Pride

Jen and I are at a second floor window at The Duplex, looking down on the crowd waiting for the Pride parade. We're sipping on our alchoholic pink lemonades and feeling very pleased with ourselves for snagging the prime viewing location.

Right below us there are a crowd of multicultural college kids, embodying fresh young queerness. Watching them for a while, we realize they are deaf, they are signing excitedly and you can almost hear different voices coming through in their gestures. The skinny black girl is high pitched. The guy with an afro has a drawl. The white boy has a gay accent. They remind me of my first few years at pride, pouring rum and vodka into supersized McDonald's sodas before my friends and I tore our way up and down fifth avenue.

Next to them there is a rowdy bunch of boys, flirting with all the guys and leading the crowd in chants. Two male cops linger near them, flirting with everyone.

The entire crowd is composed of little groups like these, friends and lovers and professionals and kids.

Right across the street from us, two women and thier baby have camped out. They've got chairs, coolers, friends, all surrounded by yellow CAUTION tape. The baby is a girl. She has peirced ears, and despite the hot sun and loud homosexuals, she remains unphased. The women aren't very like me or Jen. But, whatever our differences might be on the subject of knee length denim shorts worn with timberlands, we clearly agree that two women and a baby are a very real family. They just did what we're trying to do.

"Maybe we should go to that thing. That group" I say. "At the center. For lesbians trying to concieve. Maybe people have advice we can use."

Jen is non-committal.

"But" I continue, crunching an ice cube from my drink, "I hate taking advice."

Jen cozes me in the corner. "We know what to do. We just have to do it in the way that's right for us."

Pride rages.

We've decided our first insemination will be in august, because of finances mainly, and because things are kind of wild this month and next with work and weddings and acitivities. We need some quiet time, some time spent together, some time to organize our thoughts and do this proprely. August.

I'm frustrated though, since the insemination has had to be postponed. I belong to a livejournal community about women trying to conceieve (lesbians_ttc) and people just seem to be constantly posting about using fresh sperm and hey, since its fresh and free, why not just rush heedlessly into using it right this very second? Its just irritating when we have to be so deliberate about every move we make. I wish we had a lot more money, or some free fresh sperm. I wish someone would just crawl out of the woodwork, and be perfect and smart and generous and give us their semen for free until we conceive and then disappear again forever. What a fucked up wish. A magical semen font.

The other day, we went to a friend's party, a party that was chock full of lovely gay men. I was having a wonderful time, but I was also sitting there coveting their sperm. I'm really becoming disturbed.

I'm trying hard not to become bitter... I know the way we're doing things is the way we need to do them, what is appropriate for us. But I really want this. I feel like we're stuck at stage -1.

Stress.

Things were fine, we were ready for July, we set up our account at the sperm bank and everything. But then...jen had the weirdest cycle ever. She didn't ovulate until day 21, a full week later than usual! She still hasn't started her period, which means she's now on day 30 of her cycle, when she usually tops out at 24-26 days. WTF?

As we dealt with that weirdness...we realized how much fucking money we owe my mom for this Sicily trip. We're thrilled to be going and my mom is totally helping us out by covering our airfare, but we need to be saving money and lots of it over the next few months. Which means we can't afford to inseminate as much as we wanted to. That's just the reality of the situation. Which I found devestating. I am feeling slightly better realizing we can still insemenate, if on a smaller scale. I thought at first we couldn't do it at all and i was crying.

Its just been a rough week. And work is strange too. Stressful in new ways. Why is everying fine, but seeming dire?

twins

I called to ask the lab if they had any records of previous pregnancies resulting from our front running donor, H807. A junior type employee there told me he didn't have access to those files, but he would have a supervising doctor get back to me. They called on friday, and we played phone tag until this morning.

"Hi, I'm returning a call from Dr. Tffrishman" I didn't know if he had said "fishman, or tishman or trishman or frishman in is message. I figured I'd hedge my bets.

"Sure, hold for Dr. Fishman"

So there's that cleared up.

"Hi Dr. Fishman, I called last week. I was trying to find out if H807 had resulted in any pregnancies..."

"Ah...yes. Twins!"

I have no idea why, but that was so funny to me. I cracked up. The doctor chuckled too.

"Twins! That's cute! Thanks!"

Jen had the exact same reaction when I relayed the news.

"Twins! That's cute!"

I have no idea why this tickled us (even the doctor) so much. The genetic predisposition toward having twins has nothing to do with the sperm. Disregarding the use of fertility drugs, twins are more likely to occur when the mother:

• Is between 30 and 40 years of age
• Has had a high number of previous pregnancies. (The more kids you already had, the more likely you are to have twins.)
• Is a twin, or the sibling of a twin or already birthed twins
• Is black, or specifically african or specifically from West Africa or even more specifically of Yoruba or Hausa descent.

The sperm has nothing to do with it at all, twins are all the egg's doing. But still. Twins! Cute! Two of h807's sperm made it to the big show. (more might have as well, pregnancies are not always properly reported to the lab). That does make us giddy.

goodbye (again) H877!

Turns out H877 is in quarantine because the donor has not submitted to the necessary testing recently. They recently made stricter rules about what you have to be tested for, and I guess he hasn't been around to prove he's not diseased. That's ok. H807 is a totally cool guy, if slighly arrogant on paper. He just knows he's awesome. If I were donating my genetic material, I too would want to impress upon the people who are recieving it that they are getting some choice dna.

welcom back H877!

I went to the sperm bank yesterday. To get paper, not sperm. I went to purchase the "long profile" of donor H807, a puerto rican theater student. The long profile cost 8 dollars and didn't reveal much more than the short profile which is available for free online. It is, however in the donor's own handwriting, which carries some charge even if the info is the same, I guess because we all know what "serial killer" handwriting looks like.

For the record, H807 had typically crampy, crappy guys handwriting, but nothing approaching serial killer quality. The handwritten notes did reveal that he went to Tisch, which made me wonder if he ever had a threeway with any of my Tisch friends, and that his favorite books are Catcher in the Rye and The God of Small Things, which are both respectable, if not entirely orginal. H807 seems like a solid pick.

Last night, when discussing H807, Jen asked if I had inquired at the sperm bank about H877, who we had been previously obsessed with. He is the elusive Peruvian/Italian/Chinese donor...which, as a Peruvian/Italian/Tunisian person, I am very interested in using to create my family. Also, he too studied theater (perhaps he and H807 and one of my Tisch friends all went at it together). And he likes magical realism, which I dig. However, we had been previously told that they were out of H877 and he wasn't coming back to donate anymore. But Jen pointed out that they he was still listed as available on the website...it was worth asking about.

So this morning, I called back and asked. I was told that H877 is in quarantine! This is sort of great news. Sort of. It means he donated recently. His sperm will therefore likely be livelier than some of those that have been on ice for longer. But sperm have to be in quarantine for 6 months at least. We're going to start trying in July and keep it up for the subsequent months. Will H877 get out in time? Will he be CMV negative? Will our hero be able to reach the old mill in time to save the gang?

disappointed

One of the sperm banks we're interested in using has been in the middle of changing locations and hasn't updated their website in several months because of the upheaval. We check all the time to see if they have gotten their shit together and they never have...until today. I was SO EXCITED to see that they had updated their donor list. Until I actually looked at the donor list.

white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy
white guy

black guy
chinese guy
korean guy
chinese guy

Not even one hispanic guy. or even a middle eastern guy. Fucking fuck. I mean, I don't need this baby to be my biological baby, but I would like to look somewhat related to the child. Jen is a pretty pale woman. Pale + pale = pale and I ain't pale. nor am I black or chinese. We're going to be a family, I don't want to look like the fucking nanny. Is one brown person so much to ask for?

motherhood

We still haven't touched a sperm yet. We don't have the money for it right now, or for as much of it as we want. We decided to defer, and rather than buy one vial in May, to buy three vials in July. THREE VIALS! That still won't equal as much or be as potent as if we had fresh sperm, but it'll give us a better shot than one.

In the meantime, we're still triangulating Jen's ovulation day, and thinking about parenting. Mothering. Our plan, when the baby arrives, is that Jen will work, since her job pays more money, provides our insurance, gives her a pension...all wonderful things that my job does not...and I will stay home and take care of our child. Working, I wouldn't make much more than it would cost to pay someone to watch the baby. This way, I get to bond with the child, and I can still work nights/weekends to make sure I have income coming in. Also, the baby gets a caregiver who is loving and smart, without us having to pay extra for that. I would hate to go to work while someone else watches my baby, mainly because I don't think anyone would be better at taking care of it than me or Jen.

But since we've made that decision, which Jen and I are both thrilled about, I have noticed that it is decidedly against the norm here in NYC. Most women work, either because they have to or because they want to, and leave their children with other people. Which is fine, understandable, everyone has their own needs and goals. But for whatever reason, there's also this disdain for mothering that comes through...My old boss used to freak out if she had to stay home with her kid for a week straight. She found it exhausting and was always thrilled to come back to work. My new boss just told me she's pregnant. Her lack of enthusiasm pained me. Yeah, another kid. Yeah, email me while I'm in labor, I'll be working from home. She said she liked to get right back to work, because not working caused post-partum depression. "That's when you lose yourself."

I started doubting myself. Staying home with a kid...would I be losing myself? I don't particularly value the reputation I've built for myself in the working world, even though it is a good one. I care much more what my family thinks of me, what my friends think of me, what someone who has read my writing thinks of me. So in that sense no, losing my professional self doesn't injure me too badly. But the crux of my personal reputation is intelligence. And I was getting the impression that many women I respected and admired thought staying home with a baby was none too smart.

I thought about for about a week, carrying it around, troubling over this in my private moments. What did work mean to me? What did I personally really think about being a stay at home mom? How much of my opinion was informed by a generation of women who rebelled against having no other choice? My own mother had not stayed home with me, but when my brother was born, she quit working, I think in large part because my father wanted her to. For 6 years she stayed home, and while she did many useful things - PTA, girl scouts, teaching adult ed - it drove her crazy. She eventually got divorced, went to law school, and now she's a lawyer and I know she is very fulfilled.

But me. Is my situation analogous at all? I think not. And I think a large part of that is because I am in a same sex relationship. While our past experiences inform us, our roles as partners in life are defined by no one but us, because the paradigm for married relationships involves a man and a woman, and not us. If I stay home and Jen goes to work, it cannot be construed as a sexist division of labor because we are the same sex. I don't have to, she didn't make me, it doesn't injure HER sense of self if I choose to be an earner as well. I will choose to stay home, because I know enough to know I am likely to be more educated than the vast majority of nannies I could afford to hire. I know enough to know what advantages my abilities might be able to confer on my child. I know enough to know that we're not the perfect family in the eyes of most people. We need to work harder, to make our child safer, to give them more answers, and spend more time together in order to be the family we want to be, in our own eyes, and in the eyes of people who matter to us. I know enough to know I don't have to be a mother. I want to.

In a way, I feel like the most subversive thing we can do is emulate a TV perfect 50s household and be perfectly happy with that.

update

I haven't been blogging a lot lately. Funny, my last post indicated I needed to reduce the stress level at home, but that really wasn't what came to pass. Jen's been working very long hours and I've been wrapped up in work bullshit as well. Things are calming down now though. Jen's also nearing the end of another cycle, and her luteal phase seems intact at about 12-13 days, which is heartening.

I got into grad school - all the ones I applied to accepted me. I'm planning to attend the city school, which is the cheapest, but also where I felt most comfortable, most excited. I think I'll probably go part time and keep working full time. Ideally, Jen and i want to be able to save $750 a month, which we think we can do when Jen gets her raise, but only if I keep bringing in at least as much as I make now.

I think really, I should stay at Atlantic. I have a pretty sweet deal going on there, I like the people, I know how to do my job, I could probably get a raise, I have a ton of vacation this year, I could probably eventually move into doing some archiving work there...It could all work out neatly. But much more money, if I can get it would be very tempting. There is one possibility I'm looking into right now which involved more money AND less hours. That could be ideal...but at the same time, I'm reluctant to leave a job I pretty much dig. I just feel I should earn as much as I can before the baby comes.

We're planning to inseminate during Jen's next cycle...so that would mean that 17 days from now, we'd give it a shot. We're very excited - the only thing is we don't really have a ton of sperm to pick from at this point in time. One of the banks we'd like to use just moved, and haven't updated their donor list as they're reoorganizing. But there is one guy we like at another bank - a puerto rican college kid with dimples who studies theater and likes baking. He sounds like a small puerto rican homosexual, which endears him to me.

luteal phase

The charting continues. We've honed in on when Jen ovulates, and all seems properly in place with that phase of things. Next worry - the luteal phase. That is the phase in between ovulation and menstruation. This is the countdown clock on how long the fertilized egg has to implant itself and start growing into an embryo. If you have a short luteal phase, you might fertilize the egg, but not be able to sustain a pregnancy.

Jen's luteal phase decided to fake us out. She saw spotting and thought it was ending after 10-11 days. Shorter than 10 days is a sign of trouble. This may mean low levels of progesterone, which is fixable, with pills that make you crazy. But the luteal phase was just playin', and the indicator - a sustained high temperature, has not dropped, and she has not actually started menstruating. So her luteal phase is probably more like 12 days, which is in the range of normal. 14 would be best. Jen is very stressed right now due to work concerns, and stress makes adrenaline which basically eats up progesterone. So a new job for me. Bringing down the stress level when she's home.

wedding

life has been hectic for the past few weeks. I was the maid of honor in a friend's wedding. The wedding was lovely and featured the biggest buffet I'm likely to ever see at a private function, but there were those inevitable minutes of feeling left out of the hetro revelry. Smarda wasn't trying to make me feel left out or awkward, quite the opposite, but a straight person wedding (unless the straight people are extremely understanding...whatup frank and laura!) is a special hell, full of those moments. At a wedding, straight married people LITERALLY GET PRIZES for being married. Its just a million little jabs. The first romantic couples dance. Of course I wanted to dance with Jen. But would that make anyone else uncomfortable? Lets not draw attention to ourselves. We wanted to kiss, but didn't. Let's not draw attention to ourselves. Just like on the street, in the subway, best not to draw too much attention to ourselves. Its their day. Their celebration of heterosexual love. And great for them. I really had a terrific time. But it just sucks when you can't kiss your girlfriend when all the boys are kissing theirs.

Which makes me wonder about how it will be in these situations when we have a child. Easier because we'll be a family? Harder because we'll have to defend our family? My intern was raised by a mom who was in relationships with women for most of her young life, and she said no one really cared as much as you'd think. I wonder. And even if they don't care that much, even if just some people care a little, I'll still feel it. And what a peculiar feeling it is. The sting of a wet slap. Then a little woosh of breath, someone pushed hard on my sternum. A pinprick sting finishes it off. All different little hurts, and I'm a little sad and a little angry cause now I've got a sharp pain, a dull pain and lots of little scars that don't show.

Jen and I had a conversation with Kevin and he officially withdrew his offer to ejaculate into a cup for us. More than that, we had discussed some sort of co-parenting option, but Kevin just doesn't feel ready for a child right now and I totally understand that. We weren't surprised by this news, but it seemed necessary for everyone to get things out in the open. The way he dealt with this, the way he's dealing with other emotional issues these days, all show me that Kevin is a great man, and will one day be a great father, if he chooses to become one. In the meantime, he's a fabulous friend, and will be a great male role model for the kids that Jen and I have.

Jen and I have been enjoying putting the horse before the cart and obsessing over baby names. We feel good about girl's names, but boys names are harder, especially considering we're going to saddle the child (and ourselves) with a 14 letter hypenated last name. We went to MOMA recently and drooled over the Stokke Tripp Trapp Chair, a vast improvement both functionally and aesthetically over traditional high chairs. Stokke makes a bunch of other awesome children's furniture but the chair is the only thing we could realistically pay for. I played Mega Millions, attempting to win the record high 370 million jackpot but didn't manage to do so. How will I ever afford all the things my theoretical baby needs?

getting to know you

Jen peed on a stick this morning. This is a new addition to our charting routine. She has to turn on the incredibly expensive ($200 is the usual price for the machine, the sticks you pee on are $50 a pack) Clearblue Easy Fertility Moniter and when it tells her to, to pee on a stick that the machine then reads. The machine can understand your pee, and tells you when your days of low, high and peak fertility are. Today was the first time it asked for a stick of pee, and we were excited to see what it would say in response, but didn't expect to see a high fertility sign, since its not even near time for Jen to be ovulating. Reading the manual, we learned that the first cycle, the machine might give you tons of high fertility signs, until it learns what the baseline levels of hormones are for that particular user, and can read changes in those levels accordingly. So basically, my girlfriend and a machine have a little get-to-know you date every morning. I'd be jealous, but although she is indeed Easy, I know I'm way cuter than Ms. Clearblue.

a conceptual art

Making a baby is part of our life now. We're not planning it or thinking about it, we're working on getting it done. Since we've internalized what we need to do for the charting phase of this work, most of our adjustments are now smaller and more incremental than they have been in recent weeks.

We've called sperm banks and made preliminary decisions about which ones make us feel comfortable, but since we're not inseminating for months yet, we can't pink a donor right now; his sperm might be sold out by the time we needed it. If there were someone we absolutely loved, we could buy now and have it stored, but the only one we were obsessed with - a Peruvian/Italian/Chinese donor who enjoyed magical realism - was too crazily perfect. I am a Peruvian/Italian/Tunisian who enjoys magical realism; we would have been absolutely thrilled with this donor, and hearing the depressing news that he's no longer available made us skittish about getting attached to sperm before we know what's really going to be on the market when we need it.

We chart, and hope other Peruvian/Italian/something or others find their way to the sperm bank. We've got time to wonder where a baby would specifically, physically fit in our home, in our arms, in the space between us. Its good and exciting and the pace of things seems reasonable. Having envied straight people for their ability to just happen upon pregnancy, I now realize that this time for thought and conversation and planning is a true luxury.

How long will this luxurious period last? And will it stretch far beyond what we need, or what we can bear? I do not let myself think about this possibility. My imagination acts on me very strongly. Once, reading about girls with a psychosomatic rash gave me a psychosomatic rash. I honestly believe my imagination may have unintentionally played a small part in the death of Rose Kennedy. I cannot imagine we will experience a prolonged failure to conceive. I will not.

Instead, my focus is on doing my part to the best of my abilities. I take Jen's temperature every morning at the same time. If I am 2 minutes off schedule, I resolve to improve. I read up on how to defrost a vial of frozen sperm, exactly how fast or how slow the ideal release of sperm should be, exactly how close to the cervix, exactly what role an orgasm plays in conception, exactly when in relation to that orgasm sperm should come on the scene. These are things I will be mostly in charge of and in doing them I will most fucking definitely do everything I can to make conception as likely as possible.

Conceptualization of conception is an unexpected turn-on. I'm gonna fuck my girlfriend until she's pregnant. I find that insanely hot.

things speed up

Suddenly the process is on fast forward. I'm terrified of turning my back on Jen for a second, only to turn back and find her nine months pregnant, in labor, holding our 2 year old child.

And yet, all that we've increased is the rate of information gathering. While we've talked about sperm, placed phone calls regarding sperm, read frequently asked sperm questions, priced sperm, and argued about sperm, we still have no sperm. There is no way in hell Jen could be pregnant. But we're indisputably closer to being pregnant than we ever were before.

Jen's told me about a language that had lots of words for women in different stages of pregnancy, but no one word for pregnant. Women were one thing when they had just concieved, something else when they were a few months in, something else nine months in. I always thought that sounded nice becuase it seemed less horrible to miscarry. You didn't do it wrong, you didn't lose a baby. You were x but not y. You were truly x. Not simply a failure at y.

Now I realize the way this works. Acknowledging conception and pregnancy and birth as a process and not some unfathomable chunk of a woman's life ruled by fairy tales or miracles.
It is work that takes a long time and is difficult to do properly.

I hate that I can't just make sperm or magic some out of an orifice I never noticed I had. I hate that we'll have to save lots of money and spend it all buying sperm that will never be as likely to make a baby as sperm fresh from the source. I hate that we can't just fall into bed and wake up a family.

But I love that I get to learn what this really is. I love that instead of just magicking up a family, we get to really build one.

Its hard. We're charting Jen's fertility. Part of this involves recording her temperature every morning before she has gotten out of bed. Before she's even sitting up. Which means I have to be up even earlier and able to locate the thermometer and pen. I don't mind getting up early, I usually do anyway, but now its not a choice.

We're also charting fertile mucous. Jen doesn't like to talk about the mucous, but it's important, and she's monitering that on her own. The mucous is actually not even the most disturbing possible thing to chart. Some people actually break out a speculum and look at their partner's cervix on a regular basis. That sounds horrible on an immense amount of levels and I know I've chosen the right girl when she says that I will never fucking ever under any circumstances come eye to cervix with her.

We'll also chart some results that the extremely expensive clearblue easy machine Jen ordered will give us. I don't exactly know what that is supposed to tell us, but all of this together should give us some picture of when she's ovulating. After a few months of this, we'll be able to decide what days are appropriate for inseminating.

INSEMINATING!

Its not time yet, but Jen's kind of gotten obsessed with picking sperm. I'm sort of obessessed too, but not AS obsessed. Its the fun part of all the data collection. What is the other half of this baby?

Sperm selection is fraught though. Jen and I are pretty good at communicating, good at working through problems instead of attacking each other with them. But even for us, this is a tough one. What do we each want our baby to be? Why do we want these things? Do we even know? Can we talk about those reasons aloud? Without revealing parts of ourselves we've worked hard to keep hidden? Its sort of like the drama that comes from being in a prom limo with someone, but like, if you were going to be in that prom limo for eternity. SHOULD WE GO WITH THE SUV LIMO? WOULD A PARTY BUS BE BETTER???!!

My line in the sand is skin color. I am brown. Olive toned. Tan year round. I often get comments about my skin color, ranging from the complimentary "You have such nice a skin color" to the disturbingly ignorant "How did you dye your skin that color?" Being a person of mixed race is a big part of my identity, and very much affects the way I am able to move through the world, and informs my world view. It is something I am proud of, and I feel I have a lot of information to share regarding this subject. I think being multiracial is something that marks me as part of my nuclear family, and I'd like my child to have that signifier too.

Jen is sympathetic to those things, but MUCH more concerned about motility. She wants the sperm most likely to get her pregnant, with appearance taking a backseat to that issue. She thinks it will be ok as long as the baby has dark hair and dark eyes. She's worried that some donors I like for their olive toned ancestry will actually end up producing a baby that looks nothing like either of us. I remind her that as half the child's genetic material belongs to her, it can't help but look like her at least a little...but she's still wary.

These are difficult conversations to have.

moms

Jen feels that she can't tell her mother that we are going to be trying for a baby. Her mother loves her very much, and is a very intelligent woman, but she has a lot of feelings of anxiety, and she wants to keep Jen very very safe, and it all comes out sometimes as painful criticism. Jen thinks that if we tell her mom, her mother will discourage us and insist that we are too poor, that Jen is too old, things that wouldn't be helpful at all, especially considering we are NOT broke and Jen is NOT old.

I feel terrible though. Of course Jen wants to share this with her mother but not if its going to be demoralizing. I told Jen her mom would probably say the same things if she were with a man though, which made us all feel better. Still, we're so happy about this. It hurts not to be able to share that.

Which isn't to say I've told my whole family. I did tell my mom that we were considering it. She says things like "When you guys have a baby..." usually the sentence ends with "you're not going to be able to do this anymore." I'm glad she's conceptualizing it, even if its in a way that means I'll have no life ever again after the baby comes.

The superlesbian ob/gyn gave us the go ahead to officially start trying.

In the past few weeks, we've been researching sperm more and more. None of it has thrilled me yet, but I think in part that's because I've been looking at it accepting an unknown man into my family, and into my girlfriend, but really, I have to think of it as information we're using to build our baby, a baby that I'm putting into my girlfriend. That makes it better. I'm actually very excited to put sperm in her now. VERY EXCITED.

our friend.

Our friend, who we hoped would be our known donor, is having some heavy thoughts that don't seem compatible with being prepared for baby crafting. Last time we hung out he said that heaven must be finite, and there isn't space enough for all the physical bodies, implying that then heaven must either be a lie, or a very very selective VIP club. I argued that of course heaven in infinite and not physical, but spiritual. And there we will be free from the bounds of our bodies, ageless and enjoying an existance that far surpasses what we understand now. Heaven is the opposite of the limitations we experience as humans. That conversation in and of itself does not seem to preclude making babies, but the reasons we were having it do. A friend of his committed suicide a year ago. He does not trust this world anymore, or apparently, the next either.

When I was a kid I used to get Zoobooks, a magazine that features a different animal every month. They'd talk about the animal's environment and what it ate and who ate it and basically just give you all you ever wanted to know about koalas or tree frogs or whatever. Every month there was one page that scared the shit out of me, a page where they did cutaway diagram of the animal, revealing its muscular structure and bones. Every time I tured to that page I would get chills up my back and in my hands. It never failed to startle, even if I had read the magazine several times. The New Essential Guide to Lesbian Conception, Pregnancy and Birth is a little like that. The information is fascinating, but sometimes you turn a page and suddenly your nose is a photo of someone's cervix. Unlike Zoobooks, the New Essential Guide is in black and white. Good thing too. If the drawing entitled "A Woman Using A Desk Lamp, a Hand Mirror, and Speculum to Look at Her Cervix" was in color, I might just have to rip it out and frame it.

I'm learning a lot about the cervix though. I'm also learning a lot about mucus and breast milk and all sorts of other fluids that I never spent much time on previously. Especially sperm.

If our chosen donor doesn't work out for one reason or another, we've decided that we'll go to a sperm bank. We had no idea what sperm costs or how you get it or anything, so we went online and started crusing sperm. Information abounds. Nordic people apparently love to jerk off into a container. There are sperm banks that specialize in Norse sperm, and even ones that don't have tons of Nordic donors listed. Latinos apparently DON'T like to jerk off into a container, which sucks for us if we do end up going this route since I'd prefer a baby that ends up a little olive toned (like me) instead of a little Viking toned.

If I weren't getting so invested in this process, I'd have a lot of things to say about the way the sperm donors are classified. Often there are three tiers - sort of a bargain basement grab bag where you have less information and older sperm, a general everyman pool, and then an elite section of people who've earned PhDs or distiguished themselves in some other way. I find myself revealing odd predjudices. I could give a shit about a PhD, but a Master's Degree is very desirable. I refuse to let Jen get inseminated by anyone who is a chiropracter, or a dentist. A vet would be better than a medical doctor. No one exclusively science or math oriented. Columbians over Mexicans. Cubans over Columbians.

Weight, height, ethnicity, eye color, hair color, blood type, career, education are the basics you can find on most sperm bank websites. But reading the essays is most revealing. Does he write in full sentences? Does he start his essay with "My most memorable experience is when I saw a UFO?" I think if we found someone who knew how to use a semicolon, he'd shoot to the top of the list even if he was 2 feet tall and 800 lbs.

Its all just information now. Hopefully our known donor will work out. But if he doesn't, I'm going to have to spend more time thinking about men than I ever have in my life. Learning about them. Imagining them.

the future comes apace

More activity, more excitement, more nerves. Jen has lined an appointment with the superlesbian ob/gyn. When she called the superlesbian, she was asked if she was currently pregnant or trying to concieve. The superlesbian will only see people engaged in babycraft. Jen answered that yes, she was trying to concieve, and was granted an audience. I guess we are, but now that its checked off on a form somewhere that sounds quite factual and immediate, when before it was a plan we were working on making a reality.

I understand its not like she'll go in there for a visit and walk out with a toddler, but these doctor visits definetely signals the start of the physical baby making, which will hopefully eventually result in a physical baby.

I begin to see that this process is really about information. Deeper into it, I'm sure I'll lose this perspective and become terribly emotional, but right now I feel like I'm mapping out the road ahead in terms of how much we know and when we know it. Moving ahead depends upon us organizing the information correctly, putting the right codes together at the right time. We didn't know a doctor, I had to request information about who to request information from and now we do. We don't know if how likely it is Jen will be able to concieve, soon tests will be done, results will be gathered and we will have that information. And assuming that information is favorable, we'll have to chart and time and record until we have the information that indicates to us it is the right time to attempt to join the information encased in egg and sperm to create a new body of information, a new body.

Maybe I'm high on library science fumes but I don't think I'm wrong. If I'm being too unpoetic, I suppose this could also be configured as a quest story. Which would give names and voices to all of these people, the kind witches that help us with spells and talismans, the inevitable evil trolls that will mock us or stand in our way. But even told in a fanciful manner, its still a story about exchanges of information, who has it, who wants it, when we get it, if it is used for good or for evil, if its enough to help us solve the puzzle, beat the sphinx and win the day.