SOFFA Notes
By Lani
Waiting
for my Baby
May 2006
Sometimes I don't believe in anything. I feel as if there cannot be something greater than myself out there. Sometimes I think that I am all alone in the world and my existence is mere happenstance. Sometimes I question the value or meaning of living. At times like this, I think that god is one great prankster, and I am the butt of the joke.
Babies surround me. They are all I can see, everywhere that I go. They seem to follow me, to latch on to my face with an intent gaze whenever they see me coming. Children talk to me, introduce me to their teddy bears. I cannot seem to avoid them.
Everyone I know is having a kid, just had a kid, or is working on having a kid. It feels as if I am surrounded. While I love it, love seeing a baby smile or gurgle, love meeting my co-worker's niece and her bear, it tears me up inside too. I want to start a family, I have wanted to start a family, and we were planning to start it. Last September, eight months ago was the initial start date. Then December. Now it is the end of March and the new date is "sometime in the next two-and-a-half years." I'm not terribly patient with this waiting thing, with indefinites and lack of dates, and uncertainty. Especially since the cosmic joker has decided to infiltrate my life with babies.
I want a child. I want to have a family, and I am tired of waiting, being the good girl, being patient, putting me needs and desires on hold. That biological clock thing? For the longest time I didn't believe I was given the same parts as other women. It seemed like that was missing for me. Sure, I wanted to have a family but that was in the ethereal "someday" of my fantasy life. It hit home sometime - when? Maybe last year, maybe a little before then. I started charting my menstrual cycles, knowing that because I have PCOS I will probably have to be on some sort of fertility medicine anyway. I wanted to be actively doing something, to be engaged in the process. I met with my doctors, had all the pre-pregnancy testing done, started on multivitamins and folic acid. I joined an international e-mail list for transgender folks and their partners who either are parents or are in the process of becoming parents.
What happened?
My sister gave birth fourteen months ago to a beautiful baby girl. I was in the hospital room when she was born. It was amazing and incredible and the most spiritual thing I have ever seen. I also figured that if my younger sister could do it, why then, I could, too. Pregnancy and childbirth lost much of its fear for me.
I flew from Boston to Fort Lauderdale as often as I could in order to be near the most amazing human being on this planet; my niece.
In the meantime, what happens but a number of my friends and associates start getting pregnant. My sister had been on the pill for 10 years or so, and got pregnant the first month she stopped them. A cousin gave birth to a little girl a few days after my sister did. Good friends (a lesbian couple) got pregnant and had a girl, and another couple we know casually had a boy. A long-time bisexual polyamorous friend who always swore she would never have kids started wanting them...and then decided to get pregnant. She did, on the first try, while in bed with her husband and a few select others. She's due in about 10 weeks. A friend's 20-year-old daughter got pregnant from a now-absent boyfriend and had a baby boy. It felt never-ending.
All this time, I was waiting for my turn. I still am.
My sister and I joked about starting a website to raise money for sperm. "Sponsor-a-sperm.com" was our little joke and secret hope. We estimated the number of sperm you could buy per dollar and tossed around ways to get people to donate. Would people paypal a buck to a stranger to help her buy sperm? How would they know it was legit? We could create a "spermometer" (instead of thermometer - get it?) and show how much we had raised so far. Is it legal to have people place bets as to which insemination will be the one to take? What if we allow the highest $ donor from the cycle that works to have naming rights - from a select list, of course.
I'm serious. If I had more chutzpah (or perhaps more free time) I might actually do it.
My male friends tease me. They'll make a deposit all right, "though you have to do it the traditional way." Ha ha ha. That's a little old, boys.
I do have potential known donors if I wanted to go that route. Both my partner and I decided that it would be too messy, legally that is. What if he signs his rights away but changes his mind later on? How would having a good friend donate sperm to a lesbian and her tranny partner potentially affect his future relationships? It just got messier and messier and we decided not to go that route. Although, I must admit that at times it is darn tempting.
Back to the Great Jokester in the Sky.
I went to Fort Lauderdale in January to celebrate my niece's first birthday. On January 23 rd at 6:30am my niece turned one, and my sister and I both started our periods. She had been period-free that whole year. February came and with it, I bled enough for both of us. Her body wouldn't give it up. She is still breastfeeding and that's not so unusual. March came. Last Monday morning my sister called and she told me she was pregnant. I got to work and found blood in my underwear.
I bled hard and cramped for days. Thursday afternoon it let up. Friday I was period-free. Around 5pm my friend called me to let me know that one of the members of our temple gave birth to a little boy that morning. I started to cramp again. I was heading on the train to the baby-naming ceremony for the lesbian couple we are close to. I've been babysitting for her since she was a couple of weeks old. I got to the temple and had to use the bathroom. I bled in that one hour enough to make up for the day I was without my period. Lovely.
So what is a monogamous lesbian married to an FTM grad student to do? Wait for his exams to be over, then the dissertation...then...what?
We went to the lesbian pregnancy seminar at a local health clinic and embarrassed the poor clinician who was running the event. She was trying hard to be inclusive but was trying a bit too hard it seemed. Stumbling over what she said, correcting herself and expounding on the word "woman" or "lesbian" whenever she said it...I was embarrassed for her. I have all sorts of pregnancy books, from yoga to baby names to lesbian parenting books to the classic "What to Expect When You're Expecting." We have been buying baby clothes and toys, and sending some to my sister but storing the rest in the basement of our house. We have perused the sperm bank websites and the donor profiles and have done most of the footwork. We discussed and debated adoption and decided to try to get me pregnant first, for multiple complicated reasons.
So I wait. Impatiently. I stare at the pictures of my niece all over my desk and my house and I oogle the baby pictures of the friends who send them our way. I babysit when I have the time and energy, to give my friends a break and to fill some of that longing need. I imagine what my new niece or nephew will be like. I fantasize about the pregnancy process.
My partner longs to be able to pass on his genes and mourns that loss. Years ago he had tried to get pregnant when he was with his ex. After three years he found out that he had a luteal phase defect which kept him from being able to sustain a pregnancy. This was pre-transition, before I was in his life as anything other than a casual acquaintance. He had finally given up the hope of having a family and was used to the idea of not having kids when I came along, 12 years younger and full of a certainty that I will have a family and if you don't want that, you don't need to be with me. I wonder sometimes if he feels ambivalence about the process or if it is really an anxiety about finances that keeps him distant. I fear that this will be another process he has gone through, something that is not new to him, and therefore, not as exciting as it is for me. I fear it might bring up old unresolved relationship stuff from his past. I picture him taking the baby clothes he made and the crib and accessories he had collected those years to the local domestic violence shelter and imagine how painful that was. I want him to be engaged in this process with me, to be excited and wondrous as I am. At times like this I wish I could read his mind, or at least his diary, to get a glimpse as to what he is really thinking and feeling.
I know he will be a great father, a wonderful parent. I admit to occasional doubts about my own abilities and have to remember that no one is perfect and the best we can hope for is to just be good enough . I am settling into the idea that my kids WILL have a father (I always imagined my family with two mothers, so this is an adjustment for me). We discuss parenting styles, names, and joke about decorating techniques (my rubber ducky collection will have to move to the kids' bathroom once we have a home that has more than one bathroom).
I can't wait to start a family and yet I have to. I admit to occasional bouts of envy. An e-mail from a childhood friend I have not seen in 15 years came a couple weeks ago with a picture of my now-grown-up friend and her husband and 8-month-old son. I'm aching for that photograph to be me and my partner and child. I am making a scrapbook for my niece, of her first year of life, and wondering if my family will be as excited when I have a kid.
I am sad about a lot of aspects of this baby thing. I am saddened that my family is so far away and I cannot keep my childhood pledge to my sister to raise our families close together because we were raised far from our cousins and we want our children to be close. I am saddened to think that when I do finally have a baby my family will not all be able to be there, as we were for my niece's birth. With two young children it is doubtful that my sister will be able to travel up here to be with me when I give birth, and if it is cold, my mother will definitely be unable to come due to a chronic illness. I won't have my family nearby to drop in or babysit or to have playdates with our kids. I am once again apart from my family and at the same time, in the middle of all of their messes, second fiddle to my younger sister. It burned me up that family came from across the country for her med school graduation and I couldn't even get my mom, dad, and sister to all go to my graduation from my master's program because of their outside issues. I know it has nothing to do with me but sometimes I feel like I am being outshone yet again. My life is non-traditional in so many ways and while I would not trade mine, while I am thrilled with how my life is turning out, I must confess to the occasional envy that rises unbidden and shows its ugly face, affecting my mood and behavior towards others. I have been more depressed than usual lately, a combination of seasonal affective disorder, general depression, my mother's recent illness, and now my seeming lack of family.
I feel I am rambling and disjointed. I am feeling headachy and uninterested in conversation. I will edit this at some further time when I have more energy and patience and concentration. I just wanted a record of my thoughts and feelings and the things that go through my head repeatedly, so I don't bore my friends to tears with my whining.
Help me, please, to come to some sort of peace within myself and with how I feel about and interact with others. Help me to be strong when I need to, to feel when I need to, and to not let my feelings overwhelm me and make me distant or uninterested in the life around me. Help me to maintain my courage and my bank account balance, so I don't spend all that I do have when I need to be saving it for the future. Help me to be a source of comfort and support for my partner if he needs it and help him to be that for me when I need it, too. Help me to overcome this most recent episode of depression that haunts me and affects my self-esteem and my strength. Help me to persevere and to maintain hope when things feel hopeless, for I am good at making hopeless situations even worse. Help me to find peace and to be a better person for all those around me who need my help and strength and support and love. Help me feel love.
About Lani
Lani is a social worker
currently employed at a local HIV/AIDS service agency. She lives with her
partner, 2 cats, and a uromastyx lizard named Drazil. A
few of her writings are included in the upcoming anthology Desire in
Transition edited by Natalie Patrice. Lani welcomes comments, questions
and feedback. Personal e-mails can be sent to Lani at: BostonFTMSOFFAS
To join the list, check out the listing in the yahoogroups.com website (under
Relationships/Adult/Transgender), or write to:
BostonFTMSOFFAgroup@yahoogroups.com or
subscribe at http://groups/yahoo.com/group/bostonFTMsoffagroup/