Longing for the beach

I am ready to go on vacation! Wait, what? I have to work tomorrow? Well, only another month before work sort of slows down. Maybe we will fit a trip to the beach in before we would have to stop every 45 minutes for a potty break. I can only hope.

I'm guessing A will post more photos another time. I just wanted to share this one tonight!


13 weeks and 3 days

Doctor Approved!

We headed to our family doctor this morning to talk with her about inducing lactation for me.  It was pretty much the average experience, you go, you check in, you convince the receptionist to change your last name in their system from your maiden name to your married name (which has been legally changed since April 2010 and they have yet to change it in their computer...), you wait, you get measured and weighed and have your pulse and blood pressure checked, you get put into a room for more waiting... you know the drill.  T came with me, as this appointment was one of interest.

The doctor walks in and sits down with her laptop and her iPhone.  "So.  What's going on?"
"Well, my partner T over there is 12 weeks pregnant, and we're wanting to discuss with you our interest in inducing lactation in me so we can both breastfeed." I replied.   In hindsight, I don't think she was prepared to think this much in her first appointment of the day.
She got a slightly glazed look over her face.  "Uhhhm, ooookay."  She turned to her laptop and began typing furiously.
We waited a few minutes as she tapped on the keyboard and hemmed and hawed.

After another minute, she says, "Well, I just Googled it."
I handed her a sheaf of papers and said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were going to do that.  Here is the protocol I'm interested in."
She took the papers from me.  "Oh, great!" and proceeded to look them over interestedly.
She glanced through all the pages, punctuating the silence with the occasional "huh." or "ahh."
"Well," she said, "I'm more than happy to help you do this if you want."

She proceeded to talk with us about the risks of the high-dose birth control and of the domperidone.
"Also, you aren't going to be able to get the dom here in the States, I don't think.  Let me check."  She pulled out her iPhone and scrolled through a few pages.  "Yeah, dom isn't even listed as available."  (Yep, there's an app for that.)  "You can get it from Canada, though." she glanced at her computer screen.  "Have you researched the costs?"
"Uh, not really."
Come to find out, it's actually not that bad.  Looking at about $75 for 500 tablets, which at the peak of my domperidone use will get me through about two months.  That's totally doable!

I really enjoyed being able to sit in there and feel at ease with her, because typically it can be a little tense dealing with medical professionals with issues that are specifically related to being gay.  But our doc is very "queer friendly" and we are pretty confident that she's gay.  And she has kids, so it's all the better.  It's just a bonus that she is funny and easy to be around.  I appreciate a doctor who is willing to follow me off on a tangent that I researched and am interested in pursuing.  She even scanned in the induction protocols that I brought, saying it is good to have them "just in case".

At one point, we'd been discussing the birth control, and she lowered her glasses and looked at me intently.
"Now, I need to let you know that you aren't going to be protected from pregnancy until you've been taking the birth control for one month."
I couldn't help but burst out laughing.  We all had a good chuckle over it.

The receptionist brought in a prescription for the birth control, but the doctor noticed she'd hyphenated my maiden name with McGill instead of just changing it outright.  The doc gave it back to her to fix.  She brought it back in, last name fixed, but first name spelled wrong and it had our old address.  She took it again to fix it. Woo boy, that took a lot of fixing.  Dr. L ended up writing the scripts by hand, after spending a few minutes digging through drawers to find script pads - which she said she hadn't used in approximately forever.

Anyway.  The moral of the story here, boys and girls, is that things are official.  I've ordered domperidone and  will fill the birth control and once I possess both medications, I'll begin taking them.  The plan is to take the birth control and the dom from now until six weeks before T's due date, at which point I'll stop the birth control and begin pumping.  Doesn't the whole thing sound positively enjoyable?   Speaking of pumping, it's recommended that we look for a hospital-grade breast pump.  Anyone out there have a recommendation of a strong, portable double breast pump?  Let me know!

But you know what?  If I'm able to make any milk at all, I'm going to be so ecstatic.  I'm perhaps naively hopeful at this point.

P.S. T was 3 months pregnant, as of yesterday!  We need to take 3 month pictures, but aren't going to be able to for a couple days.  Keep your eyes open!  And thanks again, to everyone.  Your support speaks volumes to us and it will never go unappreciated.

Sometimes, I forget.

Our birth center offers Centering Classes, which I've written about before and we're excited to participate in.  However, the Centering Classes offer a limited amount of birthing advice so we are seeking additional birth classes.  The Bradley method is a popular natural birth class, one we've heard good things about.  We set to find Bradley instructors here in town, and found several.  It should be mentioned that the Bradley method is referred to as "the Husband-coached birth", which doesn't bother us, but T was concerned about me consistently being referred to as a 'husband' or a 'dad'.  We discussed what to do and settled on emailing all the instructors to politely ask if it would be possible for them to use the terms 'coach' or 'partner' or anything more gender neutral. I guess I didn't really think it would be too much to ask.  Below is the text from the emails I sent to the first four or five instructors:

Hi (instructor name),

I have looked over your website and we are interested in taking your classes.  I am emailing you tonight to ask you what may perhaps be an unusual request.  

My female partner is twelve weeks pregnant.  We have heard very good things about Bradley, hence our interest.  As well, we were referred to your classes by a friend.  My question is, are you willing to substitute the term "partner" for husband/boyfriend during the classes we take?  I understand that this may take a significant effort on your part as I'm sure you are accustomed to using the same terminology in all your classes.  I want to make it clear we aren't trying to make trouble, or make statements of any kind. 

If you are unable or unwilling to change the terminology, we would appreciate knowing that ahead of time so we can find a different class.  We understand and respect that you can offer classes however you please, but if I am consistently going to be referred to as a husband or boyfriend, this simply isn't the right fit for us in our search for a birth class.  

I appreciate your time. 

Yours,

A. McGill  

Today, the email icon on my phone pinged.  I had a new message.  It was a response to my email.  The full email is below. 

A,
Bradley Method® classes are definitely the best childbirth education classes I have seen (which is why I teach them). The information taught in the classes is thorough and effective. Dr Bradley originally titled his classes Husband-Coached Childbirth. I do not use the term boyfriend in my teaching even when there are boyfriend coaches in the class. I use the terms coach, husband, and dad. With the majority of coaches being husbands and dads, it seems unreasonable to never use those words in instructing them.
While I would not intentionally offend anyone participating in my classes, the focus of Bradley Method® classes is preparing our students for pregnancy, labor, birth, and parenting. If I agreed to try to always use the term partner, the focus it would require might jeopardize the content of my classes - something I am not willing to compromise.
If this would offend you, the group setting of my classes might not be the best fit. In order to accommodate your terminology request, we could do a private class with just you and your partner. That cost would be $1500. If you would like to do that, I would be willing to accommodate your request, provided our schedules allow a mutually available class time.
The ideal time for you to begin the 12-week series would be in May or June. Best wishes in your search and for the pregnancy and birth of this beautiful baby.
One last thought to share with you: My standard for parenting is refusing to compromise your child's best interest. What is in your child's best interest is also in your best interest. What appears to be in your best interest may not be in your child's best interest, and, therefore, is not in your best interest either. There are many parents who do not live by that standard, but I think the healthiest children (adults) are reared with that standard.
(instructor name)

First, I was surprised, and then immediately felt hurt.  Obviously in our initial email I'd acknowledged the possibility that someone would be unwilling to use different terminology... but this response just caught me off guard.  Logically, I know there isn't anything outwardly or blatantly rude in her response.  From outside my body, I can see how easy it should be to simply accept that this is not the instructor for us and move on.  Easy peasy.  

Inside my body though, I'm a twisted mass of anger and pain and sadness.  

T and I are incredibly fortunate.  We're surrounded by this wonderful and lovely insular group of family and friends and I don't feel as if we're an unusual couple or that the family we'll have is going to be anything but normal.  But sometimes, I forget that the world isn't always like that.  People exist who think we're freaks, who hate us just for loving each other, who are disgusted at the idea of us being parents.  

Truly, it isn't this woman or her response or her obvious disagreement with how we choose to live and have a family that bothers me.  It's sheer sadness that wounds me tonight; the sharp realization that she truly doesn't want us in her classes, she disagrees with acknowledging non-traditional families, and she doesn't think we should be having this baby.  This is really how she feels.  And she isn't the only one.  

It likely seems that I'm blowing the whole thing out of proportion.  I probably am.  But my feelings are honest and raw and sometimes pain has to be felt.  

We've been so protected and surrounded by supportive people, that I forget what it feels like to have people look at us from afar and judge our life together to be inferior and even perverted.  There are bound to be instances coming our way that are going to hurt me, hurt us, and likely hurt our children.  I hate that.  

But other peoples' lack of understanding and acceptance of my family is never going to be enough to stop me.  Could be that someday, some of them might even change their minds.  

Oh, and in case you're wondering, we have received several responses from instructors who are enthusiastic about having us in their classes and are more than happy to use gender neutral terminology.  For these instructors, we are eternally grateful.  As well, we are forever thankful for all of you, our friends and family.  Thank you for helping us feel safe and loved, always.  

Two moms = two sets of breasts

I made a decision this week that is a fairly big decision, and may change much about our life with a new infant.

I've read about other lesbian families in which the non-gestational mom induced lactation in herself so both parents could breastfeed the baby.  I admit, I was always intrigued by this but our focus has been so heavily on getting pregnant that it had left my head a bit.

After T became pregnant, I've had a lot of time to think about my role in our new family - particularly at the beginning, when emotions are raw and things are changing fast.  A friend of ours asked if I had considered inducing lactation so I could feel like I was more useful.  I had, in the back of my mind, felt a desire to do it but I hadn't really given it much thought in a few months, nor had I done any actual research on what inducing lactation entails.

I must be frank.  I've always found the idea of a wet nurse, or using donated breastmilk, to be odd concepts.  The woman giving birth should breastfeed her own baby, she shouldn't also offer to feed her neighbor's baby, right?  One mom, one person breastfeeding.  It's what is "normal".  So the idea of having two breastfeeding mothers for a single baby is a bit unorthodox for most people, I'd imagine.

But the idea of breastfeeding *my* baby, even though I won't have given birth to her or him, isn't unusual to me.  The thought of being able to nourish my own child is satisfying to me.  The idea that T won't have to be solely responsible for every single feeding makes me feel good.  The knowledge that I could take our baby out by myself without having to bring bottles of T's breastmilk is a positive thing for me.

Certainly, it's an idea that others will need more time to get used to than I will.

Now, just because I can fantasize about being able to accomplish lactation does not mean it will definitely work.  Two years ago I had a breast reduction surgery, and the surgeon told me the odds would only be about fifty percent that I would be able to breastfeed.  He did ask if I wanted to do so at some point, which I told him that I absolutely planned to breastfeed.  That's definitely my biggest concern with the whole thing.  Waiting and wondering if it will work.  I don't even know at what point I'll have a definitive answer about it.

There are a lot of different protocols to induce lactation, as it turns out.  I've read through a few and I think I'm most interested in one called the Newman-Goldfarb protocol.  This is a pair of docs who have come up with this protocol for mainly adoptive mothers, but it's been used successfully in many situations.  It involves taking active birth control pills (with a specific progesterone/estrogen ratio) every day in conjunction with an additional medication, domperidone, for milk supply.  The birth control is to convince my body that I am pregnant, so it will begin to prepare my breasts for bringing in milk.  Up until six weeks before the baby is due, I take the birth control and the domperidone.  Then six weeks before T's due date, I stop taking the birth control and continue only with the domperidone.  After I stop the birth control, I can begin to add certain herbal supplementation to my diet to aid in milk production.  At this time, I also begin using a breastpump to encourage milk to come in.  This method has proven that the milk a woman produces when her lactation has been induced is nutritionally the same as a breastfeeding mother at ten days post birth.  I think that's pretty great!

So I went ahead and called our family doctor to schedule an appointment.  The conversation was quite amusing, as I suspected it would be.

A: Hi, I'm a patient of Dr. Levine and I'd like to make an appointment to discuss inducing lactation.
receptionist:  Um, okay.  Are you pregnant?
A: No, that's why I need to *induce* lactation.
receptionist: (15 seconds of silence) Um, well, the next available appointment is Wednesday.
A: Great, I'll take it, thanks!

I have no idea what thoughts were running through her brain, but she actually handled it better than I'd imagined she would.  It gave T and I a good laugh.  Regardless, I have an appointment Wednesday morning and I'm looking forward to getting this party started.  For the record, I'm NOT looking forward to breast pain and enlargement, but it is worth it for a shot at breastfeeding our little baby.  And it will give us an idea of if I'll be able to breastfeed the baby I bear in a few years, so that's a plus.

Our family doctor is really great, she doesn't take new patients often but she always will take in people who are referred to her from Wingspan, which is our local LGBT organization.  We think she is gay, and we've been told by a friend who sees the nurse practitioner in the same office that she is also likely to be gay.  Our doctor has always been incredibly welcoming, friendly, and kind.  She's a considerate person, an attribute I appreciate greatly in doctors particularly.  I know she'll listen to us, I just don't know if she's ever helped anyone induce lactation before.  We'll see after Wednesday, I guess!

If you're interested in learning more, I've found this to be the most helpful website.  Lenore Goldfarb is one of the two people responsible for coming up with the Newman-Goldfarb induction protocol.
www.asklenore.com

12 weeks

or something.  If you ask me, we're 13 weeks tomorrow, but if you ask those darned midwives, we're 12 weeks today.

My poor wife has developed some considerable exhaustion this week.  She tells me it's akin to when you've got a really bad cold, and you're doped up on DayQuil and you're exactly in the middle of the dosing window and you KNOW that the medicine is functioning and holding the floodgates of cold symptoms back... but it's just not quite enough.  You know that at any moment, all the miserableness could come on out and say howdy-do.  I feel pretty awful for her, especially since she's been working more than full-time for the past few weeks.  Maybe even longer than that.  She tells me that her schedule isn't going to let up until March ends.  Ugh.  I wish I could be pregnant for her for just a little while, so she could not be sick and nauseated and emotional and exhausted at work - unfortunately, I don't know how to do that for her, so she's just going to have to suffer through it.

Valentine's Day she had to work pretty late, so after work I made myself a sandwich and grabbed our camera and headed out to Gates Pass.  I had it in my head that I'd take photos of the sunset, but it took me too long to drive out there, so I ended up taking pictures of the night sky instead.  I had such a good time, I asked Teri if she'd like to go with me again the following night and maybe we'd be able to catch that sunset.  She was game, so she came to get me from work.  We did get some pictures of the sunset, but we need to get there just a touch earlier for the best shots.  However, we had a wonderful time together and got some really awesome photos, and it helped us to realize that we'd like to do a lot more sunset chasing, especially now that we have a nice DSLR camera.  There are photos at the end of the post.

For Valentine's Day, I made a kind of mixed-media painting for T.  I painted an 11 x 14 canvas with a blue sky and a few mountain peaks.  Then I found an excerpt from an e.e. cummings poem (I fell in love with it!) and painted the quote on the canvas.  Everywhere the words were, I daubed rubber cement over them.  I also covered the entire bottom of the canvas, the mountains, to be precise.  Once that all dried, I carefully used a blow-dryer to melt approximately twenty crayons down the front of the canvas.  After I was satisfied with the melting job I'd done, I stuck the canvas in the freezer to cool the wax.  The process after this was rather laborious, as the wax had avoided the rubber cemented areas as I'd hoped.  So I had to scratch off all the wax from the areas that contained words from the quote.  I ended up using a suggestion from my mother in law to put a paper towel down over the mountains and iron the area until I lifted up all the crayon wax.  It mostly worked, so I didn't have to scratch all that off.  Whew!  After all the wax was removed from the words, I went back through and repainted anywhere the wax had stained my lettering.  All in all, it was kind of an involved project, but I'm really amazed with how great it turned out.  And I think T was quite pleased with it, as well!  Photo below.  She made me a lovely tooled wallet to replace the wallet she originally made me, I'm very excited to have a new one!  My poor old wallet is falling apart.  Thank you, darling!  Photos of that to come.

2012 Valentine's Day 

2.14.12     City lights

2.15.12     Saguaro spire

2.15.12     Sunset saguaro

2.15.12     "Peak" through the desert

2.15.12     Desert sunset

2.15.12     Jumping cholla

2.15.12     Through Gates Pass

2.15.12     Stars through slats

2.15.12     Orion over the mountain

Happy Valentine's Day!

Just wanted to pop in a wish everyone a Happy Valentine's Day! Especially my fantastic, caring, understanding, amazing, loving wife! I know that I'm not the most enthusiastic person about holidays, but that doesn't mean I'm not enthusiastic about you!

Today I am remembering how lucky I am. Sometimes I still don't believe we are going to have a baby. This is going to be a fantastic year!

Baby Announcement

Remember how I said awhile back that we told my family about the pregnancy at the cabin we rented in northern Arizona?  I neglected to mention that my fantastic brother, H, managed to record my family's discovery of the pregnancy.  He's a secret ninja like that.  Just one of our many genetic gifts!

Without further ado, here's the link to the video:

T & A baby announcement

Better to link the video late rather than not at all, right?

P.S. Parents and Brother:  I love you guys!  You're wonderful.
P.P.S. In-Laws and T's family: I love you all as well!  I just ... don't have secret video of telling you about our baby.  Sorry.

Heartbeat

Yesterday morning, we had an appointment at our midwifery practice.  It was a routine appointment, one which we expected the midwife would try to get the baby's heartbeat on the Doppler for us.

We were put into an exam room and checked in by the medical assistant, and a few minutes later Maya came in.  She wanted to know if we had any questions, concerns, etc.  She asked how T was feeling - which is pretty good, by the way.  She's feeling good, that is - not that it's a good thing Maya asked about her!  Ha.  She went over T's blood results with us; we were glad and unsurprised to learn that everything was fine.  And her blood type is the same as mine!  O negative.  What are the odds.  T remarked, "I guess we're just in a lot of 10% groups." and then laughed.  Since this was a different midwife than last time, she smiled and said to herself, "So, you're PARTNERS.  Ah."  Oops, sorry Maya, didn't know that wasn't clear.  Maybe you should put a note about us in the computer system, lol.  Beware Of Lesbians, maybe.  I'd like to mention here that the midwives and the birth center in general has been very supportive of us, but we kind of throw them for a loop because we're certainly not the norm in their practice.  They are all trying really hard to learn the right things to say.  Little do they know, we're not easily offended by people who mean well.

I guess there wasn't really anything else to do at this appointment, because then Maya said she could try to find the baby's heartbeat for us.  I imagine the grins on our faces told her that yes, yes indeed we would like that very much.

She had T lay back on the exam table and put ultrasound gel on her belly.  I've heard recordings of baby heartbeats, but never what it sounds like as the user is trying to find the baby's heartbeat.  It was interesting, and nerve-wracking.  And kind of loud.  We could hear the sound of the Doppler moving on T's skin, we could hear T's insides gurgling around, and then we heard T's heartbeat pounding along steadily.  Maya looked up at me and said, "That's not it yet, that's hers."  I nodded and said, "Yeah, I figured."

A moment later she passed over something and said quietly, "Oh!  There it was.  Now I gotta find it again."  I hadn't heard anything, so a momentary dread gripped my insides because I suddenly feared she'd find a very weak and slow heartbeat and have to tell us that it was likely this baby wasn't going to make it.  I closed my eyes and tried to mentally loosen the knot building up in my stomach.

I didn't have long to wait, however, because Maya moved the Doppler and then, faintly at first, there was a steady rushing sound.  A big smile broke out on Maya's face and she goes, "There.  There it is.  This is your baby's heartbeat."  It got louder and louder as she honed in exactly on the baby's location and the quick gallop of beats filled the little exam room.  Directly underneath it was T's steady, slower heartbeat.  T's and the baby's hearts were in a gorgeous synchronous rhythm, the baby's beating exactly twice as fast as T's was. I told T later that I thought I could listen to that little rhythm all day.  It was beautiful and miraculous and I was just overcome with amazement.  (No, I didn't cry!  If the process had taken longer, I probably would have.)

Still, I am floored at the human body.  More specifically, I'm very impressed with T's.  A few weeks ago, we had a cluster of embryonic cells that were dividing away and today, we've got a fully-formed human life with a heartbeat of its own growing and thriving inside T.  Just incredible.

I am exceedingly thankful for the gift we've been given.  I am so glad and happy that all is well with the baby, and really can hardly believe it on a daily basis that someday soon, a new life is going to be born onto this planet and that life is going to be part of our family forever.

I'll leave you with a photo we took two nights ago.  T, at eleven weeks.

Donor Profile # 2 1 4 5

I think it's natural that people are curious about how we became pregnant.  After all, everyone knows two women with no outside ... erm, influences, can't make a baby together.  So of course, people want to know how that baby came to live in T's uterus.  We have no problem with that.

For anybody who still IS wondering how we did that, I want you to be "in the know".  You're welcome.  We used a sperm donor, whose genetic material we purchased for exorbitant fees on the internet.

Still want to know more?  Okay, you asked for it.

We specifically chose a sperm bank based out of Washington that will ship liquid nitrogen charged tanks with the specimens inside to our house.  Most banks will only ship these tanks (dewars) to doctors' offices, and if they'll ship it to your house, you have to have a note from a doctor saying that they're aware that the patient is inseminating at home.  We thought that was crap, so we picked a bank that didn't require a doctor's permission.  Most people don't ask permission from their doctor before getting pregnant.  We didn't feel the need to either.  After going through a lengthy decision-making process about which donor, we ordered the vials and specified what date we needed the tank to arrive.  Just before we were ready to inseminate, we let one vial sit out for a few minutes (it was cryogenically frozen, trust me, you DON'T want to touch the vial directly out of the tank) and then I'd hold it or stick it in my cleavage to thaw it.  High tech, right?

Then I'd use a small syringe with a sterile, one time use catheter attached to its tip to draw up the sperm and then insert it into T's cervix.  We did two inseminations per cycle for five cycles.  The fifth cycle worked!

Back to the donor.  The process for choosing who was to biologically contribute to our children was daunting, at best.  Initially, we had a list of "requirements" for the donor to meet.  We had a lot of "requirements".  We plugged all the factors into the bank's search engine and behold, there were zero donors who met all the requirements.  That set us back, I'll tell ya.  We had to reconsider a lot of our factors.  We ended up actually going through the entire donor database and we made our own Excel color-coded spreadsheet to compare them.  We ranked each donor from 1 to 10 and then took the 9s and 10s and evaluated again.

The first and foremost important thing was that the donor was Willing to Be Known - a term that means the donor is willing to have contact with the conceived child once the child is 18 years old.  After that we studied the family medical history.  Donors with families who had histories of breast cancer or heart disease were automatically nixed.  We considered other conditions or trends on a case-by-case basis.  We just wanted to give our kid a decent shot at life.  Then we considered his Rh factor and his CMV status.  Both T and myself are Rh negative, so we thought it would be great to have an Rh negative donor.  Surprisingly there are NOT a lot of Rh negative donors out there.  CMV means Cytomegalo Virus, it's a sexually transmitted infection that the majority of the population actually has been exposed to.  It can be dangerous for the baby if the mother is CMV negative and she inseminates with CMV positive sperm, but CMV is interesting in that it only is contagious in cycles.  Per bank policy, all donors are negative for contagious CMV but they do accept donors who are dormant positives.  It's not something that can be passed via sperm donor because of this bank policy.  Still, CMV status is something the bank provides about each donor so we thought if it worked out, a CMV negative donor would be a plus.

After those factors it got pretty murky.  We did choose a Caucasian donor, but his heritage didn't matter hugely.  Neither did hair/eye color.  We considered his height/weight just because we didn't want somebody too short or gigantic.

We read through many, many essay questions and tried to glean something of what that donor's personality would be like.  It's really hard to do that!  I mean, these are college guys, so mostly they answer the questions in as short a response possible.  Second, I imagine the bank tells the donors to try and sell themselves, so how much faith can I really put in the truth of his response?  You can try and take some information from handwriting... but only so much.  If any.  Really, nothing.  We had some things we hoped to see as hobbies/aptitudes/education, but again, only so much you can control.

At the end of it all, we had several donors to choose from.  I called the bank and discovered that not only did we like those certain donors, but a lot of other people must too because some didn't have very many vials left, or only had vials in quarantine that wouldn't be released for six months.  We wanted to buy twelve vials, so the donors who only had three vials were out.  By the time we found two donors we liked very much who both also had a lot of vials available, we were SO tired of trying to decide.  We bought the "extended profile"s on the two donors and made a decision on 2145 because his extended medical history was better and he had a more olive skin tone.  And because there were stories of several women who got pregnant on their first attempt.  And other reasons that fail me right now.

We'd kind of realized that it's all just a crap shoot.  You don't know who you're going to be given to parent, and we can't control what genes come through and which don't.  We tried to do the best we could and that had to be enough.

So here's some of the information on our donor:

5'11, 190 lbs
dark brown hair, brown eyes
Norwegian, Maltese, English, German, Irish, and Italian ancestry
Thick, wavy hair, fair complected, medium bone structure, right handed
Wears contacts
Enjoys track, football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, weightlifting, and jogging
At the time of donation, this guy was probably 20 or 21.  All the vials we've used so far have been from 2009, so we assume he's 23 or 24 now.  Since he's young still, his parents are young still and there wasn't much in his family medical history.  Maternal grandmother with high blood pressure, a grandfather with a bladder infection, and he and his siblings had acne in high school.  Nothing terribly exciting.

I'm not going to transcribe all his short-answer questions; if you're ever THAT curious I'll let you look through his folder someday.  :)

Okay!  Long enough.

OH!  I forgot, real quick, to mention that we've already found a donor sibling.  Interestingly, his name is Rhys, which has been on our list of boy names for like two years.  But now we won't use it.  That would be strange.  Half-brothers with the same name who were raised states apart.  He's very cute!  I can't wait to see who is growing inside T.

For serious now, I'm going.  Goodnight!

Nothing in particular

I was informed that we needed to update so a happier blog was the first thing you see when you check to see if we have updated.

Everything is crazy and I wish we would both get huge bursts of energy and get stuff done. Here is my list-
-FOLD LAUNDRY. That is my goal for today
-Go through all of our clothes and downsize to what will fit in our dressers
-Clean out the nursery
-Take the old nursery furniture to Babies R Us for their trade in sale
-Get all of the dials on the stove to work and replace the bracket that holds on the drawer on the bottom
-Yard work (by far the largest and most intimidating project)

On a more fun note, we do have baby craft projects that we have started or want to start-
-Onesies! We got a bunch of 2nd had onesies for A to embroider and she ordered some plain white ones to dye and embroider
-Baby blanket that I started knitting a year ago
-New nursery theme, we like the old one, but we would like a new beginning
-Leather bound baby book
-And the continuing project of writing in the journal we bought.

I am sure we will come up with many, many more.

Our next appointment is on Tuesday. Hopefully we will get to hear the heartbeat. We'll probably take our next belly picture around the same time!