Happy Pride!

I'm stuck at work being on call. 8-5 every single day the entire Pride week. Every one else is off (are they all closeted and at Pride without me?).

Will however go to the park w wifey and some friends tomorrow night.

Am trying very hard to distract myself and keep from taking 2 pregnancy-test/day.

This might be the first year in quite a while where I skip doing the parade to stay at home and pee on sticks instead.

Oh, what glamourous life I do lead.

My friend, who's trying for her 2nd child, says that being sick of work and having an insatiable need for napping and eating DEF. means one is pregnant.

But I have a feeling I was pretty much like that before we went to Denmark too. The moodswings and bad morning temper, storming off without saying a proper goodbye to wifey due to snoozing w the alarm clock for 45 mins, also rings a bell.

I'm probably not pregnant. I just wish I could find out NOW, why does one have to wait... It's torture.

This is a list of things I'm going to enjoy if I'm not pregnant;

The biggest café latte known to mankind

A cold Budweiser

At least 3 glasses of champagne

It's good to have something to look forward too. Just in case.

Captiness logg, star date CD21....

No luck w home pregnancy test this morning. Could of course mean nothing, as it is way too early to test and get a resonable reliable test result.
Still feel utterly depressed. Summer seems to have come to an end. The fields are turning brown. Wifey says there's plenty of summer left. That the fields are brown because we've been without rain, and that I'm depressed and cranky because I have mood swings and am pregnant.

I remember the last time I took a pregnancy test (must be 10 yrs ago). I was so relieved it was negative I cried. How ironic life is.

This time I went back to bed and slept for 4 hrs. Didn't make me feel better. Nothing makes me feel better. I'm so cranky I just want to quit my job and sit on a deserted island and throw rocks at anything that moves.

Also woke up last night in the middle of the night w throbbing pain in my right breast. Never felt anything like it before. Since I decided I'm def. NOT pregnant, it must be cancer.

I'm taking my bad tempered self off to bed. I'm on call on work tomorrow. God help the patients.

Breakfast for Champions, i.e. pregnant lesbians...

It's been exactly a week since the insemination, pretty much down to the minute.

I feel really weird. Like a panic attack, heart attack, stomach flu waiting to happen.

I check my pulse now and then. It ranges from 66-80. Wifey says all is fine, but maybe we should go to the hospital. I have no idea what a "normal" pulse should be but am not really interested in hospitals.

I'll just google it instead.

Panic attacks could mean you're pregnant, according to my 2 friends who are in the stage of trying for a second baby. So I'll just consider it another sign.

I opt for a steady breakfast. I tried to get in all the colors of the rainbow. Some purple blueberries would have been a nice addition.

We might try an early-early pregnancy test tomorrow morning. You could get a false negative but not a false positive. So the worst scenario is that you still won't know.

This cycle is probably a 26 day cycle, as I ovulated on CD13. Last time I did that I got my period on CD27/1, which means 13 days after ovulation. So possibly I only have 6 days left of this cycle. Or 9 months. Depending on the outcome...

Wifey wants to wait, she thinks I'm emotionally unstable as it is, without unclear test results. I think I'm just fine. As long as I get my hard boiled egg every morning.

Also discovered orange juice and spinach contains A LOT of folic acid. Apparently you can't OD on folic acid but it protects your baby from all sorts of horrors. Guess what's on the menue this weekend?

Where's the eggs!?

Yesterday a friend told me her early signs of pregnancy was having nightmares and being hungry. Well, of course I had nightmares all night and woke up ravenous. I usually enjoy hard boiled eggs, but now I NEED them. And of course had none in the fridge.

I thought for a moment I should just get dressed, skip my lazy morning, and head for work. I should have atleast 2 eggs in the fridge at the office. Yes, I like food, but there's no food in the world that can make me get out of my pyjamas quicker than need be. I must be pregnant.

The hot sticky weather makes me feel cranky. It's like a constant cold sweat. I'm happy that I still feel my uterus, eventhough it hurts at times. It makes me hopeful something is in there, that something is happening.

I got some pad thai...

...after work and headed for wifeys office to have dinner, as she worked night. The bus took me through the same streets we were driving in December last year; heading home from our first meeting at the gynecologist. I remember how we stopped at the very stop light outside the bus window. Dark, beautiful, depressing December Sthlm, far from sunlight and warmth. We talked about what we had just gone through. How the gynecologist, once establishing that I was the one we wanted to carry the baby, only turned to me asking questions. Like wifey was not part of the process. All the strange exams; seeing your ovaries on an ultrasound, leaving bloodtests on different days of your cycel to test your hormones, testing for STDs and HIV/AIDS. All the things I never thought of or never imagine would be part of baby-making as I was growing up. For most people it's not part of having a baby. For straight people with infertility problems and for lesbians it is.

All the tests came back negative. I wanted to say of course, but I remember being afraid they would show I was completely unfit for motherhood.

I also remember the gynecologist saying I was anatomically correct; and I felt like a sensible shoe.

Now summer passed by outside the bus window. I sipped my pepsi max (very unhealthy I know. But my imaginary baby wanted it, and what baby wants, baby gets!). I thought of Copenhagen last weekend. How different we were recieved in that clinic. How they made us feel like this was OUR baby, OUR family, no matter who was carrying the baby. Our child will not have a mother who has a partner. Our baby will have 2 mothers. It seems to be a very complex and difficult concept for the Swedish healthcare system.

As for pregnancy (phantom)symptomes ; wifey has at least half of what I'm experiencing.

During the weekend, euphoria, over-confidence and cramps convinced me baby was a reality, blastocysting her way through my ovaries. In the days that followed, workstress and early mornings have taken the focus off my body and left me feeling like it was all just a lovely dream.

The impossible early symptomes I've experienced so far is;

* Slight nausea; but I had the stomach flu last week and have been feeling slightly nauseous ever since.

* Tender breast/nipples, but that can happen around ovulation.

* Cramps; apparently a side effect of IUI. (For you who have not been down this road; they tell you this only AFTER you have done the insemination. By then you're so high on adrenaline and endorphins you couldn't care less if they said they were going to amputate your right arm.)

* Super sensitivity to smell, but I'm like that most of the time when I don't get enough sleep.

* Extremely tired; but then I hadn't slept well for a week, freaking out over possible ovulation and IUI. Also spent 15 hrs in a car Saturday.

* Moodswings, according to wifey. Me, I feel just fine. I'm just very happy and hopeful one minute and miserable and in the depths of despaire the next. But lesbian conception can do that to you.

I still get the odd cramps and pains from my uterus, but perhaps that's just from the IUI. All the information we find on pregnancy online is for heterosexual couples who have had intercourse. There's nothing on the symptomes of IUI or possible early pregnancy signs. Sometimes it's a bit lonely in this heterosexist world we live in.

Now my imaginary baby wants to dance. To David Bowie. And as you well know; NOBODY puts baby in the corner!

I'm pregnant! (or maybe not...).

It has been a couple of hectic days. I've been riding the emotional roller coaster like a genuine preggo! Lesbian conception is just one long bootcamp preparing you for (possible) pregnancy.

It all started after my last blog entry.
I could, of course, not sleep from all the tension and the nagging feeling I just might, possibly, probably, almost certainly when to think of it, get a positive test result by now.

Around midnight I gave up trying to be resonable and headed for the bathroom. The teststick didn't work! Again!!! I tried 2 sticks, in 2 different decoders. NOT WORKING. I was starting to panic by now, as I desperately needed to go, and didn't want to have to wait 4 hrs until I could try again.

Finally I found that by keeping the stick shoved in to the decoder, it would work. As soon as I let it go it malfunctioned.
Somehow I managed to get through the stick trick while keeping the stick and decoder in a firm death grip. Croco Steve would have been proud.

The test was negative.

After a few hrs of sleep I was up again by 6.15, doing the death grip (the entire pack malfunctioned); and was met by a smiley!!!

Enter panic.

I tried to remember what the midwife had said; if it's positive in the morning you should inseminate the same afternoon or the morning after. Should I skip work? Should I get a ticket to Copenhagen? Could wifey meet me there? Why didn't the clinic open until 8 o clock? What was I going to wear?

I called wifey who promised to call the clinic as soon as they opened. For obvious reason I didn't want to make that call from the office. (Up coming negotiations of salary being one of them, keeping my private life half-private, despite of being a lesbian, being another).

I texted my friend to meet me before work for an ovulation-angst-emergency talk.
We sat on a park bench, next to the hobo's, and she said a lot of wise things like; there's always going to be an uncertainty as to timing, you can't control these things, you can just try and try again. My insticts told me to throw myself on a plane to Copenhagen. But there was no way wifey could meet me there. As we decided this was something we def. wanted to do together, there was no way it was going to happen this month.
I instead went to work and apparently worked, though I don't remember much of it.

Wifey called me, super-happy, just as I had given up the thought of ever becoming a mother and embraced retiring into childlessness and shriveled ovaries.

The midwife had been exstatic on the phone and said the best time to try was Saturday morning.
We were on again!
Through out the day the mornings panic slowly subsided and I started to breathe more normally and slowly took in that the smiley was actually a good thing, and we were actully timing it right, not missing ovulation as I was afraid of earlier.

At the end of the day, I took the train to see wifey at her work. After a few hrs of sleep in a hotelbed we were off to Copenhagen!

We started out at 4 o clock in the morning and made it to Copenhagen with 30 mins to spare to our morning appointment at the clinic.

I had dressed up in a new dress, new cardigan and even sported a new bra and new earrings. I wanted to look nice the first time we might actually encounter our baby. Also I needed some shopping to calm my nerves Friday lunch hour.

A new midwife met us at the door, our had just gone on vacation. She had a very warm and enthusiastic energy about her.
We got to see the sperm which was quite amazing. Like little, tiny bulbs of light, moving quickly under the microscope.
Apparently the quality was excellent, much higher motility than we had actually paid for.

I was so nervous I hardly remember what we talked about before the insemination. Wifey asked a few question. The midwife asked me for my date of birth and I was so nervous I, for a moment, forgot. I pulled myself together and actually got it right. Wifey later told me the midwife told her on the phone I would need to give out my date of birth. I wish she would have passed on the info so I could have prepared by writing myself a note.
I needed it.

The midwife said it was a big decision to get pregnant, and only natural to be nervous. But I was nervous about NOT getting pregnant. So when she suggested we'd make a go of it, I was not the one to hesitate.

Next thing I know we were getting the IUI. Wifey was beside me, holding my hand and we were looking into each others eyes the entire time. The midwife was extatic over the amount of fertile mucus I apparently had all over the place.
2 extatic midwifes within 24 hrs, that must be a good sign?

I don't remember much, I was too busy being nervous and trying to relax my pelvis. But wifey later told me the midwife had said we had PERFECT timing, that I was def. ovulating and super-fertile. (There was a lot of superlatives going around the clinic that morning).

What surprised me the most was that I actually FELT the sperms. I was prepared to feel the syringe (and btw it didn't hurt, it was just slightly uncomfortable). But I actually felt the sperms moving inside me!
It was an awsome and totally unexpected feeling. It felt like soft summer rain, like the mild sun rays of august, like movement, energy, activity. Mostly on my left side.
Wifey said that at a point my pupils got enormous. She is certain that was the moment our baby was conceived. I'm not so sure sperm can move that fast, and that conception can happen that instantly. But I would love it if it was true.

After the insemination we got about 15 mins to ourselves. Wifey climbed up on the table beside me. We giggle, laughed, told bad jokes and I tried to describe my physical sensations to wifey. We took pictures of me on the table, grinning, pointing towards my stomach and doing the victory sign. We were IUI tourists.

Driving out of Copenhagen I said it out loud the first time. I had the feeling already while we were resting in the clinic. I also had the feeling the baby was a boy.

We were sitting in the car on HC Andersen Blvd. And I felt the strong surge of energy in my left fallopian tube. Like a tiny sun, orbiting inside me. Starting a new universe. Enclosing my heart. And I defied destiny and all common sense and said it out loud; I am pregnant.

It's the final countdown...

No smiley face on the teststick!!!
Smiley face means you will need to inseminate within 24 hrs. Had it been tonight I would either have had to skip work tomorrow, or wait until another month.
If the smiley appears tomorrow morning, we can still make it to Copenhagen Saturday morning. Preferably the stick and destiny will smile at us tomorrow night or Saturday morning.
I'm keeping my everything crossed, including my eyes. Ok, that hurt. And made typing difficult.

A feeling of urgency...

stress, longing, anticipation and denial. All rolled into one. Am I REALLY going to try to get pregnant this weekend?
THIS weekend?
And sign on for a life-long comittment?
I might be pregnant next week!

No more champagne, no evening of dinner and drinks as planned with my friend. A possible tornado of nausea, morning-sickness, fatigue and weird physical reactions known only to those who's been down the pregnancy path before me. Will I be showing by the time it's time to negotiate a new salary at work and will I, like millions of other women, be discarded as second-class workforce in that case?

Wifey is working out of town this week. Most of my friends are on vacation or busy.
I took myself to the park with a picnic-dinner for one and a lesbo magazine.
Time alone. Another thing to put on the list of bye-bye's.

Browsing the magazine's articles of how to survive pride, get laid, be a non-bio lesbo mom, deal with period's as a butch etc was a welcome antidote to everyday life in heteroville.

I remember the magazines I used to read as a teenager and in my early 20s. Magazines on how to brush up, push up, do make up and what-ever-else-up to catch a man and keep him. Thank God I found myself inspite of all the brainwash. Thank Godess for wifey and our life together.

And I feel so blessed. And so ready. And suddenly that night out with drinks is not on the top of the list. While trying to get our little egg inside my body meet with a little sperm from a donor of our choice seem like the miracle of all miracles. The miracle I've been preparing for and longing for all of my life.

And anyways, one could always get a babysitter for the little miracle and head out for a night of drinks with friends. Though something tells me that might not be a priority any longer.

God, I miss wifey. I'm gonna call her later, put the phone on my stomach and ask her to bless my eggs. Or perhaps the other way around. Or she might think I hung up on her.

Oh Carol, I'm but a fool...

...in the Swedish progg version started my morning off, as I was attempting the stick-trick.
I failed miserably. The little decoder wouldn't blink. Then it would and this wierd little booklet appeared in the window.
Ok, scrambling through the manual; found the little booklet; Error 17 (there are seventeen errors that can occur while peeing on a stick!?).

Error 17 comes in type A or type B. I made the type B error. I think. If the symbol blinked you made the type A error. I actually think it blinked for a few seconds, or maybe I was blinking. It's hard to keep track of these things this early in the morning.

Error 17 type B;
*too much or too little urin
*the test stick wasn't handeled properly
*the stick wasn't kept downward or layed out flat
*the stick was exposed to urin before being inserted properly in the decoder.
Well. That narrows it down.

Btw, the basal body temperature didn't work out that great either. Either I'm suffering from a premature heatstroke or I'm running a fewer, or there's something wrong w the Baby-or-not themometer.

Gotta get to work now. 8 hrs of sauna. Why am I not on vacation in July like all sensible Swedes?

Bienvienue! It's too hot to live, so I'm starting a blog instead...

It is a very hot July afternoon here in Stockholm, Sweden. The hottest in 16 years, the news say. I sat all day at work and dreamed of swimming laps in the pool. Instead I ended up eating ice cream and starting a blog.
Let me explain people. I'm under a lot of pressure here. Not that chocolate ice cream has ever done anything to relieve pressure, I actually think that medically it might add pressure by clogging up arteries.
The pressure I'm talking about is after about a zillion months of dreaming, planning, taking all the neccessary steps, we're just days away from possibly trying our first go at IUI!!!

The We here is my beautiful, love of my life, wife-to-be (let's just call her wifey for short) and I.

Wifey is absolutely certain it will be a hole-in-one, super-sucess, one-try-knocks-up-all! Me, I'm not too certain. Actually I have a sneaking suspicion it might not work at all. Despite of all the test results saying I'm as good as new.
"Practically a teenager", the midwife said. Then she went on to calling us virgins. I was shocked and thought for a split second it was some heterosexist remark about us supposedly not having had sex with men. But it was a reference to us never having tried to get pregnant before. I'm not sure if it was the Danish translation, but I thought it sounded really weird.

Being called a virgin at anything at the age of 30+ surely is a compliment? Or does it just mean you're so far behind everyone else you can't even see the back of the wagon you fell off of anymore?
I couldn't help but think of Madonna straddling a gondola in wild hair and lace corset. It made me instantly feel better! As Madonna always does. Thank you Madonna, patron-saint of wayward women!

The lesbian life of trying of get pregnant consist of a lot of new practices. For instance you learn a lot of new tricks. One of them is peeing on a stick. I had some early practice in my teen years when I dated boys and all you did was trying NOT to get pregnant and ruining your life.
Now the tables have turned, ladies, but the angst is no less, let me assure you!

Being a natural planner/organizer (obsessive/hoarder) I orderd 4 pacs of ovulation tests online. I now have over 30 sticks to pee on. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

Something else you're suppose to do is get up in the middle of the night (6 am) to take your temperature every morning. I ordered a themometer at a website called baby-or-not to get one with 2 decimals; apparently very important in this line of work. But really, baby or not, what kind of depressing name is that? Isn't maybe baby , or hopefully baby, or braver; baby on the way!, better names? Need I add the site was Danish?

The Danes are a big part of lesbian babymaking here in Sweden. We don't go for the pasteries and the Tuborg, but out of neccesity. Swedish law forbids you to do anything fun and exhilarating, like having a baby with your girl with a donor of your choice.
Yes, it certainly is possible to have a baby via insemination as a lesbian couple in Sweden. It is however not possible to chose the genetics. The donor is chosen for you by some faceless, bleak government employee.
Having my professional career closely related to the field of genetics and seeing it's impact everyday at work, having a donor with unknown background was just not an option.
If you would still choose the Swedish route, you will also have to wait in line for 1:3 year. Just to add to all the fun.

I shouldn't be too hard on the Swedish system. We might have to turn to it if we go broke trying in Denmark.
The perk of the Swedish system is that it cost no more that a trip to your local gynecologist to get knocked up. And it is probably just as romantic and relaxing.

I try not to stress out completely - easier said than done. I have sudden cravings for chips and beer and all sorts of things I usually only eat/drink at really boring parties to keep myself awake. I'm most definately in LPPS; lesbian pre-pregnancy stress mode .

I try to listen to wifey and stay positive. Weirder people than me with worse medical history has gotten pregnant. This thing just might work, with or without chocolate ice cream.