit and I made it out of the bathroom. I successfully nuked 2 wasps before I ran out of hairspray. (I now have hairspray on most of my furniture and curtains). I still have a wasp semi-sprayed in my hall lamp, making the odd buzz sound.
I'm hunkering down in my sofa, one eye wildly fixed on the lamp.

Seems like I have developed a phobia for wasps. Or I'm just over worked, exhausted from the wedding planning, the IUI, pregnancy and now on top of it all; a stubborn cold. If that wasp would just be so kind as to die, I could get back to my napping.

Also just realized that being pregnant gives you a free pass for all kinds of crazy behavior. One should def. be pregnant more often.

Disbelief...

... is probably my strongest feeling right now. And shock. I can't really grasp that I'm pregnant. Am I really? And am I really going to be allowed to keep this baby?
The disbelief is protecting me from starting to obsess about a possible misscarriage.

But somehow the getting pregnant part always felt like the hardest piece of the puzzel. Quite miraculous actually. Conception is always a miracle, of course. But conception after importing frozen sperm from another country, time your ovulation, listen to your body, listen to the midwives and reading books all saying different things and deciding what to trust; then travle to a third country, defrost the little swimmers and actually have a conception take place? Does it sound do-able to you?

So now that I -unbelievably enough - somehow AM pregnant I just have a feeling our tiny fetus is an Amazone and will stay with us.

The night before Sunday I dreamed I got two positive pregnancy tests. Then I woke up. I'm afraid I still might do that. Wake up. And find it was all just a dream.

The plan now is just to get married, get on the plane to our honeymoon destination and relax in the sun and let it slowly, slowly sink in.

According to my google search Klumpis (as me and wifey call her) is now somewhere between the size of a sesame seed and a grain of rice. Her tiny heart beats approx. 200 beats per minute. She is all heart. Our little heart.

She is also very picky when it comes to her diet. I already discovered she likes proper food and has a strong distaste for candy, cakes or anything sugary. I had to try the wedding cake yesterday and felt like I was motionsick afterwards. Klumpis does NOT want sugar. She does want sushi.
Next she will want to go shopping in NYC, or she'll make me motionsick again.
I run it by wifey to see what she thinks...

Sunday the 29th of August 2010, 6.30 in the morning...

...and we're up again doing stick tricks.
I'm gonna let the picture speak for itself. Or help those of you foreign to sticks by 3 words; WE.ARE.PREGNANT!!!


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I awoke at 5.30...

...and discovered I'm bleeding. F--K!!! Or F-N!!! as we say in Swedish.
Not that I was hoping (but really, you know I was).
This bleeding could be my period. If you wanna go wild with it, you can imagine it's a so called nidation bleeding. Or that I'm one of the milli-percent of women who bleed through pregnancy. (They apparently exist. I've read about them on a not-so-high-quality site called Familjeliv).
I think it's just my period.
Perhaps the egg brushed by my uterus lining, causing the pos pregnancy test before deciding to make it's exit. Perhaps there was something wrong with the test.

Wifey has a friend who got her child via IVF, and she had a bleeding the day of her expected period. I thought my day of expected period was yesterday. But I don't know anything anymore.
Who's to know? Who's to tell? And even though I have tried so hard not to get sucked into this and start obsessing again; how can I help not to?

At least I have no cramps yet. But perhaps my body has shifted from having cramps during my period to having cramps all through the month except for my period?
I don't know how to read my body anymore.
"I try to read your portrait, but I'm helpless as a rich man's child". - Bob Dylan

Friday morning...

...and as planned we took the pregnancy test.
I visualized the large caffe latte I was going to get on my way to work as soon as the test showed a negative result.
When the time was up I let wifey look at the test first. She hovered over it for a long, long time and I thought she was trying to read in a second line that just wasn't there.
But it was.
It was faint, it was almost undetectable but it was there.

So no coffee for me.
But maybe a baby.

We are going to re-do the test in 2 days for a more certain result.
Atleast there are no signs of my period yet.
I don't want to get my hopes up. My heart is still sore from the last crash. But I have a tiny, tiny...wish, more than a hope now. A whisper of a prayer;
stay with me my baby, you are the fairest of my seasons.


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Two more days...

..until I most likely will find out I'm not pregnant by mother nature. I have, however, convinced wifey we should take a pegnancy-test Friday morning. Not wait until Sunday as we first planned.
I'm not a patient person by nature, but this waiting has been torture beyond imagination.
I think my living-in-denial strategy is working so-so. I DO have a bunch of weird symptomes.
The most persistent at the moment is a sort of pulling, strechy feeling in my uterus area. Like I've pulled a core muscle. I can guarantee you I haven't done any sit ups in ages so that's not it.

I'm still going strong staying off sugar. I decided last week (after I spent about all of it in tears, the crescendo being the wedding-dress hysteria) to stay off sugar to see it that would help me feel less like a human rollercoaster.

I'm not sure it made any difference, besides being able to walk through the candy section in the store without considering getting chocolate.

However, I also decided sushi, green tea and pineapple is a free for all. Especially with my delicate mental state. This means I've had sushi 3 times this week already. 5if you count the past weekend. Ok, that's like everyday. Don't tell wifey, she thinks too much sushi gives you mercury poisoning.

If I'm pregnant, our baby is going to come out looking like a maki.

By the way, also picked up the Dress today. Manage to get it through lokal traffic in rush hour without it getting crushed. Now it takes up half my appartment. I have a small appartment. But now also a huge Dress.
Reminds me of that time I got a Christmas tree so big my brother had to sleep under it when he came to stay with me.

Time goes by so slowly...

I'm all willpower by now. NO pregancy tests and NO sugar. On Friday I will probably get my period. If I don't we've decided to wait until Sunday to take a pregnancy test. Concidering we took three last time, we're gonna try to stick to ONE this time. I'm so certain I'm not pregnant I just want to get it over with.
I have, ofcourse, had my share of symptomes. But since it didn't mean anything last time, I'm trying to ignore them.
It's probably just PMS. For the past 2 weeks.
I'm keeping busy by doing huge amounts of laundry tonight. I think I've pretty soon washed everything I've ever owned. Including carpets.

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AGIRLIN SANE...

So far I've been a fairly levelheaded bride-to-be. I've kept my inner Bridezilla at bay, not even really believing in her existence.

I bought a nice, marine dress for a very good price. I was open to all options to make our wedding a low-budget affair. I settled for a nice, plain ring (despite madly falling inlove with a designer ring w a ruby heart). I kept my focus on the right and proper things; save money to be able to go to Denmark as many times as possible to make our baby dream come true.

I awoke screaming from a nightmare at 6 o clock Saturday morning and had a total breakdown.
Since WHEN have I EVER imagined getting married in a dark blue, plain dress???
Was I going to a funeral or a wedding?
I was inconsolable and called wifey crying hysterically. Unfortunately my breakdown coincided with wifey's hen-party. Happy hen-party Honey! Let me just keep you on the phone for 5 more minutes while I have another panic attack.
To my defence I must say that I had nothing what so ever to do w the planning of putting wifeys hen-party 2 weeks before our wedding. Ok, that's not much of a defence. I rest my case. (And yes, this woman still wants to marry me. She's a walking miracle).


After crying myself blind for another 2 hrs I realized that what I wanted, what I needed was a REAL wedding dress.
Not a nice dress that you can also use at parties. Not a sensible option that makes your bankaccount happy and your inner glamour girl crawl away and die.
I needed a Dress, and I needed it Now.

I went on a dress hunt with my poor mother who'd come to town to help me sort out other things before the wedding.
But this was Dress Emergency, pull out the sirens!

In the first store the (very typically Swedish) staff looked very depressed and troubled when I said my wedding was just 2 weeks away. They then asked me to take a look around on my own. All the dresses where covered in plastics so you couldn't really see them. The younger of the sales women timidly showed me a jacket. Ok.

The second store had women my age from (apparently) another cultural origin. They immediatly understood we had a dress emergency on our hands. I told them I woke up crying and they said; "you need a dress! Even those who think they don't want a wedding dress need one! We had a woman yesterday morning who was getting married that same afternoon, and we found her a dress!"
THANK YOU!!!

They pulled out dresses they thought I would look good in, but not too many options either, since bridezilla nerves are tender and needn't be confused by too many options.
After a couple of hours I settled on a dress I never could imagine I would have wanted if I saw it in a picture, but now can't imagine living without. I shed a tear.

I called wifey crying, again, and asked her if it was OK to spend more than our entire budget on a dress. She said as long as it made me stop crying all was fine.

This morning I woke up at 8.30. The first thing on my mind was my Dress. I was smiling.






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"TIME...

... he flexes like a whore, falls swanking to the floor" (David Bowie).

Time moves slow, fast, slow, fast, fast, like some ballroom dance I never learned the proper steps to.

Wedding planning takes up most of our spare time. I have semi-successfully managed to ignore that we even tried a second time. It's still over a week until we know anything for sure. I'm not gonna take any pregnancy tests pre-time.
I'm just gonna wait.
It's you and me Time.
Show me what you got.

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2nd try...

After debating back and forth with wifey the pros and cons of having another go at insemination (the pro of a possible baby outweighing all the cons like being utterly depressed at our wedding day if it doesn't work, cramping, stress and anxiety) the stick decided for us.
All of the sudden it was grinning at me at 6.30 at night. Despite even having midpain throughout the day; I was totally unprepared.

Enter panic. Again.

No matter how much charting, planning, looking at planes, trains and hotels a week beforehand, I always enter a state of shock when the stick smiles.
I called wifey at work, who was luckily just wrapping it up. She came home and we decided to take the car to Copenhagen (being the cheapest and most flexible alternative).

An hour later we were on the road.

We couldn't reach the clinic on the phone until next morning. But thought the closer we were to them, the better. I could never shake the feeling we were too late last time, in spite of all the extatic midwives. To follow their recommendations as to timing once again and end up with the Finnish test stick was not an option.

Apparently there are different ideas as to timing. Some clinics recommend you inseminate as soon as you have a pos. test. The theory is that the little sperms will be hanging out, waiting for the egg to be released. Some, like the one we use, recommend timing it as closely to the actual ovulation as possible.
The thing is that no one really knows for sure. Not much research has been done on women as a whole, of the research that has been done on IUI the women have been straight and having fertility problems.
When it comes to fertile lesbians wanting a baby, everyone seem to be pretty much in the dark. No one knows and no one cares.
Like my friend said with a mockingly surprised tone of voice;" it's almost like they don't WANT same sex couples to start families!"
Yeah, imagine that...

Anyho, oblivious to the human rights aspect of this whole ordeal, wifey and I was well on our way to another country to make our dream come true. I was in charge of the music. But due to putting my entire record collection on a hard drive and storing the actual cd's (who said that would make my life easier?) we ended up w an odd collection of Johnny Cash, early (and depressing) Dolly Parton and the odd christmas album. AND the soundtrack to Beaches. My show tune loving darling sang through the entire record at least twice. (I'm SO gonna marry that woman!)

We arrived in Malmö at 3 o clock at night and checked in at the Comfort Hotel. Don't let the name fool you. But they did have clean sheets and something that resembled a bathroom, and at 3 o clock at night after 7 hrs in a car you don't really care anymore.
We went to bed, and I continued to wake up every hour to check what time it was, afraid to oversleep.
At 7.30 we gave up and headed for the breakfast buffét. Not much comfort there either. We called the clinic and got an appointment at 10.00.
I was later obsessing about us not getting to talk to a proper midwife but a secretary when scheduling the appointment. But trusting and optimistic wifey said they most certainly would tell us if our timing was off.
I tried to trust wifey, even though I had a hard time trusting the clinic, the entire process and when to think of it life in general and mankind as a whole.

We drove into Copenhagen on a cloudy morning. Waited in the waiting room of the clinic and talked nervously about God knows what. Our midwife showed up and it was virgin-midwife from post no 1. She was nice but not as emotional and warm as our previous one.
Also I felt a bit depressed during the whole procedure. It didn't work last time, why would it work this time?

The midwife didn't talk through the process, like the first one had done. I was staring at the roses in the ceiling, wifey was talking to me but I couldn't hear what she was saying. It stressed me out. I saw her lips moving but couldn't make out the words. The process hurt, I was apparently not ovulating yet and the cervix was not yet open. I just wanted to get it over with. There was no sun shining through the windows, the skies over Copenhagen were dark. I couldn't feel any movement, energy or beginning of new life inside me. It just hurt and I wanted to cry.
Afterwards me and wifey got to lay and rest together for a while. I felt sad. We talked about the planning. I was upset they didn't help us more, listen to us and gave us information but still let us make our own decision.

We asked to talk to the midwife again.
She strongly recommended not to do a double insemination. We talked about doing it beforehand, but it requires a pos. test in the morning so you can inseminate the same day and then 24 hrs later.
By having the pos test in the evening, that option was out.
She said the sperms was remarkably good quality (THANK YOU donor Bob!), even uncountable. And that they usually live longer than 24 hrs. 24 hrs being a bare minimum they can guarantee.
I felt a bit better.
If we didn't end up pregnant this time, she recommended we tried the hormone shot to have better control over ovulation. We'll see about that. I'm not happy making this process more artificial and medical than need be.

When we left the clinic the sun came out. Wifey asked me how I felt. I said I felt nothing from the neck down. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
I'm not gonna give in to bodily sensations this time and get carried away! I'm pretty convinced we didn't conceive this time either. But if we don't try, we most certainly won't.
I still feel heartbroken from the last time and don't want to go through that disappointment again.


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I'm back in town, and so are the sticks.

I'm back in town after a weekend of wedding planning in various places in the country. And last night it was time to start the stick-tricks again. So far so good, nothing is malfunctioning. Now we're just gonna keep our sticks crossed we'll get a positive test this weekend.

As for wedding planning, I'm still in my baby-bubble, or rather my ovulation-bubble and have a difficult time focusing on other things. However, planning the wedding ceremony made the actual wedding seem real.

We have a minister doing the wedding. And there's a lot of beautiful passages in the bible. But the bible has also been translated, interpreted and revised by a bunch of old men about 2000 yrs ago. The "created to man and woman" has got to go. The minister said it's really a mistranslation; it refers to the diversion within mankind, not to gender or sex as such.
Oh well.
The passage adapted for women by the Swedish Church is that of Ruth and Naomi. It's a beautiful text, but the context is not that of two lovers but of a mother- and daughter-in-law. Also Naomi (the mother-in-law) makes Ruth go to bed with a man, which she does out of obedience. Was Naomi also a pimp? If wifey ever tells me to go to bed with a man, I'm getting a divorce!
The minister said the text needs to be interpreted out of context; as a vow. But I can't shake the context. We'll see if we can find a compromise. I, however, like the painting of Ruth and Naomi I attached above. In MY interpretation (the word of the weekend)Naomi is holding Ruth, and some servant is standing in the background. But actually, I think it's meant to be a man holding Ruth and her pimpy mother-in-law lurking in the background. But it's all open to interpretation people.

"But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried... nothing but death separates you and me."

I was trying to cheer myself up...

... by logging into the rainbow family network. I was browsing, looking to read some posts about successful inseminations.
Found one of a woman who had inseminated on the same day she got a pos. ovulation test.
Goodie!
She thought she'd done it too soon and wouldn't get pregnant. A later post showed that it had worked out and she was indeed pregnant.
So far, I considered myself cheered up.

I (perhaps wrongly so) suspect we inseminated too late our first try. That my body (or my panic) told me to jump on the first plane to Copehagen as soon as the stick grinned at me, and that we should have listened.
Also, wifey has a friend who lied to her clinic to get to inseminate the same day she got a pos. test. (She told the clinic the test was pos. the day before). And now she has a cute little boy as a result.

Well, bingo! Two people who's inseminated "early" and gotten results.

In good spirits I read on.
I shouldn't have.

The poor woman ended up with a misscarriage. Still in pain she turned to the hospital and it came to show she had misscarried one of her TWIN fetuses. The other little fetus was stuck in her fallopian tube, she could see it's tiny heart beating on the ultra sound.
She got sent home w the choice of either surgery; which might damage her for life and make her unable to carry any more babies, or to try by chemotherapy to kill it off and let nature do the rest as a second misscarriage.

But, we're not done yet.
While at home, her ovary/fallopian tube ruptured and she was taken for emergency surgery to the hospital and almost died of internal bleeding.
Also, she was single.

I sat in front of the computor unable to move.
Oh. My. God.
Called wifey, who was still at work and very busy. I started crying on the phone. Poor wifey, I'm not even pregnant yet and still act nuts every other day.

Poor unknown-internet-woman who had to go through all that horror, and all alone.

Poor me who seem to have gotten stuck in PMS mode and am unable to function on a rational level for more than 5 min at a time.

It's def. time to go out to our country house, lay on the bridge and watch the water lilies grow. This baby business has been more nerve wrecking than I ever could have imagine. How on earth have we ever survived as a species?

I'm a free woman...

...for another couple of days.
No stick tricks, no ovulation to keep track of, no phantom symptoms of imaginary babies, I'm free to roam the planet as I choose, coffee in one hand,champagne in the other. I can do as many sit-ups, twists and plough positions as I please.

BUT, I still have a wedding to plan.
I'll sleep when I'm dead. Or hopefully, on the honeymoon.
I'm so exhausted, if I hadn't had 3 pregnancy tests and a period to tell me otherwise, I would assume I was pregnant.

We're not having a traditional wedding, or perhaps we are. Who knows what's traditional now a days. My mom says we need a Toast Master. But the word makes me break out in mental hives. Perhaps we can have a hostess or two, or three, instead?

The only thing planned so far is the guest list,atleast kind of.
As for the rest I'm thinking pink flamingoes, karaoke, zorba and chocolate cake. And loads of champagne. We'll see what wifey thinks about my random planning when she's back in town.

Only one of the elderly guest has declined our invitation due to homophobia/dementia. (Dictionary ; dementia - taken from Latin, originally meaning "madness", from de- "without" + ment, the root of mens "mind", is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person.
Dictionary; homophobia - taken from Latin, orignially meaning "madness", is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person).

I tend to forget just a year and a half ago I wouldn't have been able to marry wifey in this country. I remember joking with a gay friend about not needing the gay marriage since we didn't have anyone to marry anyho.

And I think of how wifey and I live in our little bubble of friends, co-workers and love. And how sometimes lightning strikes and you realise that people find our love offensive and disturbing.
And in another place, not even in another time but in august 2010, we would be persecuted, tortured, gang raped and executed.
Because of our love.
Because it offends people that when I look into her eyes I find myself and everything else loses it's meaning.
Because it's disturbing to other people that she is the home of my heart.


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New Game Plan

Our first attempt at IUI did not work. Did for a while feel a bit cheated by all the extatic midwives. I cried, I had a huge caffé latte and ate coffee ice cream. I acted crazy and freaked out over the possibility that my body is infertile no matter what all the testresults said.
But am now back to my senses.
It's my body and I need to be more assertive if we're gonna end up pregnant. Crying and eating ice cream won't help.

New game plan is lots of sleep, exercise, healthy eating and no stress.


Work is usually very hectic and have been stressful all spring. The IUI plans and wedding preparations on top of that has left my head spinning.
I have slept badly for a very long time, and especially before the IUI. For those of you who know me by my US-nick name Sleeping Beauty know that sleeping heavy and long is one of my greatest talents.
I need to get back to the basics. Try to get my body in balance. Try to get myself calm, centered and feeling in control.
I trusted the midwives, and it didn't work. This time I'm going to trust myself and my body and see if we can't get it to work.
I know our baby is waiting for us. Now mama's gonna fight for her.

(And God help us if we succeed and our donor looks like Sly...).
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Baby love, oh my baby love... break my heart and leave me sad...

Am definitely NOT pregnant.