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.