i haven't posted anything in forever! now that i have this site linked on facebook, i feel like i should!

nothing is really going on in the baby realm, other than continually thinking and praying. we are honestly held back at the moment by practical concerns (money, deciding country of citizenship, etc) and suddenly i can appreciate that even transcendental momentous supernatural things like the creation of life also interact with the daily practical. though on the other hand, i can always remember my former boss (when i was in ministry) saying in response to why he had so many darn kids (5 at the time i last spoke to them..i think the parents were 34-ish?): "you always think there's no more money, and then you stretch it a little more and see that--there is. i want to see how many kids i can feed on the amount of money i make!"

not that he was actively trying to overpopulate the planet or anything, or that i would follow his example. just another way of looking at it that seems to imply that you can choose to NOT let the daily practical things have as much power as you think they must.

we have talked about it on and off over the weeks. i think i may have gotten esther to sway just a tiny bit on the issue of names :), and i've re-considered just using one of our sets of reproductive equipment, instead of trying to combine both. both are still options, just trying to make the right decision.

it's still happening though, people. unless the Lord takes us home first :)

i have four friends who are pregnant right now! can you believe that? i pray for them daily. ah, and several more that recently gave birth. Lord help me not want kids just to be like the joneses. wouldn't that be just the most horrible thing ever? it seemed to work well for ana (ref: 1 samuel), but i'm so not wanting to be her...at least in that sense.

so i was reading about picking sperm donors on some other lovely blogs about ttc, and i was thinking to myself, what would the absolute ideal situation be? i know there are pros and cons to known donor versus anonymous, but i think my ideal would be a close friend, who could be a part (even a "friend" part) of the child's life. i picture us being the two moms, but the friend living in at least the same city, us going on picnics together once in a while, maybe even going to church together. the friend would not have to be a dad at all, but he would have the privilege of being a friend. isn't that lovely?

we've actually had a few friends mention their desire to be sperm donors, and i doubt that any of these friends would later try to gain custody or anything like those other horror stories. the thing is, though...i'm not super IMPRESSED by any of these people. is that horrible? i don't find them particularly handsome or intelligent or inspiring. how sad! i don't mean to say that our friends are not wonderful people! i just am not ATTRACTED to any of their qualities such that i would like to live with them as a family. which is how the heterosexual community picks its procreative mates, so why should i be any different?

i was trying to think of who i would choose out of all the people i know, who most impresses me, to be a co-parent of my child. and would you believe i could only think of women?? i swear i am not an anti-man kind of a gal...i just apparently know an awful lot of wonderful women. i'd pay for some of becky's sperm, for example, if she had any. getting some of ashlee's would mean my kid would be beautiful AND incredibly smart. michael's (yes, she is a girl) would help create an artistic, adventuresome, wondrous spirit. and on and on.

again, i know this sounds like some kind of "brave new world" pick the qualities you want in your kid kind of thing...but let's face it, that's essentially what we're doing when we decide who to flirt with! and thus, the main point of this post is--that thank goodness whosever sperm i eventually buy, half of that wonderful child will be e's.

i've found at least one person who summarily impresses me :)

by the way, yes, baby making plans are still on the list. we have made it our first priority to get our own apartment, and as soon as that's crossed off, to start saving up everything extra for babying. i am pretty positive about this. the translation-sellin' business is a dog-eat-dog world, but time heals all wounds. or something. anyhow i have started to make commission, and though last month brought in a total of only $44, it's a beginning.

i think i've essentially decided in my mind which fertility clinic i like the best. i wonder if e is in agreement?

gotta run go get laundry.

today we received a phone call from a representative from one of the clinics asking if we were ready to make an appointment for a first consult...and wondering if we were serious about this and if not, to stop wasting their time.

!!!

i have no idea if that person is homophobic or just stupid, but Plenitas Clinic is now off the list.

emails galore.

all progress in the current stage seems to be electronic. and really, how much feeling can one show over email? thus, we are not currently experiencing lovely bonding moments with doctors or secretaries that i've read about on other blogs. it's ok, though.

we continue to get responses from various clinics (except the one who said "no anonymous donors" has NOT written back with a good excuse yet...). they seem to be pretty ridiculously varied in price, which surprised me. i've currently gotout a round of clarifying emails: "when you told us that price, was it in US dollars or argentine pesos?" the pesos is about 3.09 to the dollar, so it'll make a difference!

yesterday a friend from church forwarded us an article from the biggest national newspaper....about lesbians using fertility clinics! how about that!! it quoted the head of one of the clinics we've been writing to as saying that he gets about 10 or so lesbian couples a month seeking more information. of course, he added, they come in saying they're friends, that the wanna-be mother is single, etc. but you figure it out eventually.

i just think that's amazing, that that article appeared just now. also, it gave us a couple of leads for other clinics...

so we're actually making (excruciatingly slow) progress on this whole thing. we got back several emails from the different clinics we wrote to this week, and are waiting to find out the price of the first consult for three of them. only one has said a definite "no" (the others said yes, we just don't know all their costs...), and gave their reasoning as "we only do egg donation when the donor is anonymous." why this might be? i have no idea. it could be anti-lesbianism (is that a phrase??), or it could be something else. i would have written them a slightly snarky email trying to get them to own up to it, but luckily esther wrote the reply. we shall see if they feel like offering more details.

what's next??

i just realized that becky and margot commented back a week or so ago, and how exciting is that! i didn't figure anyone would actually read this...here's hoping they come back to see the answers to their questions. and that becky starts her own freaking blog someday!

why not just buy sperm? seriously, i totally get that it would be WAY cheaper. yes. but we are totally enamored of the idea of both being a major part of this person's conception. i realize that one of us (not sure who yet) will not be contributing chromosomes, but they will be giving much uterine time and energy and nutrition, as well as most likely, the boob.

who? not sure yet :) we both want to; we both see that there would be some advatages to having it be mine to get instant u.s. citizenship; but it's such a delicate issue that i'm hoping the doctor will decide for us. she thinks she's already decided to let me get pregnant, but i know how badly she also wants it, so for me, the decision won't be made super easily.

i don't know if we'll do this twice and both get to try pregnancy. that would be the ideal, but we don't have that kind of cash. and i feel bad enough about overpopulation already. thoughts?

this morning we had a fight about baby names. can you believe that? we haven’t talked to a fertility specialist, cracked open a book, or measured a single temperature, and yet we managed to fight about NAMES. for a human being who is probably a few years away from existing. do you think that’s a bad sign?

really, our fight was more about our personality flaws than the actual names. i want to get my way at all costs, and she tends to assume the worst. what the heck else is new. of course in this particular altercation i have my defenses prepared and could explain to you why i think i wasn’t in the wrong…but isn’t that what EVERY fight is like? who ever fights about how the other person is RIGHT?

i will refrain from posting about said names until they are less polemic (the poor kid’s 3^rd grade year?)

not much else had been happening on the baby front. we were waiting to hear back from the one clinic we actually managed to speak to, as their doctor was supposedly out of the country until march 18^th. monday we got a call from “federico” asking if we wanted to set up an appointment. what happened to nadia? she was the nice lady that called the first time and spoke to esther for half an hour and asked good questions and all that..where is nadia?? according to esther, federico was nice as well, but apparently i’m already hyper-sensitive about things like this. sigh.

we’re considering whether or not to make that appointment for a consult. if it’s really expensive, i’m going to go with “no,” but if it’s not too much, it might not be a bad idea to go ahead and spend a few bucks on that, to actually have a moment to lay our thoughts down before a professional and have him or her react to them. you know?

this morning we did some more web searching and filled in info forms for three more clinics. i should go and check esther’s email and see if anyone wrote back….

…nope, nothing yet.

existential adoption angst.

on the bus ride to and from work, i've started reading a new book. (it's not a very long ride, but a good book is worth snatching bits and pieces of whenever you can.) i really am more of a non-fiction fan than anything else, and i've recently started the sins of scripture by john shelby spong. you probably remember the name; i remember back when i was "in the fold" automatically thinking he was a heretic without ever actually reading the book, and now i like reading him and being discerning. isn't that a good word? instead of prejudiced.

so anyhow, this particular book is about how particular bible verses have been used way out of context and have had harmful effects rather than positive ones. i'm still in the first section, which turns out to be about the environment. and the first chapter? focuses on being fruitful and multiplying. his point is, essentially, that a mandate that had a purpose when humanity/the jewish people were just starting out, has lost its immediate context, and thus can't be blindly applied anymore. in actuality, he claims, using excellently researched and chillingly scary numbers, one very important thing we can do right now for the earth, nature, and humanity is CURB population growth.

bethany asked me today why we don't just adopt. (she was being curious, not judgemental). the answer is that i think we will, and that we'd like to try both, but that we'd love to be biologically involved and create something together at least once. stated that way, these aren't sinister desires. but up against population density statistics and al-gore-type environmental truths...don't i just feel like the only decent thing to do is adopt. ouch.

i promise to pray about this, but this is going to be one of those prayers that severely test my ability to be humble.

time zones.

not that anyone cares, but the "time posted" on these babies (ha! babies!) is way off. that last one was actually posted at 10:50-ish, a.m. the curse of being in argentina :)

street cred.

so we have actually started the process, apart from looking things up on the internet. although that is a vital part of the process of doing anything these days. but the next thing we did was fill out some forms for a fertility clinic we found in buenos aires, and thus subsequently had a phone conversation with one of their representatives.

this was highly interesting. first of all, their forms were your typical, "your info/partner's info" complete with lots and lots of questions about sperm and scrotum and the like. so, we just deleted that section, and sent the girly section twice. the lovely woman assigned to us (whose name is nadia) called us a few hours later. she seemed not in the least bit fazed about us being two chicks. granted, buenos aires is fairly liberal among its latin american peers, but there is still a fair amount of discrimination. i won't suggest that it behooves fertility clinics to be non-discriminatory so they can get the big bucks from anyone and everyone, but it does appear that some of these clinics have figured this out already.

anyhow, esther and nadia had a nice lovely talk about everything, ending up with her promise to work up a detailed list of procedures, prices, etc. (i have a dream that everything will be much cheaper here because we're in latin america, but i'm sure that'll get dashed at some point.) the doctor is actually on vacation now until march 18th (it's high summer vacationing time here), at which point we will be re-contacted, possibly go in for a consultation, etc. we're still shopping around and what have you, but it feels nice to have been taken seriously by at least one fertility professional. like, we're actually taking first steps or something. crazy.

she said that from our profiles, we sound perfectly healthy and good to go (this is her pre-any-testing opinion) and that the total fee will probably be somewhere around $7000 smackers (likely less than in the states, but still a scary number for us). also, although i was hoping that there would be some medical reason that would suggest one of us being much more suited to donate eggs or give birth, it appears that there isn't one, so far. looks like we're still on the hook for making that decision.

regarding cost: my grandmother gave me a savings bond several years ago for $10,000, which i always (in my single days) said i would be saving for either grad school or adoption. so if we were to spend it all in one chunk on making a baby, theoretically, i should feel fine with this. there are a few issues, such as it (the bond) not actually being mature for a few more years, and the fact that once you spend it, it's gone--and then how do you FEED the little animal?? and of course i'm leaving out the strong possibility of having to do IVF way more than once. i know i need to be ridiculously grateful that we have this at all, but i'm still jealous of the blogs i've read of two-mom households, where both moms are making US wages. although that's still not quite enough for them, either...nutshell: if you're the praying type, pray for esther to get a job and/or me to get a promotion. it's sort of something we're using as a benchmark for whether or not to go ahead with this. i apparently have faith that it's going to happen (i've created a BLOG, for goodness's sake!), but our present income of $500 bucks a month isn't going to cut it to raise a family, even in buenos aires.

enough about money for now. promise!

the three whys.

i figured there would be some questions to answer at the beginning of the blog, so here goes...

1.) why in the heck are you thinking about having a baby?? you're too young/single/lesbian/living a sinful lifestyle/against God's plan/etc!

contrary to the beliefs of some, i'm no longer young nor single (i don't give a rip if the government doesn't acknowledge it). as to whether or not i'm living a sinful lifestyle, go back and read the comment wars in my lj. we could debate about whether or not lesbians can have babies, but i'll cut that debate short: they have. and are.

i think there's probably one or two of you reading this who AREN'T antagonistic towards me (gracias), and for those folks, here's the rel conversation on this topic.

isn't it weird? just the concept, producing and then being responsible for another human being? it's a HUGE deal, which is why i was ambivalent about it for a long time. since making a permanent committment to esther, i've known that she is totally unambivalent about it. she wants babies, end of story. at times i felt wary about that--do i want them as much as she does? is it a bad thing if the answer is no? what harm will it do my eventual kids if i have them less than enthusiastically?

but over time, my personal emotional reaction to this idea just...shifted. like so many things. i was talking to a friend online last week (i'll call her znai, because i do. call her znai.) i mentioned that i was reading baby name lists on the internet (and by the way, it turns out i'm totally old-fashioned in my taste in names, but i'll hold back on that post until i feel that i've earned it a bit more) and she asked me when the heck i had gotten so serious about this whole thing. she knew we were thinking about it, someday, but when did it become concrete? and the real answer to that question was, just, i just knew. i just suddenly felt more sure about the whole thing. and there you have it.

it's an awful lot like back in 2001, when i was trying to decide if i was going to become a campus pastor. i was worrying over the decision for quite a while, fretting, making lists, praying feverishly, etc. then i went on a missions trip to russia for the summer, during which one of my stated goals was to pray for an answer to that question. well, i completely forgot to focus on it at all during the summer, and on the last day, i realized i already knew. i wasn't worrying about it anymore; i had peace.

i'm sure i can find other things to worry about now :)

and...as to whether or not it's against God's plan. i'm not going to lie; i've struggled with this one. clearly, we are going to have to enlist professional help in this endeavor--and what does that mean? but here's what occurred to me the other day while i was showering. certain folks may think us trying to have a baby is like bucking God's plan--He said "man+woman" and we ignore Him and do what we want. i can see how you might think that. but in the end, we're not disagreeing with God's plan at all--we're totally affirming it! we think life and conception and the miracle of gestation are totally awesome things. we're not against the equation of sperm+egg, we just personally don't have any sperm, so we need to get some. that's really all it is.

think about this--a heart transplant patient. one of the wonders of modern science. but in no point in his or her medical journeys was there a redefinition of blood or vein or muscle or beat. the patient totally adores and affirms these things. just because they were willing and eager to use medicine and technology and financial resources to do so doesn't mean they are denying the original concept.

the heart transplant patient needs help to get access to a new heart; i need help to get access to sperm. neither one of us wishes hearts and sperm would just go away. seems simple to me :)

or you could just go with esther's far simpler answer to the question of why it's ok for us to consider in vitro: "Jesus was conceived by IVF, wasn't he?"

2.) the heck are you writing a blog for? you're not so smart!

you are totally right. i am completely not smart about this, not at all. but the other day, when i went searching for resources and found almost nothing, i was crushed. then i posted a plea for help on a livejournal community for lesbians, and within hours got all sorts of useful links to blogs and communities and webpages and book recommendations. i get all veklempt about community in general, and it was a very happy thing to realize that there IS a community of people engaged in exactly the same process. so, maybe i can somehow be a part of that. and maybe, just maybe, i can offer a unique perspective on a couple of points. trying to do this overseas, eventual immigration issues (since i am an american citizen and my wife will just get turned away at the door), etc. we shall see.

3.) why does it have such a weird name?

i work as an administrative assistant at a translation company. i like it. anyhow, my desk is right next to the two in-house translators, and the other day, one of them was working on the subtitles for an educational film about gestation (totally a sign :). in the english, one of the labels said "the early embyro," and she enlisted my help to try and figure out the best translation for this into spanish. the upshot is that we found that the word "precoz" is often used in spanish medical documents to refer to this beginning stage of the embryo...not exactly the same meaning of "precocious" in english, which i tend to associate with 6-year-old classical violinists and the like, but simply meaning "in the opening stages." which my new family is. and it's awesome.